Guantanamo: What the World Should Know (Politics of the Living)

In the months following its initial release, Guant¡namo: What the World Should Know has proved to be a disturbingly accurate account of the Bush administration's tangle with civil liberties and torture. Written by Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights President and co-consul on the case of Rasul v. Bush)and Ellen Ray (Institute for Media Analysis President), Guantanamo is the most authoritative documentation to date on President Bush's moves toward a network of detention centers--a system without accountability, which flouts U.S. and international law.
With a resource section that includes the Gonzales memo to President Bush and excerpts from the Geneva Conventions, Guantanamo provides strong evidence of Ratner explains how Gonzales and the Bush Administration are acting to radically alter America's historic commitment to civil and human rights, and why all Americans should resist what is being done in our name.
Gathered together for the first time, Guant¡namo: What the World Should Know includes the governmental memorandum that led to the conditions at the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and beyond.
Ratner and Ray give the definitive account of what led to the current conditions at Guant¡namo and the importance of continuing to fight against the violations of U.S. and international law undertaken by the United States since 9-11. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the rule of law, liberty, democracy--and the right to dissent.

Ratner (president, Center for Constitutional Rights), who was one of very few American lawyers to attempt to take up the cases of the Guantánamo detainees in the wake of September 11th and the U.S. war in Afghanistan, is interviewed at length by political journalist Ray in order to expose the legal and moral dangers posed by the United States' establishment of an extra-legal detention camp. Ratner describes how the Bush administration erected an edifice of rule by executive fiat in its justification of the camp and reveals details of the torture regime that would later migrate to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He also describes the ongoing efforts to bring the camp and the detainees back into the system of international and domestic law. A helpful index contains relevant treaties and legal documents.
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Guantanamo: What the World Should Know teams human rights lawyer Michael Ratner with political journalist Ellen Ray to reveal the truth about Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and the creation of a new network of U.S. detention camps around the world.

For two and a half years the U.S. military imprisoned and interrogated more than 700 Muslims from 44 countries at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, without filing charges against them or granting them access to lawyers or family. The U.S. administration insists that these anonymous prisoners have no rights, that the "war on terrorism" gives President Bush the power to designate people (including American citizens) as "enemy combatants," to be held indefinitely and interrogated for as long and as intensively as their captors wish, often fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Guantanamo teams Michael Ratner, lead cousel on the case before the Supreme Court, with political journalist Ellen Ray to reveal the truth about the government, the prisoners, and the legal and human rights involved.

Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He serves as co-counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the historic case of Guant¡namo detainees currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Under Ratner's leadership, the Center has aggressively challenged the constitutional and international law violations undertaken by the United States post-9/11, including the constitutionality of indefinite detention and the restrictions on civil liberties as defined by the unfolding terms of a permanent war. In the 1990s Ratner acted as a principal counsel in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees on Guant¡namo Bay. He has written and consulted extensively on Guant¡namo, the Patriot Act, military tribunals, and civil liberties in the post-9/11 world.
He has also been a lecturer of international human rights litigation at the Yale Law School and the Columbia School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, special Counsel to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to assist in the prosecution of human rights crimes, and radio co-host for the civil rights show Law and Disorder. Ellen Ray is President of the Institute for Media Analysis and the author and editor of numerous books and magazines on U.S. intelligence and international politics. She is co-editor with William Schaap of Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars the American Way and Covert Action: The Root of Terrorism, both published by Ocean Press in 2003.