Gitmo water quality: Statements by prison warden and spokesperson are directly contradicted by US Marine and others

Via Jim White at Emptywheel, it appears that there is a conflict surrounding the potability of tap water at Guantanamo Bay’s detention facilities:

Yesterday, the controversy at the prison expanded. Jason Leopold broke the news via Twitter that attorneys for some of the prisoners have filed an emergency court petition in response to claims that guards at the prison have cut off bottled drinking water and that the tap water prisoners have been told to drink is not potable. Leopold provided links to both the court petition and a declaration from a doctor for one of the prisoners. From the filing requesting an emergency motion:

According to an AP story linked by White:

Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the prison, said prisoners are provided with bottled water and that the tap water is safe to drink. “It’s potable water. It’s the same water I make my coffee with and that they make lunch with,” Durand said.

Colonel John V. Bogdan, considered to be Gitmo detention camp’s “warden,” has issued a sworn declaration in which he claims that the tap water at Guantanamo is perfectly safe and that “it is the same water I drink on a daily basis.” The accompanying government motion in opposition to the emergency court petition can be found here.

Detainee counsel has issued a list of exhibits that appear to directly contradict this assertion. Perhaps the most convincing of these exhibits is a sworn declaration by a US Marine Corps. Maj. and judge advocate named Derek A. Poteet. The declaration bluntly states that it is normal procedure to give detainees and prison staffaccess to bottled water at all times and that the tap water at Guantanamo is not potable:

In the housing at “Camp Justice,” there are signs located near the sinks warning that the water is non-potable and that thewater is for hygiene purposes only. I also have been verbally warned not to drink the water at Camp Justice. […] While meeting with clients at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, I have observed the tap water on base at Guantanamo Bay to be Yellowish-brown at times. I have sometimes mistakenly thought that somone forgot to flush a toilet because the water in the bowl was yellow, only to flush it an see that the “clean” water in the bowl was yellow even after flusing. This does not happen all the time, but I have witnessed it multiple times and in different locations on the base including the detention facility. […] I have never observed any military, civilian, or detainee drink water out of a tap inside the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Also included among the exhibits:

• Declaration of Stephen N. Xenakis, MD: “Advising hunger-striking detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility to drink water from the faucet predispoes them up to gastrointestinal infections and a quick demise, because their metabolic status has been severely compromised and their medical and physiologic conditions are significantly impaired.
• Declaration of Daniel Lakemacher: “I am a former Hospital Corpsman of the United States Navy. I was deployed to Guantanamo Bay as part of the Joint Task Force – Joint Medical Group in 2007, and served in that capacity into 2008. During my service at the Guantanamo Bay prison, I observed that all military and non-military staff working within the prison facility who drank water, drank exclusively bottled water and never tap water. Likewise, all detainees were provided with bottled water and were never required to drink water from faucets in their cells. I never observed anyone – staff or detainees – drink water from any faucet at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. All water consumed by both staff and detainees was bottled water.”
• Statement of Petitioner Musa’ab al Madhwani: “Because the tap water is not suitable to drink, I now drink only the bare minimum amount of water, when bottled water is denied to me. After drinking the water from the tap, I felt nauseated.”
• Two articles from the official news magazine of Joint Task Force Guantánamo that make it perfectly clear that bottled water is the main source of potable water at Guantanamo.

1991 Appeals Court ruling left door open to necessity defense in cases of “direct” civil disobedience

US v. Schoon (1991), United States Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit:

On December 4, 1989, thirty people, including appellants, gained admittance to the IRS office in Tucson, where they chanted “keep America’s tax dollars out of El Salvador,” splashed simulated blood on the counters, walls, and carpeting, and generally obstructed the office’s operation. After a federal police officer ordered the group, on several occasions, to disperse or face arrest, appellants were arrested.

At a bench trial, appellants proffered testimony about conditions in El Salvador as the motivation for their conduct. They attempted to assert a necessity defense, essentially contending that their acts in protest of American involvement in El Salvador were necessary to avoid further bloodshed in that country. While finding appellants motivated solely by humanitarian concerns, the court nonetheless precluded the defense as a matter of law, relying on Ninth Circuit precedent.

In political necessity cases involving indirect civil disobedience against congressional acts, however, the act alone is unlikely to abate the evil precisely because the action is indirect.* Here, the IRS obstruction, or the refusal to comply with a federal officer’s order, are unlikely to abate the killings in El Salvador, or immediately change Congress’s policy; instead, it takes another volitional actor not controlled by the protestor to take a further step; Congress must change its mind.

