Because 9/11 changed everything

Videotapes of 2002 CIA interrogations destroyed.

"CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said."

This news comes the same week the Supreme Court heard arguments about prisoners in Guantanamo's right to challenge their imprisonment, otherwise known as habeus-corpus. Most of whom have been there 6 years now.

The newly coined term unlawful enemy combatant is what the administration uses to describe the people there, it does not call them POW's since that term carries with it certain rights from the 'quaint' Geneva Conventions. Though sometimes it does compare them to POW's, arguing that in a war, POW's can be held without charges or trial until the end of hostilities. With the seemingly endless 'War on Terror' this amounts to a de-facto life sentence.

The advantage to holding them at Guantanamo is it allows the administration to claim US law does not apply since they are not on US soil, an argument refuted by the Supreme Court, much like the other prisoners at the various CIA black sites scattered around the world, and the 'extraordinary rendition' program.

After failing to convince the Supreme Court of the legality of the imprisonment system in earlier cases, the previous Republican Congress passed the Military Commissions Act to specifically take away the habeus protection, trying slowly to make the tribunal system appear legal. Some things allowed in the Combatant status review tribunals - CSRT's: secret evidence, evidence and confessions obtained through 'coercion'; not allowed: lawyers, introducing evidence for the defense.

One of the few prisoners to be charged with a crime reached a unique plea bargain, "the [US] government released Hicks on the condition that he not speak with reporters for one year, that he waive his rights to appeal or sue, and that he recant accusations of illegal treatment while in U.S. captivity."

If the one year period starts at his release, due at the end of this month, it will coincidentally end during Bush's last scheduled month in office.