There are news reports that over 100 of the 660 prisoners could soon be released from Guantanamo Bay, but that’s done little to mute criticism of the internment of fighters captured during the Afghan war. To the U.S. they are “illegal combatants” and can therefore be held and interrogated indefinitely without charge or legal representation.

Those defending the policy say this is a new war and new rules will inevitably be written in trying to contain the conflict. But lawyers, judges and human rights activists here and abroad say the men are being denied the very basics of justice, they see this military detention as ongoing evidence of American unilateralism…and a skirting of international law that’s governed the treatment of captives since World War Two.

Guests:

Viveca Novac, correspondent with Time Magazine

Ruth Wedgewood, Director of International Law and Organization Program at SAIS;
Jacquiline Bhabha, professor, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

No writer compares to Shakespeare. And there is no collection of poems quite like his sonnets. Over the centuries, Shakespeare’s words have inspired, delighted and captivated.

Perhaps even more important, though, over the course of the 154 sonnets, the bard is thought to have captured on the page that reigning queen of emotion: Love. It’s hard to imagine the literary landscape without the first two lines of sonnet number eighteen: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day / Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” In the first of a two part series on the poetry of love, we consider three of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Guests:

Michael Gearin Tosh, fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford Univeristy, and author of “Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny.”

American forces are calling this weekend’s fighting in Iraq the bloodiest since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Ambushes in the city of Samarra started gunfights that left dozens of Iraqis dead and call into question the U.S. military’s recent announcement that attacks on U.S. forces are down.

But just as troubling are the increased numbers of roadside attacks on coalition partners. In the last few days, South Korea, Japan, Spain and Columbia lost nationals in what officials are calling a new campaign aimed at undermining international support for the U.S.-led occupation. And while those governments are vowing to stay the course, one wonders how further attacks could impact that commitment.

Guests:

John Shattuck, CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and author of “Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars and America’s Response”

Brian Bennett, Time magazine reporter in Baghdad

Jim Wurst, New York Correspondent for UN Wire.

Guests:

John Shattuck