Closing Guantanamo: A bloody mess

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http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/11/16/opinion/michael_haley/doc491ca91c618b9605121614.txt

The Bush Administration had a bad habit of not thinking through the consequences of many of its actions, or not caring, and one of them was what is the eventual outcome going to be of torturing prisoners of war? It was inflicted on many of them, many of whom have turned out to be innocent, at least of terrorism.

But even in the case of top tier Al Qaeda prisoners that were tortured, there are huge problems and when Guantanamo is closed those problems are going to come to the surface.
When you capture someone and imprison them without trial, with little evidence often based on the account of another prisoner who has given the name under torture themselves, you end up with a system where the prisoners are unprosecutable under U. S. law. Once you take prisoners outside the rule of law, you have a hard time bringing them back in.

When you have tortured them, held them indefinitely without charges, and gained confessions under torture, you "shock the conscience of the court" in legal parlance by violating a number of United States laws including the Constitution. That is the situation we find ourselves in with many of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. snip

Americans need to face and know the truth of what went on, who we tortured, how and why, and we must cleanse ourselves of this horrible contamination of the body politic of America. What makes American identity is not its geography, it is its adherence to principles. America stands for something, something of character, something of dignity and freedom. America’s soul rests on our ideals, and if this isn’t a violation of the American ideal, of freedom in the land of opportunity, of valuing the individual, the rule of law, of being the "good guys", then what is?

There is a point of changing yourself to respond to your enemies that you become just like your enemies. When you do that, you have lost the war, because the real war is about human dignity and the value of the individual. When your enemy brings you down to their level, they win. The Bush administration policy of torturing violated the most fundamental values of our Constitution and our nation and we have to repair the damage from that.

It is going to be more than a can of worms, it is going to be a big bloody mess, but it is our mess and we need to own up to it. Incoming President Obama should not back down from this challenge. We need it to cleanse our very soul.