Lithwick: How Guantanamo Policies Spread to the US | Newsweek Dahlia Lithwick on Legal Issues

Wrongs Council
9/22/2009 12:00:00 AM
Despite a high-profile effort to reform the world's top human-rights panel, the new U.N. Human Rights Council continues to face the same criticisms that plagued its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights. Experts say bloc voting, loose membership standards, and bias against Israel are keeping the two-year-old council from living up to expectations as a responsible watchdog over global human-rights norms. It is earning a failing grade from a broad range of groups, including human-rights advocates, international-law experts, and democracy activists. Experts say the council's condemnation of the human-rights situations in Darfur, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are steps in the right direction, and there is also a broad expectation that a new U.S. administration in Washington could change the contentious relationship between the council and the United States, which is not a member. But in a year during which the world body marked the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many see the new rights council as a stain on the U.N.'s reputation.
Letters
8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
Gitmo Woes
Michael Isikoff 7/25/2009 12:00:00 AM
White House officials last week tried to downplay their decision to postpone by six months a key report on what to do with Guantánamo detainees when the facility is shut down. But the delay reflects the daunting political obstacles facing President Obama as he struggles to meet his pledge to close the prison by January. Only a few weeks ago, the White House had considered a grand rollout of its Gitmo plans with a joint appearance on Capitol Hill by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CENTCOM Cmdr. David Petraeus. But the president's aides concluded that a briefing would likely backfire, diverting attention from health care and giving Republicans fresh ammunition. "There was no good reason to put it out there and have it attract fire," says a senior administration official who asked not to be identified talking about the internal deliberations. The White House announced last week's report delay in a late-afternoon press briefing that was embargoed until 9 p.m.—late enough to keep the disclosure off the network news and the cable talk shows with the highest ratings.
Obama's Gitmo Task Force Blows Its Deadline
Michael Isikoff 7/20/2009 12:00:00 AM
An Obama administration task force set up to develop a plan for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will miss its first deadline this week—and put off a key report—amid continued divisions over how to resolve one of the president's thorniest policy dilemmas.
Our Real Prison Problem
Dahlia Lithwick 6/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
The public-opinion two-step on the wisdom of closing the prison camp at Guantánamo is fascinating, and not just because, as recent polling shows, Americans are inclined to keep it open forever. The current legal meltdown over what to do with the 240 prisoners shows that Americans actually care a lot about prisons, prisoners and prison reform, but only when the inmates threaten to tumble out into their backyards.
Franco Frattini: ‘Solidarity With America’
Daniel Klaidman 5/30/2009 12:00:00 AM
Now in his second stint as foreign minister under Silvio Berlusconi, Franco Frattini is easily Italy's most serious politician. From his suite in Rome, Frattini chatted with NEWSWEEK's Daniel Klaidman and Barbie Nadeau about Italy's willingness to use soldiers in Afghanistan and his government's renewed commitment to resettle Guantánamo detainees as a gesture of "solidarity" with the United States. Frattini, whose temperament has been called more Scandinavian than Italian, showed passion only in defending Berlusconi against a tabloid-alleged affair with an 18-year-old underwear model from Naples. Excerpts: