Steyn cont'd.

"The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess," he went on. "On the contrary, the rules expressly provide that statements made by a prisoner under physical and mental duress are admissible 'if the evidence would have value to a reasonable person', ie military officers trying enemy soldiers."

Lord Steyn said the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had no access to the writ of habeas corpus to determine whether their detention was even arguably justified. The military would act as interrogators, prosecutors, defence counsel, judges and executioners. Trials would be held in secret, with none of the basic guarantees for a fair trial.

The jurisdiction of the US courts was excluded. The military controlled everything, subject to decisions of the president even on guilt or innocence in individual cases, as well as sentences.

President Bush had already described the prisoners as "killers".
The concession extracted by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, that the British detainees would not face the death penalty, gave a new dimension to the concept of "most favoured nation" treatment, he said. "How could it be morally defensible to discriminate in this way between individual prisoners? It lifts the curtain a little on the arbitrariness of what is happening at Guantanamo Bay and in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic."

I Am
(Excerpt from Paracletus! - Harry Langen)

I am the last song and the first word;
The spirit of your dance and your richest elation.
Across each soar the blue-breasted birds,
All of my which are of my creation.

I am the secret equation;
The cuddle, hug and cradle.
Your babies very first steps
And the elders' successful collaboration.

I am the scent of the hardwood fireplace
After a day of chilly toil.
Your first glimpse of a young lady's grace
And the distant sound a seashell makes.

I am the anticipation of the ten happy brides
And the designs of the heavens at night.
Their wheels turning and their clocks ticking
Marking the arrival of the day's last light.

My windy words sprinkle seeds.
I am the success of continuity,
The debt paid and the Sunday ease.
The illusion and the shocking reality.

Find me in the unmanifest
Who asks your faith.
I am the correct decision,
Who is the poem which you may envision.

I am the one you will see at the last of times
When it is clear there is not time; there never was.
And I adorn myself in tumbling white clouds;
There about my throat strings of yellow topaz
and green sapphires.

I am the last song and the first word;
The spirit of your dance and your richest elation.
Across each soar the blue-breasted birds
All of my which are of my creation.