Both the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would require the President to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The facility currently has around 380 prisoners, most of whom being held for years without any formal charges being filed against them:H.R. 2212 and S. 1249 were introduced Tuesday and referred to the Committee on Armed Services, reading in relevant part:
SECTION 1. REQUIRED CLOSURE OF GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION FACILITY.
(a) Closure of Detention Facility- Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act--
(1) the President shall close the Department of Defense detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and
(2) all detainees detained at such facility shall be removed from the facility and--
(A) transferred to a military or civilian detention facility in the United States and charged with a violation of United States or international law and tried in an Article III court or military legal proceeding before a regularly-constituted court;
(B) transferred to a military or civilian detention facility in the United States without being charged with a violation of law if the detainee may be held as an enemy combatant or detained pursuant to other legal authority as Congress may authorize;
(C) transferred to an international tribunal operating under the authority of the United Nations with jurisdiction to hold trials of such individuals;
(D) transferred to their country of citizenship or a different country for further legal process, provided that such country provides adequate assurances that the individual will not be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; or
(E) released from any further detention.
Holding prisoners indefinitely without the slightest of due process contradicts the very "freedom" this nation supposedly values so dearly (at least as represented by a bumper sticker on your car). These are not prisoners of war who can be returned to their home countries after a formal peace declaration. The "war on terror," is a multi-generational struggle that will involve our children, and children's children - there is no end in sight, no enemy to meet at Versailles. Guantanamo has become a symbol for all of America's enemies to rally behind.
Even Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Secertary of Defense Robert Gates have urged President Bush for its closing. Naturally President Bush, at the urging of Dick Cheney, rejected their advice. The administration has gone even further, having the Justice Department attempt to severely limit inmates access to attorneys:
Under the proposal, filed this month in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the government would limit lawyers to three visits with an existing client at Guantánamo; there is now no limit. It would permit only a single visit with a detainee to have him authorize a lawyer to handle his case. And it would permit a team of intelligence officers and military lawyers not involved in a detainee’s case to read mail sent to him by his lawyer.
The proposal would also reverse existing rules to permit government officials, on their own, to deny the lawyers access to secret evidence used by military panels to determine that their clients were enemy combatants.
Close Guantanamo and move these people into American civilian or military prisons, just like Ramzi Yousef, Omar Abdel-Rahman and Richard Colvin Reid (the former two being responsible for the original WTC bombing in 1993 and the latter the infamous "shoe-bomber). If the government believes they are guilty of crimes, they should be charged. Present them with evidence and appoint them an attorney. If necessary, lower the burden of proof to a preponderance standard rather than beyond a reasonable doubt. But everything about the status quo is patently un-American.
8 comments:
This whole thesis presupposes that all the prisoners being held at GitMo are 17-year-old boys who accidentally wandered into the wrong part of the desert in Afghanistan. Your impassioned plea on their behalf may garner some sympathy, but when thinking about the captivity of scum like Kalid Sheik Mohammad and his ilk, the notion that he should be processed through the County Lock-Up like the guy who booted some stolen cigarettes is both laughable and frightening.
"Holding prisoners indefinitely without the slightest of due process contradicts the very 'freedom' this nation supposedly values so dearly (at least as represented by a bumper sticker on your car)." The snarky bumpersticker comment notwithstanding, it is the ability to hold terrorists and extract from them vital information regaring potential attacks on American (and international) interests that protects the 'freedom' of people like you and your ACLU buddies to decry the treatment of captured terrorits. This can't happen when KSM, flush with defense fund cash, courtesy of his favorite Islamic "charities", hires F. Lee Bailey to sit by his side in the interrogation room. Tell me something--when just one of these guys is set free by "the system", heads back to his local Al Queda Terror Academy and kills more Americans, will these same politicians who support this legislation be the ones who cry to the New York Times that Bush "had thug in his grasp and let him go"? I'm sure there's a talking point being crafted on this matter as we speak.
It's very convenient to disregard the system when it doesn't suit your interests.
You still haven't made your case as to why the shoe-bomber, the 1993 WTC bombers, would be 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui and American Taliban John Walker Lindh were all afforded trials. I suppose the liberal boogey-men of the NY Times and the ACLU couldn't use their subversive powers to find them not-guilty.
I also don't understand how you can champion a place like Guantanamo when you're fighting a war of values and hearts and minds. It's a myopic view that endangers our security in the long run. Even the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Defense can see that.
