Review "This collection of stirring narrative, government data and testimony, edited by two of the lawyers for those detained by the Bush administration as unlawful combatants at Guantánamo, puts America on notive about the issues of civil liberties and constitutional freedoms" (Publishers Weekly)"Provides an invaluable perspectiveor more accurately, perspectives, since more than one hundred lawyers contributed to the volume. These men and women, all working for nothing, have gained intimate access to those whom the United States sought to keep hidden behind strictly closed doors.The stories these lawyers have been able to tell, adroitly edited by Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, offer a multifaceted portrait of life on the base." (New York Review of Books)"A critically important and inspired project. . . . Guantánamo from the point of view of the habeas lawyersthose courageous men and women who have stood up for the rule of law, the constitution and human rights as they represented the detainees beginning in December, 2001." (Peter Jan Honigsburg,author of Our Nation, Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror)"“The most compelling reason to read is that the legal questions created by Guantanamo have not yet been fully resolved. President Obama’s promise to close the prison has so far gone unfulfilled, and John Paul Stevens, who will perhaps be remembered more for his writings on Guantanamo than any other subject, will leave the Court at the end of this term. No matter how the Guantanamo question is resolved, historians will no doubt benefit from Denbeaux and Hafetz’s excellent book." (Tyler D. Helmond, in The Champion (NACDL))"Perhaps the appeal to enlightened national interest was the best strategic means of accelerating the end of Guantánamo; but it necessarily de-emphasized in the public discourse the great cost imposed on the detainees. The many stories told in The Guantánamo Lawyers, which make Guantánamos human cost much more tangible, go some way towards redressing this." (Concurring Opinions)"In this admirable compliation, Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seaton hall University School of Law and Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project, have explored one of this generation’s great moral questions by assembling first-person reports from over 100 attourneys who represent prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.”" (New York Law Journal)"This volume is as chilling an indictment of the executive's disdain for the rule of law as could be imagined…. The details of what passes for law in Guantánamo will shock readers familiar with any concept of due process…. The skill, courage and resourcefulness of the unofficial Guantánamo Bay Bar Association give us genuine cause for pride in lawyers." (New York Law Journal)"[M]akes for gripping if somber reading. . .They have produced a book that will make other lawyers vicariously proud." (TimesOnline)"A valuable contribution to the record of an unfinished story bound to reverberate for years to come." (Kirkus Reviews)"A new and remarkable book... made up of the written accounts by more than a hundred of the lawyers who provide detailed accounts of their meetings with their clients inside the prison... an informative and telling chronicle of what Guantanamo is really like..." (The New York Times) Read more About the Author Jonathan Hafetz is Associate Professor at Seton Hall Law School and has litigated numerous landmark habeas corpus detention cases. He also is the co-editor (with Mark Denbeaux) of The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press, 2009).Mark Denbeaux is a professor at Seton Hall Law School, where he also directs the Center for Policy and Research. Read more
T**D
I was struck by how well both books can tell us a great deal about the sad state of political governance in ...
This book shows why our citizens and government officials need to reaffirm a commitment to our own principles, values and laws, and to those of the international community that our nation helped to create. For an update on the lawless culture at Guantanamo, see Jonathan Hafetz (2016), Obama's Guantanamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison. As I was reading this more recent book, I was struck by how well both books can tell us a great deal about the sad state of political governance in our nation. In particular during our toxic politics of today, the lawlessness at Guantanamo can show us how a lawless culture for the powerful paved the road for the presidential run of Donald Trump. He is a reputedly successful business man, who–reflecting the brutal culture of our prison at Guantanamo–shows no regard for fair laws or human dignity and decency.
D**E
The story behind the propaganda
I've read many amazing books in my life, but this is the first time I've been moved to write a review. I often highlight books as a left-over habit from school. Most books I've read have a bit of highlighting every 20 to 40 pages. This one has highlighting on nearly every page.This story couldn't be told as fiction - no one would believe it and every editor would bounce it as completely unrealistic. But this story isn't fiction. It's what our government has done, right under our very noses, for the past eight years.We all know the story of Guantanamo Bay - or think we do. In the fear-filled days after September 11, 2001, hundreds of men were swept up on or near battlefields, from their homes, from refugee camps, and from many other places. They were accused of being "enemy combatants" who committed acts of "hostility" against the United States. They were "the worst of the worst" and we needed a secure place to house them until the "end" of the "war on terror".But the stories told by the lawyers who compiled this book tell a far different story. These men, far from being "the worst of the worst" are more accurately "the least of the least". Most are completely innocent - guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those who are guilty at all are low-level functionaries of al Qaeda, mostly forcibly conscripted. Housed in unspeakable conditions, never charged with crimes, given no opporunity to prove their innocence, these men have languished and many have slowly descended into madness and ruinous health. Even today hundreds still linger, cleared of all charges, but with nowhere to go because no government, including our own, will take men declared to be "the worst of the worst".The most important part of this work is that it's impossible to dismiss it as simply a "liberal hit piece". Of the books' 100+ contributors, many are current or former military lawyers. Most of the rest hail from large conservative law firms. None of them set out to indict the Bush administration; they simply set out to do what lawyers do - even "the worst of the worst" are entitled to representation. But their experiences, and the government's own documents which they were able to access, led them to that conclusion. Furthermore, the book is not significantly kinder to the Obama administration than to the Bush administration. Despite his promises to close Guantanamo and open up government records for greater transparency, Obama has continued on a foreign policy course, including his policies with respect to GITMO, which is strikingly similar to that of the Bush administration.I've read many books regarding such horrors as Nazi Germany, the Inquisition, etc. and I'm always left with a pit-of-the-stomach sick feeling - how can humans be so cruel to other humans? This book left me with a similar sick feeling, only much worse. I can't dismiss this episode of history as "those people". This was and is being done by my country within my own lifetime. We as Americans need to speak out. It's well past time to reclaim our once-proud name.
K**A
Fascinating and Disturbing
Made me angry and sad and proud all at once. This is a book that will stir powerful emotions. Who are the men in GTMO? Why are they there? How our government, the alleged bastion of liberty, imprisoned many men wrongfully without real evidence of being "enemy combatants" is very disturbing. How we lied to our own citizens and to the world can never be forgiven. But how our justice system , though slowly, responded to this situation and began to shed light upon it and prevent the Executive from exercising unchallenged and unchallengeable power was for me as an attorney a beautiful story to read. It left me wondering about the men still there and if they should be and what their fate will be.
B**R
True Patriots
They say if the walls of the world's slaughterhouses were made of glass, we'd all be vegetarians. And certainly anyone who reads The Guantanamo Lawyers will recoil in horror at this al Qaeda public relations bonanza and cancer on American values.As the title suggests, the focus of the book is on the American lawyers who have fought on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees (a strange euphemism for men who have been imprisoned indefinitely without evidence, charge, trial, or conviction). In this respect it's an excellent companion to Andy Worthington's equally excellent The Guantanamo Files, which focuses on the prisoners.The book is not the least bit dry. It's a first-person telling by true American patriots whose horror at the condition and treatment of their clients, elation at hard-fought successes, and frustration with Kakfaesque setbacks are palpable in every paragraph. Read it and ask yourself this: did America become the nation we are despite our values, or because of them? And if the latter, what will become of us if we don't right this terrible wrong?
V**G
This is one of the bests books I've ever read ...
This is one of the bests books I've ever read in my life. EVERYONE should be reading it since we've all been missguided on what is going on at GTMO. It hurts me, as a citizen of the world, that this things continue to happen.Very well written, I couldn't put it down!
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