Shut Down Guantanamo
One prisoner got hypothermia after 10 hours. Two others wet their pants while another pair barfed up their dinners fol lowing harsh interrogations.
Welcome to Guan tanamo Bay - reality TV-style.
Earlier this year, Channel 4 in Britain aired "The Guantanamo Guidebook" as part of a three-part series on torture. The show featured seven volunteers who spent two days locked up in cages and subjected to treatment such as sexual humiliation and temperature extremes allegedly culled from the "milder forms of alleged abuse" at the U.S. naval station lockup in Cuba. The Associated Press said three quit before the 48 hours were up.
OK, so there's nothing very "real" about this docudrama.
Yet Guantanamo TV is just one of the many signs that rising anti-Americanism around the world is driven less by the war in Iraq than by allegations of U.S. maltreatment and human-rights violations in handling detainees in the war on terror.
Call it the Abu Ghraib syndrome - or just the propaganda of our enemies.
Either way, there's only one remedy: Close down Guantanamo. Repudiate the president's February 2002 decision denying that Geneva Conventions apply to al-Qaida detainees. Lift the veil of secrecy on the alleged network of CIA "dark prisons" and off-the-books prisoners.
Most importantly, instead of fighting to give the CIA a free pass to torture under U.S. law, declare that torture is abhorrent and illegal, and that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners never should be allowed, ever, anywhere.
Guantanamo is a blot and a burden on our military's ability to succeed in Iraq and elsewhere.
There never was justification for the Pentagon's decision to lock up hundreds without evidence. Five hundred are still at Guantanamo nearly four years after they were picked up on Afghanistan's battlefields and elsewhere, most without ever being able to hear the case against them.
America puts itself on the same level as Uzbekistan and Syria when it continues to deny U.N. human-rights rapporteurs unrestricted access to these prisoners.
A hunger strike already has put 22 inmates on forced feeding tubes. It could well widen now that Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, is over.
The game is up, Mr. Rumsfeld.
It always was a ghastly idea to shunt these guys off to Cuban soil simply to give the military a free pass to experiment with extreme interrogation techniques.
That's hurt the war effort and remains fundamentally at odds with international law, U.S. military custom and the need to marshal international public opinion against those still plotting terrorist atrocities.
As one expert told the New York Times a year ago, it's also created America's own madrassa - a place where inmates get immersed in extremist anti-U.S. feelings.
Yet the decision to maroon these fighters as "unlawful combatants" denied fundamental legal rights was made by a narrow clique of officials divorced from the mainstream of international and military jurisprudence.
The cases of injustice speak for themselves.
Last summer, a wheelchair-bound Egyptian who'd been locked up for more than three years finally was unmasked for who he was: a professor at Kabul University who had worked for democracy causes most of his adult life, according to the Washington Post.
Yet after that vindication, what happened to Sami Al-Laithi?
In the dead of night early last month, without notice to his lawyer, Al-Laithi was summarily sent back to the Egypt he'd fled 17 years before.
Luckily, according to Amnesty International, there was a happy ending when Al-Laithi was reunited with his family rather than imprisoned by Egyptian authorities.
There is a simple answer: Shut Guantanamo down.
Military officials concede only a small number of its inmates ever will face charges. Identify them, specify their misdeeds, and then release the rest.
It's not an ideal solution, given that a dozen previously released inmates are known to have rejoined militants. But it's the only practical solution for this nasty canker eating at the ability of the nation's military to continue to take the fight to the enemy without enhancing al-Qaida's ability to gain in strength and adherents.
Elizabeth Sullivan
Plain Dealer Columnist
Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages.
Contact her at:
bsullivan@plaind.com, 216-999-6153
http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1131273014101500.xml?ocsul&coll=2&thispage=1
Welcome to Guan tanamo Bay - reality TV-style.
Earlier this year, Channel 4 in Britain aired "The Guantanamo Guidebook" as part of a three-part series on torture. The show featured seven volunteers who spent two days locked up in cages and subjected to treatment such as sexual humiliation and temperature extremes allegedly culled from the "milder forms of alleged abuse" at the U.S. naval station lockup in Cuba. The Associated Press said three quit before the 48 hours were up.
OK, so there's nothing very "real" about this docudrama.
Yet Guantanamo TV is just one of the many signs that rising anti-Americanism around the world is driven less by the war in Iraq than by allegations of U.S. maltreatment and human-rights violations in handling detainees in the war on terror.
Call it the Abu Ghraib syndrome - or just the propaganda of our enemies.
Either way, there's only one remedy: Close down Guantanamo. Repudiate the president's February 2002 decision denying that Geneva Conventions apply to al-Qaida detainees. Lift the veil of secrecy on the alleged network of CIA "dark prisons" and off-the-books prisoners.
Most importantly, instead of fighting to give the CIA a free pass to torture under U.S. law, declare that torture is abhorrent and illegal, and that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners never should be allowed, ever, anywhere.
Guantanamo is a blot and a burden on our military's ability to succeed in Iraq and elsewhere.
There never was justification for the Pentagon's decision to lock up hundreds without evidence. Five hundred are still at Guantanamo nearly four years after they were picked up on Afghanistan's battlefields and elsewhere, most without ever being able to hear the case against them.
America puts itself on the same level as Uzbekistan and Syria when it continues to deny U.N. human-rights rapporteurs unrestricted access to these prisoners.
A hunger strike already has put 22 inmates on forced feeding tubes. It could well widen now that Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, is over.
The game is up, Mr. Rumsfeld.
It always was a ghastly idea to shunt these guys off to Cuban soil simply to give the military a free pass to experiment with extreme interrogation techniques.
That's hurt the war effort and remains fundamentally at odds with international law, U.S. military custom and the need to marshal international public opinion against those still plotting terrorist atrocities.
As one expert told the New York Times a year ago, it's also created America's own madrassa - a place where inmates get immersed in extremist anti-U.S. feelings.
Yet the decision to maroon these fighters as "unlawful combatants" denied fundamental legal rights was made by a narrow clique of officials divorced from the mainstream of international and military jurisprudence.
The cases of injustice speak for themselves.
Last summer, a wheelchair-bound Egyptian who'd been locked up for more than three years finally was unmasked for who he was: a professor at Kabul University who had worked for democracy causes most of his adult life, according to the Washington Post.
Yet after that vindication, what happened to Sami Al-Laithi?
In the dead of night early last month, without notice to his lawyer, Al-Laithi was summarily sent back to the Egypt he'd fled 17 years before.
Luckily, according to Amnesty International, there was a happy ending when Al-Laithi was reunited with his family rather than imprisoned by Egyptian authorities.
There is a simple answer: Shut Guantanamo down.
Military officials concede only a small number of its inmates ever will face charges. Identify them, specify their misdeeds, and then release the rest.
It's not an ideal solution, given that a dozen previously released inmates are known to have rejoined militants. But it's the only practical solution for this nasty canker eating at the ability of the nation's military to continue to take the fight to the enemy without enhancing al-Qaida's ability to gain in strength and adherents.
Elizabeth Sullivan
Plain Dealer Columnist
Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages.
Contact her at:
bsullivan@plaind.com, 216-999-6153
http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1131273014101500.xml?ocsul&coll=2&thispage=1
posted by R7 at 8:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home