Closing Guantanamo: A bloody mess

[NNN0LHI]

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.

[babylonsister]

1. One of PE Obama's first priorities, thankfully. nt

[GrizzlyMan]

2. Actually, it can be quite simple

Release them all and deport them back to their home countries. Problem solved.

[liberalmuse]

3. Unfortunately...

those countries are likely to imprison and further torture our former detainees. Heinous, isn't it? Much like that young girl who was stoned to death for reporting her rape. It's a grotesque travesty of justice. Lucky for the Bush and the assholes who both raped and then stoned that girl, god or whatethefuckever is responsible for all this shit did not see fit to make me an avenging angel.

[GrizzlyMan]

6. Perhaps, but I doubt it

Somehow I don't think some random detainee dropped off in suburban Kabul is going to face a lot of scrutiny from the local authorities, especially if its done quietly which given the relatively small number of detainees at Gitmo (in comparison to our federal prisons) is possible.

[Chan790]

21. There was an thread earlier today on DU...

about some native Chinese Uyghurs we have in Gitmo because we picked them up in Afghanistan fleeing from certain death in China. They were being trained by the Taliban to return to China and initiate/engage in separatist actions. They are by no means harmless but they're not dangerous to us.

We can't send them back to China because they're enemies of the state and the Chinese government has an already stated desire to execute them as political dissidents.

We can't send them back to Afghanistan because they won't take them. This is a persistent issue...most nations will not accept for repatriation their own citizens currently in Gitmo who have been cleared...let alone illegal immigrants who were arrested in their country. They might have been let in by the Taliban but the current regime doesn't recognize any obligation to repatriate them.

We can't find a nation to grant them asylum as we classified them as "dangerous" at one point. They very well are...just not to us.

What do you propose that we do with these prisoners and others who are of a nation-less classification?

[But....]

20. Exactly...

and if anyone cannot be safely deported home, I hate to say it but, we'll have to take them in here.:hurts:

[RC]

4. It may not be that simple. If they weren't terrorists when they went in,

they very well may be when they get out. Another gift that could keep on giving.

[GrizzlyMan]

8. You are presuming BushCo got it right when they detained them

I have serious doubts as to the quality of their police work.

[EFerrari]

11. You are right. Those are just two excuses the State Department gives

to put off releasing these poor people before the Torture President is out of office.

[Every Man A King]

10. Should have thought about that before they were arrested.

Innocent is Innocent. There is no gray area here at all.

[Hippo_Tron]

23. You can't imprison somebody for a crime that they might commit

And the fact that people are even making that argument suggests that Americans have been brainwashed into being scared shitless of terrorism.

Frankly I'm far more worried about being shot in an armed robbery or my female friends getting raped at gunpoint than I am about terrorism. Many people put into US prisons for non-violent drug crimes come out as hardened criminals. But you don't see me or any other sane person suggesting that we should keep them in prison forever because of what they might do when they come out.

[tkayj]

5. And then you have...

a bunch of people who, if they didn't hate America before, definitely do hate it now. They then have the potential to go back to their country, reorganize, and return for revenge. (If they are even functional human beings anymore.)

[NNN0LHI]

9. Better to make them all Secret Service agents and put them in charge of protecting ex-president Bush

Now that would be interesting.

Don

[democraticco12]

7. They are even detaining juveniles there

Unbelievable. I read it in the news today.

[EFerrari]

12. We keep forgetting that. It's been known since 2004 or so.

The children Rumsfeld called "the worst of the worst", right?

Welcome to DU.

[MikeNearMcChord]

13. Just close the damn place, give reparations to the prisoners

forget trying them(try the bastards in the Bush Administration) and give the place back to Cuba.

[mikehiggins]

14. Lets pray they aren't all killed "attempting to escape"

Oh, that's right. Even Bush/Cheney wouldn't go that far, would they?

Would they?

[gratuitous]

15. "It is our mess and we need to own up to it."

Yep, and it's going to be very, very messy. From the torturers to the people who gave them their orders to the superiors off-site who knew or should have known what was going on there, all the way up the chain of command. This isn't some excusable error; this was a deliberate program carried out by an administration that was too scared, or too cynical, or too sadistic, or too something to think through the ultimate consequences of their actions.

Well, here come some of those consequences. We threw our principles out the window, and now it's time to pay the price. Because if we don't take care of this, someone else surely will.

