Maybe. Report says it was found in a “work area of the West Wing,” so it looks unlikely to be a tourist at least.
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It could also be the Eisenhower Exec Office building; which is part of the WH complex. Lots of people go there for meetings who aren’t gov employees every day. The White House building itself too. When I went to Eisenhower they just metal detected and looked in your bag. At the WH proper you went through this long screening tunnel - lord knows what they irradiate you with going through that!
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Is the Eisenhower complex considered part of the West Wing itself, though? WaPo report seemed pretty clear that’s where the cocaine was found.
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Just remember if the local assessor ever comes by it’s a “tool shed.”
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The dog’s got to sleep somewhere.
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If he’s staying there it is definitely a tool shed.
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The Biden administration, which has said it wants to close the Guantanamo facility, said in a statement attached to the report that Ní Aoláin’s findings “are solely her own” and “the United States disagrees in significant respects with many factual and legal assertions” but it will carefully review her recommendations.
AP didn’t link to the source documents, which can be found here.
The SR finds that several U.S. Government procedures establish a structural deprivation and non-fulfilment of rights necessary for a humane and dignified existence and constitute at a minimum, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment across all detention practices at Guantánamo Bay. First, all Joint Task Force personnel are required to address detainees by their Internment Serial Number instead of their preferred names.
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Second, the instruments of restraints used for detainee transportation to/from and at attorney meetings, family calls, military commission and other legal proceedings, hospital visits, and the SR’s own meetings with detainees are inherently degrading.
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Third, based on her interviews with detainees, former detainees, and lawyers, the SR expresses serious concern that certain disciplinary measures like forced cell extractions and solitary confinement continue to be implemented disproportionately and overexpansively, amounting to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
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Fourth, the SR finds the U.S. Government’s near-constant surveillance of both “non-high value” and “high value” detainees through visual monitoring to be excessive and amounts to humiliating and degrading treatment, especially for those who have never been charged with a single crime. All of these practices and procedures are experienced in overlapping and intersectional ways by the Guantánamo Bay detainee population.
That’s just the detention operations.
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I still don’t understand the legal justification for holding these prisoners without due process.
They aren’t enemy soldiers, who would be accorded rights under the Geneva Convention.
They aren’t US Citizens or permanent residents or US “people” who would be accorded rights under the US Constitution.
They aren’t foreign citizens, who woukd be afforded rights under UN policy and International Law.
So if they are none of the above, who are they?
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“The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must”?
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They’re John Yoo’s victims. And his legacy.
“ Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to General Colin Powell in the Persian Gulf War and while Powell was Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, has said of Yoo and other administration figures responsible for these decisions:
Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzales and—at the apex—Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In the future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court.[91]”
From Wikipedia
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Update: new reporting says the cocaine was found in a heavily trafficked area rather than a work area of the West Wing as previously reported, so “tourist trying to ditch their stash before heading through another security screening” sounds like a likely possibly after all.
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The whole point of Gitmo was to find a location where they could be detained indefinitely without the legal rights afforded to either criminal suspects or prisoners of war. That’s why they weren’t brought to the United States like suspected terrorists or enemy combatants of bygone eras might have been.
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But… but… but… Bidenomics is a failure! INFLATION!!! /s
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And he’s not the REAL President, anyway.
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I know you’re not defending it, BTW, but I still have questions. Because I don’t think that holds together logically. If Gitmo is part of the US, then US law still holds. If it’s part of Cuba and the prisoners are civilians, then Cuban law holds. If they are prisoners of war being held on foreign soil by the US Military, then they are still afforded the rights of the Geneva Convention.
Legally, I guess it’s only holding up because the US government refuses to recognize jurisdiction from any court, not because it’s legally valid. So that goes back to @chenille’s point.
Given what SCOTUS just did with manufactured standing, I wonder if a human right group could do the same for GITMO prisoners - manufacture standing to assert these prisoners’ rights.
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I agree with you, but apologists have worked tirelessly to maintain the pretense that Gitmo is some kind of Schrödinger’s prison; simultaneously all of these things and none depending on what kind of legal protections are being sought.
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