* Obviously, the same may not be true of instances of direct civil disobedience. For example, if the evil to be abated was a particular shipment of weapons to El Salvador and the protestors hijacked the truck or destroyed those weapons, the precise evil would have been abated. Because our case does not involve direct civil disobedience, we do not address the applicability of the necessity defense to such incidents.

Just throwing out some ideas here. Let’s say that some group of protesters were to sabotage an arms shipment to Bahrain or Israel, they might want to mention this precedent.

I know it sounds crazy, but the necessity defense has worked before–at least at a state level court–in getting more than a dozen protesters acquitted of charges relating to the disruption of CIA recruitment operations at the University of Massachusetts.

The bitter truth about the US-Israel relationship

Remarks by President Obama in Arrival Ceremony, 19 March 2013:

I want to begin right now, by answering a question that is sometimes asked about our relationship — why? Why does the United States stand so strongly, so firmly with the State of Israel? And the answer is simple. We stand together because we share a common story — patriots determined “to be a free people in our land,” pioneers who forged a nation, heroes who sacrificed to preserve our freedom, and immigrants from every corner of the world who renew constantly our diverse societies.

John Quincy Adams, Oration at Plymouth, 22 December 1802:

There are, indeed, moralists who have questioned the right of the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals in any case, and under any limitations whatsoever. But have they maturely considered the whole subject? The Indian right of possession itself stands, with regard to the greater part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. […] Shall he forbid the wilderness to blossom like a rose? Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall before the axe of industry, and to rise again, transformed into the habitations of ease and elegance? Shall he doom an immense region of the globe to perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the tiger and the wolf silence forever the voice of human gladness?

Shimon Peres, 1970:

The country [Palestine] was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlements; and Israel’s cultivable land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness.

Gallup, 15 March 2013:

As President Barack Obama prepares to visit Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, and Jordan next week — his first trip to the region as president — Americans’ sympathies lean heavily toward the Israelis over the Palestinians, 64% vs. 12%. Americans’ partiality for Israel has consistently exceeded 60% since 2010; however, today’s 64% ties the highest Gallup has recorded in a quarter century, last seen in 1991 during the Gulf War.

Too often the US’ close relationship is attributed to the ambiguously defined “Israel Lobby.” While there is something to be said about the strong-arm tactics of groups such as AIPAC in getting massive amounts of US tax payer money sent to Israel, the fact of the matter is that the American population overwhelmingly sympathizes with the settler state of Israel while heaping endless disdain and loathing upon the indigenous Palestinian population. The reason for this is simple: Americans relate to the Israelis more than they ever could with the Palestinians. Israel and the US were both founded as settler states which displaced their respective native populations. Therefore, Israelis are represented as honorary members of the civilized world while Palestinians are proclaimed to be savages.

In this context it becomes clear that AIPAC would not succeed in getting much financial, military and diplomatic backing for Israel without the widespread support it enjoys among the American people. Members of Congress may be greatly concerned with obtaining campaign contributions and gifts from lobbyists, but they are not as insulated from the demands of their constituents as many on the left have asserted.

CRS demonstrates how anti-Chávez concern trolling works

Mark P. Sullivan, Hugo Chávez’s Death: Implications for Venezuela and U.S. Relations (Congressional Research Service, 8 March 2012), pp. 4-5:

One of the legacies of President Chávez is his extensive financial support for the poor, supported by high oil prices, which was a significant reason for his continued popularity and re-election over the years. His government established social programs known as misiones or missions offering an array of services in education, health, nutrition, and housing. As a result of increased social spending, the rate of poverty fell from about 49% in 2002 to about 29% in 2011. The political empowerment of the poor under President Chávez will likely be an enduring aspect of his legacy in Venezuelan politics for years to come. Any future successful presidential candidate will need to take into account how his or her policies would affect working class and poor Venezuelans.

On the other hand, President Chávez also left a large negative legacy, including the deterioration of democratic institutions and practices, threats to freedom of expression, high rates of crime and murder (the highest in South America), and an economic situation characterized by high inflation (over 20% in 2012), crumbling infrastructure, and shortages of consumer goods. Ironically, while Chávez championed the poor, his government’s economic mismanagement wasted billions that potentially could have established a more sustainable social welfare system benefiting poor Venezuelans.

Multiple things are notable about this.

First off, when this report mentions the massive reduction in poverty under Chavez, it cites an external source: the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean‘s Social Panorama of Latin America 2012. By contrast, when mentioning all of Chávez’ faults it does not feel the need to identify a single external source to support its claims. I suppose that the crime rate and inflation are quantifiable and easily proven, but that isn’t the case with dubious assertions of a “crumbling infrastructure” and “economic mismanagement.”

