The Obama administration on Monday for the first time released the names of the 48 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military prison who may spend the rest of their lives there without trial.

Until today, the identities of the detainees that the Obama administration has determined to be too dangerous to release, yet unable to be prosecuted in a court of law, has remained secret. The Miami Herald on Monday reported that it had obtained the full list of the individuals from the government following a Freedom of Information Act request, resulting in a list of four dozen names.

After President Obama signed his 2009 Executive Order to close the base’s prison, an administration task force sifted through the evidence against all of the prisoners who remained in the base. In 2010, the panel concluded that the evidence against 48 of the detainees was either too flimsy or too tainted to be allowed to stand in a criminal court, but that each of them were also too dangerous to be released or transferred to another country’s captivity. With this admission, the only remaining authority remaining to hold these individuals is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, under which these men are held as a form of war prisoner which the Bush administration claimed was outside the bounds of the Geneva Conventions’ rules.

While the identities of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners was previously known, this is the first time the administration has publicly acknowledged those listed as being ineligible for release, transfer, or prosecution. Each of the detainees are indexed with a serial number and their nationality, with two asterisks denoting prisoners who died during their captivity. As a result of the release, we now know that the prisoners hail from a multitude of Muslim-majority countries, including not just the declared war zone in Afghanistan, but also from undeclared conflict zones like Somalia and Yemen.

Several of the detainees on the indefinite detention list are currently participating in the prisoners’ on-going hunger strike, according to the Herald. This includes Yemeni prisoner Abdal Malik al Wahab, who, according to his lawyer, vowed in March to fast until he was out of Guantanamo “dead or alive.” As of Monday, 104 of the 166 detainees left in the prison were participating in the strike. Of those striking, 44 are being force-fed to keep them alive, a practice that has been condemned as “torture.”

President Obama last month announced that he would renew his efforts to close the base, one of his campaign promises when running for his first term. House Republicans rebuked those efforts once again last week, voting through a defense authorization bill that contained provisions to extend a ban on spending funds to close the facility. Democrats offered several amendments to reverse this decision, which were all voted down on the House floor.

Debate is set to begin on Wednesday among the full House of Representatives over if and how to amend their version of the Fiscal Year 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Nearly 300 amendments were submit to the House Rules Committee, which polices the terms of the debate.

Many of the more concerning provisions within the NDAA are already baked in, thanks to the Republican control of the House Armed Services Committee. President Obama has already issued his now-annual veto threat against the NDAA for certain provisions that his administration finds unacceptable. To date, the President has signed every NDAA that has come across his desk, but that’s never a guarantee.

ThinkProgress has already highlighted some of the amendments offered that can improve the House’s bill. But there are still several amendments that, if accepted into the final bill, could render the NDAA truly indefensible:

1. Ban Gitmo detainee transfers to Yemen.

President Obama recently announced, as part of his renewed efforts to close down Guantanamo Bay, that he would lift the moratorium for transferring cleared detainees to Yemen. At present, 59 Yemeni citizens have been vetted and approved for transfer back to their home country. Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) wants to prevent such a move from taking place, however, filing an amendment that would ban any use of Defense Department funds to facilitate these prisoners moving from Guantanamo back to Yemen.

2. Eliminate military aid to Pakistan.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Pakistan don’t precisely get along. He’s been declared persona non grata for his urging the Balochistan region to declare independence from Islamabad and therefore is barred from setting foot in the country. So it’s understandable that Rohrabacher submit an amendment to ban all military aid to Pakistan. In 2012, the administration spent $371.9 million in Pakistan, of which more than 95 percent went to USAID programs providing assistance to some of Pakistan’s poorest. Only $1.9 million of that was spent on aid to Pakistan’s military, making it unclear why Rohrabacher sees the need to pass a full ban into law.
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The Pentagon’s former top lawyer said on Wednesday that the death of a 16-year old American in a drone strike in Yemen was effectively an accident, the first time any current or former Obama administration official has made such an admission.

On Wednesday afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to members of Congress for the first time publicly acknowledging that U.S. drones had killed four American citizens. One of those citizens was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16 year-old son of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who on Wednesday the government also for the first time admitted was killed in a U.S. drone strike for his role in al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and alleged participation in attempted terror attacks on the United States.

Jeh Johson, who served as the Department of Defense’s general counsel during President Obama’s first term, appeared on MSNBC last night to discuss Holder’s letter, speaking with host Rachel Maddow. In Holder’s letter, Abdulrahman and two other U.S. citizens are described as not “specifically targeted” in the strikes that took their lives — suggesting that perhaps they were killed in a so-called “signature strike” that targets behavior. But Johnson said he thought Holder’s letter could have been more explicit:

JOHNSON: I think you could remove the word specifically from that sentence.

MADDOW: Not targeted at all?

JOHNSON: Not targeted.

MADDOW: They are effectively saying it was an accident.

JOHNSON: We are effectively saying that they were not targeted as part of those specific operations.

