New to Job, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER, NYTimes
WASHINGTON, March 22 — In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.
Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.
Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.
...but Zee Germans are now arbiting Islamic law, wtf...?
German Judge Cites Koran, Stirring Up Cultural Storm
By MARK LANDLER, NYTimes
FRANKFURT, March 22 — A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman’s request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.
In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.
News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legal experts and Muslim leaders in Germany, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put seventh-century Islamic religious teaching ahead of German law in deciding a case of domestic violence.
Forgetting even the very concept of the separation of faith and government for a moment, let us examine the basic, common sense-grounded options presented to a judge by such a case: 1) Tell a wife, repeatedly beaten by her husband, to go fuck herself. 2) Help the poor woman (or man, what if it were a man?).
Clearly, this is a fucking no-brainer. How absurd to read news of this judge's hurtful and indefensible decision on the same day we read that Robert Gates--some old-school Commie-stoppin bad-ass general-type--has decided that illegally detaining Muslims in a foreign country for indefinite periods of time is not only not cool, but, more to his point, is doing America more harm than good.
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