The money factor
February 8, 2010 at 7:02 pm by Valerie WoodallWe all know that when it comes to restoring the rule of law, our current elected officials have been less than proactive. In fact, opening up the past and righting wrongs has been stopped by Obama’s administration on numerous occasions, most recently with the DOJ finding that torture authors should be disciplined, not tried because legalizing torture was simply “poor judgment.”
This leaves many of us wondering, isn’t this the presidential nominee who taught Constitutional Law? Isn’t this the guy who made strong statements on the campaign trail regarding restoring our constitutional values and the accountability that comes with them? This is the administration that just two days after entering office signed an executive order to shutter Guantánamo, right? So what has happened?
Lawrence Lessig wrote an editorial for The Nation, “How to get our democracy back: If you want change, you have to change Congress.” The premise is that as of now Congress is practically selling policy to the highest bidder and no real reform can happen until that fact is changed. Lessig asserts Congress is corrupt:
That rather than being, as our framers promised, an institution “dependent on the People,” the institution has developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash. The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers—as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered—not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests…
There are two main factor in Congress that are holding restoration of the rule of law. First we have the apparent “debate” between national security and constitutional protection under the law, as if they are two separate entities. This debate, while important, is also continuous, as it is brought up every election cycle. The second factor is the money factor.
It is long known that congressional officials add what is called “pork” into bills for defense contractors, transportation budgets, health care infrastructures, etc. And this is because they are scoring monies for their districts, plus probably receiving some sort of campaign donation. What is harder to find is how much money is coming or going from corporations who also supply torture.
The New York Times ran an article back in 2007, “Guantanamo by the Numbers,” stating the annual operating costs of Gitmo to be between $90-118 million. That it cost $54 million to build and the building of legal facilities, about $10-12 million extra. Closing Guantánamo is still a billion-dollar affair, even if the countries and states that accept detainees make money off of the transaction (and that initiative has been continuously denied by the US Congress).
In terms of detainee trials, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s trial in New York City has an estimated cost of around $1billion over 5 years, and that is for security forces. Furthermore, six members of Congress are making it near impossible for the administration to hold trial anyway.
In the case of Aafia Siddiqui, who was found guilty of firing upon US soldiers, according to her lawyers, she was held in prisons, tortured and shuttled between prisons. There are very fewpaper trails in this story; however, we should understand her whole ordeal has not been free. We also know that there have been thousands of cases just like hers, and like her these ordeals have not been free.
So, questions that we need to answer are as follows:
Who wins contracts to build secret prisons? Which companies provide torture amenities, who supplies the orange jumpsuits and barbed wire? Which states are involved? Which members of Congress take money from corporations who supply torture equipment or air crafts to shuttle detainees around? How much does it cost to torture people? Who benefits from keeping Guantánamo open and the debate “open” for election season?
Civil liberties activists need to follow the money so we can reform our system of justice, once and for all.
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