American Civil Liberties Union

The medical professionals worked to strap the detainee "into a chair, Velcro his head to a metal restraint, then tether a tube into the man's stomach through his nose to pump in liquid nourishment twice a day."

After the Miami Herald wrote about the 30 hunger striking detainees in the Guantánamo Bay detention camps in January, we were concerned. We wrote an urgent letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to bring his attention to the cruel, inhuman, degrading and unlawful treatment of the 30 hunger striking detainees. In that letter, we pointed out that hunger strikes were indications of a larger problem concerning the conditions of confinement at the detention camp. A week later, Amnesty International, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch joined us in writing to President Obama requesting full access to the detention facility at Guantánamo to independently examine and report on conditions of confinement. We still have not received an answer to our request.

When President Obama issued an executive order calling on the Department of Defense (DOD) to investigate conditions of confinement at Guantánamo and whether they conformed to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and to "other applicable laws," we hoped that the DOD report would shed some light on the actual conditions at the camp and the role of medical personnel during interrogations and forced feedings.

One month later, the DOD report came out and the DOD – unsurprisingly, since the DOD was policing itself – claimed that conditions at Gitmo were in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. We knew this was a total whitewash, and that a real independent assessment would be necessary to ascertain the actual conditions at Guantánamo.

Today, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding the disclosure of a May 2009 legal memo from the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The memo reportedly addresses the constitutional rights that Guantánamo detainees could legally claim during military commission proceedings, as well as the admissibility of statements obtained through coercion in those proceedings.

As President Obama travels overseas, it is a good time to remember the United States’ potential to lead by example. Today, the ACLU ran an ad in the daily Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, asking President Obama to restore American values of justice.

This week has been a busy one for those following the military commissions debate. Congress has held not one, but two hearings on recent proposed changes to the military commissions.

Before we get into that, a brief history lesson: The military commissions were created in 2006 by the passage of the Military Commissions Act. I could write paragraph after paragraph about why this bill was unconstitutional, should never have been written in the first place and was partially ruled illegal by the Supreme Court but, for the sake of time and space, I'll just point you here.