Occupations abroad lead to erosion of liberties

A script, which has long been clear, has been written at Guantanamo Bay. The point of these detentions has never been to see justice done, but rather to provide a teachable moment about the lengths and depths the American state would go to pursue its perceived interests in the war on terror.

It was to find a place in which the US could operate above and beyond not only international law but its own - a display of unfettered power not merely indifferent to, but openly contemptuous of, global and local norms.

It is a brutal allegory in which Guantanamo is not the exception but the rule: a grotesque exemplar of the Bush administration's reflexive and opportunistic response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, from the bombing of Iraq to the phone-tapping of its own citizens.