So while outright admitting that Chávez massively reduced poverty and empowered the poor, this report seeks to convince people that he was not a True Friend of the poor because the social welfare system he established is not “sustainable.” Unsurprisingly, this claim is short on details. Without any external source to look up or any specific examples of Chávez’ mismanagement cited, it is unclear why any reader should be convinced that this is the case.

It is very typical for liberal critics of Chávez to proclaim their sympathy for the impoverished majority of Venezuelans while arrogantly brushing aside the fact that they elected him repeatedly. They are often taken in by the most inflammatory propaganda pieces in the purportedly “liberal” Western press that assailed his rule based on anecdotes and misrepresented his statements to make him look buffoonish. They are made unjustifiably nervous by his illiberal (but often wholly justified) actions such as the closing of RCTV. Perhaps more than anything, they held his reign to a higher standard than that of other regimes in Latin America, be they center-left or right-wing. Every time someone brings up Venzeuala’s high murder rate, it should be kept in mind that post-coup Honduras’ murder rate is even higher–the highest in the world in fact. Rarely is Honduras’ homicide problem ever attributed to its US-backed neo-liberal government.

It is entirely possible that because Chávez’ government vocally rejected the neo-liberal framework and actively took responsibility for the health of its citizens that its shortcomings were more noticeable. The cruel irony of the rhetorical battle between capitalism and socialism is that capitalism has little pretext for providing economic necessities to each and every citizen while socialism does. This means that those who die from neglect and deprivation under free market-based societies are rarely held up as examples of capitalist failure. Since capitalism declares itself devoid of any duty to provide food and health care to every human being regardless of their class or employment status, it is considered blameless for any “unfortunate” deaths that occur. By contrast, socialism is lambasted and ridiculed as a direct cause of economic ruin and poverty even in countries that are not socialist by any stretch of imagination. So even if it is the case that socialism does a better job of providing for basic human needs, it often becomes discredited by its own high expectations.

That there are massive problems in Venezuelan society is undeniable. That Chávez’ vision of socialism and his regime are solely to blame for most of these problems is doubtful. That these problems are worse than in economically neo-liberal Third World countries is even more doubtful.

Daniel Pipes openly yearns for millions of dead Americans so people won’t call him a sociopath bigot anymore

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2013:

The 3,000 victims of 9/11, it turns out, did not suffice to shake Western complacency. 30,000 dead, in all likelihood, will also not suffice. Perhaps 300,000 will. For sure, three million will. At that point, worries about Muslim sensibilities and fear of being called an “Islamophobe” will fade into irrelevance, replaced by a single-minded determination to protect lives. Should the existing order someday be in evident danger, today’s relaxed approach will instantly go out the window. The popular support for such measures exists; as early as 2004, a Cornell University poll showed that 44 percent of Americans “believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.”

Israel offers a control case. Because it faces so many threats, the body politic lacks patience with liberal pieties when it comes to security. While aspiring to treat everyone fairly, the government clearly targets the most violent-prone elements of society [note: if this were true Israel would be targeting the IDF]. Should other Western countries face a comparable danger, circumstances will likely compel them to adopt this same approach.

Conversely, should such mass dangers not arise, this shift will probably never take place. Until and unless disaster on a large scale strikes, denial will continue. Western tactics, in other words, depend entirely on the brutality and competence of the Islamist enemy. Ironically, the West permits terrorists to drive its approach to counterterrorism. No less ironically, it will take a huge terrorist atrocity to enable effective counterterrorism.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

Fourteen Muslim-Americans were indicted for violent terrorist plots in 2012, down from 21 the year before, bringing the total since 9/11 to 209, or just under 20 per year. The number of plots also dropped from 18 in 2011 to 9 in 2012.

For the second year in a row, there were no fatalities or injuries from Muslim-American terrorism. Meanwhile, the United States suffered approximately 14,000 murders in 2012. Since 9/11, Muslim-American terrorism has claimed 33 lives in the United States, out of more than 180,000 murders committed in the United States during this period. Over the same period, more than 200 Americans have been killed in political violence by white supremacists and other groups on the far right, according to a recent study published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy. Sixty-six Americans were killed in mass shootings by non-Muslims in 2012 alone, twice as many fatalities as from Muslim-American terrorism in all 11 years since 9/11 (Charles Kurzman, Muslim-American Terrorism: Declining Further, 1 February 2013).