Word: namo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like a studio releasing once censored scenes from a classic horror movie, on April 1 the Pentagon declassified a key memo used to justify the abuse of prisoners by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Completed six days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the full text of the 81-page document is rife with shockingly broad edicts about prisoner treatment, like this barely constitutional chestnut: "In wartime, it is for the President alone to decide what methods to use to prevail against the enemy...
...destruction of videos allegedly showing torture in its secret overseas prisons, while Attorney General Michael Mukasey remains on the defensive for not condemning specific forms of torture. A variety of cases in lower courts and at the Supreme Court address allegations of faulty process and illegal detention at Guantánamo...
Bowman, 26, a rising star on the Irish stand-up scene, has been setting off comic explosions for 18 months now with Jesus: The Guantánamo Years. In the one-man routine, Bowman is Jesus, who, at the behest of his aging dad, returns to earth for a comeback tour. Since he's a bearded Palestinian willing to die as a martyr, the messiah is stopped at U.S. Immigration and shipped off to Guantánamo Bay. He finds himself trapped on an island that's become a maximum-security prison, designed by the people who brought the world...
...akin to a Gandhian exercise in passive resistance. It's a kind of intellectual sit-in - "a nonviolent act that can cause a change in public awareness." An atheist whose skepticism of organized religion was honed growing up during Ireland's Troubles, Bowman nonetheless claims his Guantánamo show is deeply Christian. It stands up "for American values, and for Christian values," he says. "Guantánamo Bay is profoundly un-Christian. I'm simply doing what Jesus did during his life: going around from place to place, and speaking up for what he believed...
...While non-Americans have railed against U.S. policies over the past few years, much of the world has continued to love America, or at least the idea of America. A good part of the anger over the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay is explained not just by the fact that torture may have been used, but by the sense that the U.S. has failed to live up to its own ideals. For many non-Americans, the U.S. elections hold out the promise of change, of renewed leadership. "A lot of what French people identify as negative influences...