Gitmo Appalling
Cheney advanced the masterful thesis that the camp had to be kept open because it held "bad guys." Rumsfeld claimed it must stay open because taxpayers had invested $100 million US to build it and spend $90 million annually to run it.
The Senate majority leader, Republican Bill Frist, added, "to cut and run because of image problems is the wrong thing to do." Brilliant, Bill. In an earlier time, you might have advised: "Mein Fuhrer, ignore all that stupid criticism of our concentration camps. Stand firm!"
Fortunately, decent Americans find the Guantanamo gulag an outrageous violation of everything the nation stands for. Former president Jimmy Carter, who has become the country's conscience in a time of growing totalitarian impulses, demanded it be closed, as have a growing number of legislators, including the Republican party's most courageous senator, Chuck Hagel.
Americans are being told that all Guantanamo inmates are mad-dog terrorists. Not true. Many were rounded up in Afghanistan by local warlords offered $10,000 or more per head by the U.S. for "terrorist" captives.
Some are Pakistanis who were visiting Afghanistan for religious or family matters. Some had joined Taliban forces to fight the Russian-backed Afghan Communist Party known as the Northern Alliance -- not against the U.S. Others were jihadis preparing to fight Uzbekistan's brutal communist regime or to oppose Indian occupation of Kashmir. Only a handful of real anti-U.S. al-Qaida members are there.
ABC News revealed the U.S. Navy's general counsel, Alberto Mora, warned in 2003 that interrogation methods used against Muslim prisoners might expose senior officials to "liability and criminal prosecution."
Sen. John McCain, himself a former POW, is right to call for speedy trials of Guantanamo's inmates and an end to their indefinite jailing. But the past three years have shown that people charged with terrorism are unlikely to get fair trials in post-9/11 America. A military defence lawyer told Congress this week his superiors warned that if he represented a prisoner at Gitmo, "only a guilty plea would be accepted" -- shades of the U.S.S.R. Guantanamo violates the Geneva Conventions, international and U.S. law. There are reports that in the rest of the secret U.S. gulags in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Diego Garcia, even worse crimes are being committed against those suspected of anti-U.S. activities.
If true, this is a criminal enterprise, and those involved should be prosecuted -- starting at the top.
... Guantanamo, just 150 km from Miami, is not a problem of image. It is an arrant violation of every American value. It's worthy of KGB. Close this disgrace now.
- posted by geoff @ #