MADDOW: But killed anyway.

JOHNSON: But they were, obviously, killed.

Maddow wondered whether Johnson believed that U.S. culpability meant the family of those killed deserved recourse. “That is a very good question,” Johnson said, “I think you should put that to the Department of Justice.”

Nassar al-Awlaki, the father of Anwar and grandfather Abdulrahman, is in the midst of a lawsuit against the U.S. government, alleging that the killing of his son and grandson was unconstitutional. After yesterday’s revelation, a federal judge asked that government lawyers within the next week file a memo on how Holder’s acknowledgement affects the lawsuit.

Prior to Johnson’s statement, the assumption was that Abdulrahman and his friends were killed in what is known as a “signature strike” or “profile strike.” Under the practice, groups of men between 16-55 who meet a certain profile are often considered legitimate targets, often with the U.S. having no concrete knowledge of their identities. There are indications that the practice will be sharply curtailed moving forward, however, as it seems that the same standards applied to the targeted killing of American citizens will be applied to suspected terrorists writ large.

Our guest blogger is Elizabeth Marcus, an intern with the National Security team at the Center for American Progress.

The Middle East is undergoing dramatic political transformation. Despite the prominent role women have played in organizing these popular movements, the treatment of women in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, raises serious concern about the future of democracy and human rights in the region. A central issue is the use of rape by both government and non-state forces as an attempt to silence opposition forces. In the context of patriarchal religious societies, rape and sexual violence holds unique potential as a horrific tool of political repression, and its use has been widespread as an attempt to stunt the growth of the Arab Spring.

Women agitating for political change in these countries face the ever-present threat of sexual abuse and the societal stigma that results from sexual violence in highly patriarchal societies. Unlike physical violence, rape and other forms of sexual violence can permanently damage a woman’s reputation and status within her community. Not only is she considered unfit for marriage but rape causes profound humiliation to the male members of her family and, potentially, her community.

Rape was used excessively during Moammar Qaddafi’s attempt to remain in power in Libya. Towards the end of his struggle, his regime ordered soldiers to go into villages and rape the female adults and children, some as young as 8 years old, in front of family members. Condoms and Viagra were found in pockets of dead Qaddafi soldiers. Benghazi journalists reported seeing the ground littered with Viagra after troops had been through.

Rhetoric related to women and sexual violence always comes back to ideas of honor, which is held in the highest regard within Islamic societies. Raping a woman strips the woman, her family, and her community of “honor.” Qaddafi understood this dynamic and used it as a tool to prevent women from organizing opposition to his regime.

Despite Egypt’s notorious reputation for sexual harassment and violence against women, female activists have been at the forefront of efforts to change Egypt’s political system from the very beginning. Perhaps predictably, Egyptian women have also faced sexual violence as they seek to effect political change.

On March 9, 2011, just under a month after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, protesters returned to Tahrir Square to express frustration with the slow pace of reforms. The Egyptian military broke up the demonstration and arrested demonstrators, including at least 18 women. These women were beaten, charged with prostitution, and forced to submit to “virginity checks.” When confronted, a senior general said, “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine… these were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square.” In a patriarchal religious society in which female sexuality is heavily policed, accusations of promiscuity serve to damage the reputations of female protesters.
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Nearly half of Air Force drone pilots reported high stress levels in a new survey. The stress, linked to long and erratic work hours and a dramatic increase in the use of drones, leads to “high operational stress” for Reaper, Predator and Global Hawk drone pilots. A smaller number — including approximately a quarter of Global Hawk operators — exhibited signs of “clinical stress,” defined as anxiety, depression or stress severe enough to affect an operator’s family life or job performance.

Drone operators fly missions over Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and Iraq from bases in Nevada and California. The study — conducted by the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio — found that frequent shift-changes, “mind numbing” monotony, and increasing workloads contributed to the heightened stress levels. Between 65 and 70 percent of drone operators with symptoms of mental illness were not seeking treatment.

The dramatic growth in the use of drones in recent years has led the Air Force to increase the number of drone pilots but the ratio of pilots to drones remains low. The Pentagon has about 7,000 aerial drones and about 1,100 drone pilots. “There’s just not enough people,” Wayne Chappelle, an Air Force psychologist who helped conduct a six-month study of drone operators from 2010 to 2011, told USA Today. “You have to constantly sustain a high level of vigilance, both visual and auditory information, and that would be really tough to do when there’s a lot of monotony.”

While Lt. Gen. Larry James, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told USA Today that he didn’t think instances of pilot error could attributed to high stress levels among drone operators, instances of pilot error and civilian deaths have increased as drone mission over Afghanistan and Pakistan increase.

In April, a Predator done killed a Marine and a medic in what appeared to be the first case of “friendly fire” from a drone. And in late October, the drone program drew more negative publicity after 16-year-old Tariq Aziz and his cousin were killed in a drone strike one day after attending a “Waziristan Grand Jirga,” an official meeting, to discuss the impact of drone strikes on communities in Pakistan.