‘Fourteen Saudi Arabians were released on Saturday from
the detention center at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
transferred to their home country, the Pentagon said.

One was released because U.S. officials determined the
prisoner was no longer an enemy combatant.  

The designation of enemy combatant means the suspect can be
held without charges in a military prison without the protections of the U.S.
criminal justice system, such as the right to counsel.

The other Saudis were released after an administrative
review process determined they could be transferred. 

The releases bring to 310 the number of detainees who have
departed Guantanamo to other governments, including Albania, Afghanistan,
Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Kuwait, Morocco,
Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden and Uganda.’

Guantanamo
Prison Sends 14 Saudis Home

Whilst these US detainees might be glad to escape the tortures of Guantanamo Bay, one wonders whether their lives will actually be any better, given the reputation of the country of their birth - Saudi Arabia.

Under International Law, the US has an obligation not to hand-over any prisoner to any country, without first ensuring that their human & legal rights will be respected.

Given the failure of the US itself to respect the human & legal rights of detainees, it is hardly likely that they will trouble themselves too much  to ensure that they are treated any better by their own governments.

Given the efforts by governments around the world to secure the release of their citizens detained at Guantanamo, with the notable exception of Australia, David Hicks may well wind-up being the sole occupant in America's Cuban hell-hole.    

From the New York Times

WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

Jamie Rose for The New York Times
Gregory D. Kutz, a G.A.O. official, testified before a House panel about fraud and held up one of the $2,000 debit cards given out by FEMA.
A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.
read more swindles at the NYT...
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Gus is please the US leads the world in management techniques... Imagine if a honest country was managing the reconstruction of Iraq or Afghanistan? Please! Really... No opportunities for swindles, cock ups, crookery, highway hold-ups or daylight robbery!... What would the world be without these? Yes they are the essential greasy bits that make capitalism work at its best... The price of things is in the eye of the con artist who already has his fingers on your wallet while you are too busy saving your soul... Bless these dextrous swindling scalpers who are at the core of enterprising capitalism. You pay the price, any price, because you want it... because they make sure you want it...

From the New York Times

Military Fails Some Widows Over Benefits

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: June 27, 2006
As Holly Wren coped with her 6-month-old son and the sorrow of losing her husband in Iraq last November, she assumed that the military's sense of structure and order would apply in death as it had in life.

After Lt. Col. Thomas Wren was killed in an auto accident in Iraq in November, Holly Wren, with her 1-year-old son, Tyler, in their Lorton, Va., home, had a hard time getting her survivor benefits, partly because the military had his personal information listed all wrong.
Instead she encountered numerous hurdles in trying to collect survivor benefits. She received only half the amount owed her for housing because her husband, one of the highest ranking soldiers to die in Iraq, was listed as single, childless and living in Florida — wrong on every count. Lt. Col. Thomas Wren was married, with five children, and living in Northern Virginia...
Read more at the NYT
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Gus: Fantastic administrative records... and this widow is not the only one... and the soldiers die without fanfare because the Army as no clue where they come from, as long as they salute the right flag...