[Hippo_Tron]

16. Those who were captured on the battlefield should be treated as prisoners of war

And those who were captured in the United States should be tried in US Courts (assuming there is even ample evidence to indict them).

I went to a congressional hearing about this over the summer and some shill from the Bush Justice Department was talking about how holding them in a domestic prison was a problem because a bunch of sympathetic Muslims would come and try to break them out. I had to literally put my hand over my mouth to not burst out laughing.

[GrizzlyMan]

17. Yeah, they said the same thing about McVeigh

They were convinced some anti-gov. group was going to break him out as well.

[Hippo_Tron]

22. The guy also rhetorically asked the Senators if they would like a terrorist prison in their backyard

And I was thinking to myself "I'd much rather have that than a regular maximum security prison on my backyard."

[Peace Patriot]

18. Turn Guantanamo into a healing place, run by Cuban doctors, where the former

prisoners are free to live, get help and recover, and where we pay the tab for however long they want to stay there, and for their recuperation in whatever society they choose, that will have them.

We cannot dump these people out and forget about them. We tortured them. We destroyed their lives and some of their psyches. We have a humanitarian obligation to provide help, and what better thing to do with Guantanamo than to take down the barbed wire, plant trees and gardens, and transform the cells into convalescent living quarters of the highest quality. These prisoners will never trust U.S. doctors. Cuba has one of the best medical systems in our hemisphere. Cuban doctors are right there, on the island. They have been exporting doctors to run medical clinics in poor countries. They have a surplus. And they would surely have some ideas on how to heal these poor prisoners.

We should put up the money and get out. Let Cuban architects design something beautiful--out of this horror--and transform it, in the prisoners' minds and in the world's. It would be a very great magnanimous gesture, and maybe help to heal the wound of Cuba/U.S. relations as well.

:grouphug:

[otherlander]

25. I like your idea.

When I first came to DU, everyone was talking about what a disgrace and what a sham this whole thing was. But after Obama won, I was shocked and extremley disappointed to see how many people here suddenly decided that we should just get "these people" off of our hands as quickly as possible so that Obama doesn't wind up looking bad. I never thought that, in DU of all places, I would see such willingness to discard humanity in favor of political popularity. I'm glad to hear that you, at least, recognize what our responsibility as a nation is. Too bad that Obama will probably not do anything cooperative with the Cuban government, for fear of being painted as a "communist sympathizer". Gah, I can't believe that terms like that are still being flung around. But if they were able to use "socialist" as an insult during the election...

[Peace Patriot]

27. "they were able to use 'socialist' as an insult..."--yeah, but it didn't go over very well,

did it? A lot of Americans were thinking, 'Yeah, right on! Socialism! But not just for the rich!"

And Obama was still able to beat the machines.

Do you know what many messages of congratulations to Obama from South American presidents contained? A plea to lift the embargo on Cuba! Lula da Silva, of Brazil, and many others, added this particular thing on to their congrats. It's "in the air." It's time. And Obama knows this (it's in his speeches--holding talks with Cuba). But somebody needs to say, "Hey, the Guantanamo Bay torture dungeon is on the island of Cuba!" Hmm. How could Cuba and the U.S. get together and solve this humongously difficult, embarrassing (to the U.S.), tragic (for the prisoners) disgrace? Put it to Cuba. Got any ideas? Surely they have been more aware than anybody of this horror on the other end of their island. They're VERY GOOD at medical problem solving. Give them the money. Let them solve it. And a new day is born in Cuba/U.S. relations.

[Demeter]

28. Turn It Into an Historical Tourist Site, Like Those Nazi Death Camps

And then let Cuba have it back for the tourist trade....

[MadMaddie]

19. * can pardon all of the torturers he wants the Hague can still

prosecute them. They tortured children for pete's sake, the US must cleanse it's soul and bring to light all of the crimes committed by the * crime mafia.

[Ohio Joe]

24. Yes, a wicked mess but...

I said this in another post the other day. It does not matter. If people are innocent we cannot continue to hold them. We can't keep them imprisoned because, oops, we tortured them and they might be dangerous now. It is going to mean America has got to stand up and say "yes, we tortured people under the previous administration but now it stops and the innocent go free".

[jberryhill]

26. Start at $500,000 and an offer to join the Witness Protection Program

...appropriate counseling, and a job somewhere.

Settle in successive rounds, keep an eye on them, and then see how many are left over.