Guantanamo: What the World Should Know (Paperback)

by Michael Ratner (Author), Ellen Ray (Author)
Key Phrases: interrogation camp, United States, Supreme Court, Geneva Conventions (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Imperial policies abroad undermine democracy at home. GUANTANAMO drives this point home like a nail through butter" -- Kevin Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange

"Michael Ratner is America’s most important civil libertarian. If this book doesn’t frighten the public into action, nothing will." -- John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s and author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War

Tis the season...for political nonfiction
Ruminator Review
October 2004
Guantanamo is a profoundly disturbing portrait of the history of the U.S naval station in Cuba and those detained there. Prisoners of war and even civilians, carefully recategorized as “enemy combatants,” may be held there indefinitely, on no formal charges and without access to legal counsel or a hearing in court, and even allegedly tortured in hopes of producing intelligence that may improve national security. This small book consists largely of transcripts if interviews with Michael Ratner, an attorney working with the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the detainees in Guantanamo (some of them held there since 2002). He gives stark information about conditions within the prison as well as the ongoing struggle to give the detainees a fair hearing in court. Much of it is drawn directly from government and court sources. If our government is going to “nuance” its commitment to the Geneva Convention and its protections for prisoners of war, we owe it to each other to make civil liberty concessions deliberately, with informed consent. If we don’t bother to look squarely at Guantanamo and the detainees—and the implications for our own basic freedoms the situation entails—we have no one but ourselves to blame for the erosion of those rights. This is a book you must read.

Product Description
Guantánamo: What the World Should Know teams human rights lawyer Michael Ratner with political journalist Ellen Ray to reveal the truth about Guantánamo Bay Naval Station and the creation of a new network of U.S. detention camps around the world.

As president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner is at the center of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Rasul v. Bush. This case will help to decide the future for thousands of people being held in U.S. detention centers—without charge or any hope of trial. The U.S. administration insists that these prisoners have no rights, and that President Bush has unlimited power to designate anyone—including American citizens—as "enemy combatants" who can be held and interrogated for as long, and as intensively, as their captors wish.

Gathered together for the first time, Guantánamo also includes the governmental memoranda and orders that led to this system of detention without accountability, a letter from two recently released Guantánamo detainees, and excerpts from the Geneva Convention.

Ratner and Ray give a definitive account of what Guantánamo means for the rule of law, for liberty, democracy, and the right to dissent.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green (July 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1920769277
• ISBN-13: 978-1931498647
• ASIN: 1931498644
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #627,434 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good account of the USA's concentration camp at Guantanamo, December 16, 2004

By	William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book consists of interviews of Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, by writer Ellen Ray, plus relevant UN and other documents. Ratner was co-counsel in Rasul v Bush, which the New York Times called "the most important civil rights case in half a century" because on 28 June 2004 the Supreme Court ruled against President Bush that the US military could not hold what it called `enemy combatants' indefinitely, without charge and without access to legal representation. The Court ruled that the prisoners had the right to challenge their detentions in civilian courts.

The Bush government then set up `combatant status review tribunals', supposedly to decide whether the detainees had been correctly designated as enemy combatants and therefore were being rightfully detained according to the laws of combat. However, the administration breached the Supreme Court's ruling that the prisoners had the right to challenge their detentions in civilian courts, since all the tribunals' members are military officers.

Guantanamo is `an interrogation camp', which is flatly illegal, under US and international law. It harks back to Stuart Britain's offshore penal colonies which were beyond the reach of law, forms of executive imprisonment which the 1679 Habeas Corpus Act made illegal. The US detention centres in Iraq, Afghanistan and Diego Garcia and on board US aircraft carriers are modern Devil's Islands.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported that US forces had inflicted on the 550 prisoners illegally held at Guantanamo Bay psychological and physical coercion that was `tantamount to torture'. It said, "the construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture." At least three children, between 11 and 13, were held at Guantanamo; some are still there today.

The British state is guilty of collaboration and connivance with these illegal US state actions. British courts, like US courts, are using as evidence statements made under duress and torture in these US-run camps, thereby condoning the use of torture.

29 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The True Story Behind an American Gulag , August 14, 2004

By	Magna Carta "Caring Human" (New York) - See all my reviews

This book provides a really concise, clear and powerful explanation of the American interrogation camp at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. The author who represents some of the detainees and has interviewed them paints a vivid picture of their hideous treamtment. He demonstrates that the camp is not only outside the law, but a threat to the safety of us all. If you want to know why Guantanamo has become iconic in the Muslism world for everything wrong with the US, read this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rule by Executive Fiat or Rule of Law?, July 20, 2004

By	M. Baldwin (Vermont) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the clearest indication yet of where the Bush administration is heading in terms of putting in place a system of totalitarian justice. The authors show how the President, under his authority as "Comander in Chief" can designate anyone, including American citizens, (that includes you!) as enemy combatants in the US "war on terror." Once designated as such, you have no recourse to a lawyer or an impartial hearing. The recent Supreme Court decisions have upheld the right of "detainees" and so-called "enemy combatants" to the courts but the Administration is trying to do an end-run by bringing them in front of miliary panels--no lawyers--to determine their fate. This is a must read for anyone who is concerned about our civil liberties and international law. It is also a frightening expose of the conditions under which the Guantanamo detainees are held,including testimony by released prisoners about the abuse and torture they have suffered. Buy this book and then buy another to give away to your next door neighbor! There is no time to waste!