Flouting the rules of law and morality (GUANTÁNAMO)
BY JUAN VASQUEZ
G UANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — Before this onetime coaling station for the U.S. Navy ships in the Caribbean was transformed into a site holding captives in the war on terror that U.S. officials had called the worst of the worst, most Americans were unaware of its existence.
With a few exceptions, such as the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, a film about military duty and honor, and what happens when soldiers step over the line, the rule seemed to be, out of sight, out of mind.
That changed after Jan. 11, 2002, when the first batch of alleged terrorists arrived. They were put into kennel-like cells measuring 8x8x8 and placed under armed, 24-hour guards who had little or no training in detention. It was all improvised. Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials gave orders to make it happen. The military saluted and complied.
Twelve years later, Camp X-Ray is little more than an isolated, abandoned tangle of rusting, chain-link cages and barbed wire overrun by weeds and infested with banana rats and other tropical varmints. Elsewhere on the base, lawyers come and go. Litigation continues. Sporadically, hearings of one sort or another are held for some of the remaining 154 detainees still held in four newer camps.
But the spotlight has moved on. Members of the news media, under military escort wherever they go, visit occasionally, but the public’s interest level has dropped. Guantánamo is old news and sometimes it seems that no one cares.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/22/4011343/flouting-the-rules-of-law-and.html