You may think I'm championing GitMo, but I think I am accepting the reality of the dangers we face in fighting this war, and it is you who are myopic. Unfortunately, it is difficult to prevail in war without having to make some kind of decision that pulls you away from the moral straight-and-narrow. Do you think Harry Truman was unaware that he was compromising the "values" of the United States when he gave the order to drop atomic bombs on Japaneese cities filled with civilians? I don't know how he ever lived with that decision, but, unfortunately, these are the realities of fighting to win.
I think the Democrats (or, if you will, the "boogeymen") want to have it both ways--we're not afraid to respond militarily to terror attacks--but only after we have irrefutable, airtight evidence regarding who attacked us and why; we'll go on the offensive to combat terror--but only after we have the approval of International Community. Would I prefer if we could send coordinated strike teams around the world, with cooperation from every country, to capture each and every terror cell and bring them to justice through our legal system? Or course! (or, at least, for most, I would still waterboard Kalid Sheik Mohammad for fun).
I'm glad the legal system worked on the blind sheik from Brooklyn who plotted the '93 attachs (though not, of course, without his attorney carying messages to his fellow terrorists on the outside). Is it enough to say, "you see? now close GitMo and send everyone to court"? I don't know, but it's not a risk I want to take.
i'm sorry to butt in...but whats wrong with wanting "air-tight, irrefutable evidence" before making a decision as big as the one to go to war?
I'm willing to waive my belief that it makes sense to garner the support of the international community--in this case our national issue isn't popular worldwide. OK. But dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while it wouldn't have been my preference for warfare, at least was a move made against a clear and definable enemy. A country attacked us and we attacked back.
Also, the fear that proliferated after the dropping of those bombs
seems like good evidence that it really was a LAST resort. No one's jumping to do it again, nor should they be.
I will admit though, I'm no expert on any of this. Just don't know if such clear parallels can be drawn between the current war and WWII.
You continue to attack a broad liberal ideology but are unable to articulate why Guantanamo is necessary for our security. If you need to interrogate prisoners to prevent terrorists, why can't you do it in a prison? If these people are guilty of crimes, why can't you charge them and present them with evidence? What is so controversial about this? Hell, you can't even expel a high school student from school in this country without giving the kid more due process rights than we afford people who've been held in captivity for 5 years.
Tova--Great to hear from you! You are never butting in! This is an open forum (one, of which, apprently only members of our family elect to avail themselves, but open nonetheless).
My point about "air-tight, irrefutable evidence" is that, while we'd all love to have it, it nearly impossible to achieve (hell, we can't even convince some wackos here that Bush and/or Israel weren't behind the 9/11 attacks). Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that our leaders have to make life and death decisions with imperfect information. As Harris correctly pointed out, my statement was directed at a broad liberal ideology which, IMO, is not based in any reality. There is a sect of the conservative/Republican movement that believes that the best thing for everyone would be for a left-wing Democrat to be elected President next. This argument basically states, "let them take the wheel for a while and see it's not so easy, and then they'll understand." I don't necessarily agree with it, but I do think it's easy to dismiss the decision-making when all you're doing is making speaches and Monday Morning Quarterbacking. It plays well to the MSNBC (anybody but FOX) audience to say, "I would make sure we have irrefutable evidence" before attacking, but as President, you very often don't have that luxury.
Harris--my point was that our interrogators may need to bend the rules in order to extract information and/or keep the jihadis from returning to their countries of origin and launching another attack. I don't believe that the kind of interrogation that takes place in US prisons or holding cells, with cameras recording and attorneys present is going to net the information needed to save lives. You may feel otherwise, but I'd rather not take that chance. I would also rather not take the chance that a terrorist will go free because we can't convince 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the "defendant sitting in the courtroom today" who was spying for the Taliban, or that some Military Mark Furman on an anti-Arab crusade could not have planted evidence at the scene of the crime.
Well two things then:
1. Guantanamo to you is about the need for torture. I don't believe torture is warranted in almost any situation. Even the Israelis, who deal with terrorism on a much grander and more frequent scale than we ever have, have outlawed torture as an interrogation technique (with exceptions for "ticking time bombs"). I'm not about to begin a debate though, on the pros and cons of torture. So I'll let it be.
2. If the government has to lower the burden of proof in an "enemy combatant" case so be it, but charge them and give them an opportunity to refute the evidence. Then have a fact finder decide. I'm not convinced that the everyone on that island is guilty of what the government says. This isn't about me feeling sorry for terrorists. Rather, I am inherently more suspicious of unchecked government power than you are.
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