An editorial today from the very best newspaper in the USA...

The Guantánamo Papers

The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration's system for deciding detainees' guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released.

Innocent men were picked up on the basis of scant or nonexistent evidence and subjected to lengthy detention and often to abuse and torture. Some people were released who later acted against the United States. Inmates who committed suicide were regarded only as a public relations problem. There are seriously dangerous prisoners at Guantánamo who cannot be released but may never get a real trial because the evidence is so tainted.

The torture has stopped. The inmates' cases have been reviewed. But the detention camp in Cuba remains a festering sore on this country's global reputation. Hampered by ideologues and cowards in Congress, President Obama has made scant progress in healing it...

 geordiezimmerman wrote: 

The right to a due process goes all the way back to Clause 29 of the Magna Carta, from the year 1215... so Guantanomo Bay is inexcusible beyond medieval... on top of that, the USA is occupying another country as a host for this gulag, so it is a double disgrace...

I am disappointed that Obama promised to close that abomination and has not done so yet... maybe he will in his second term... I have hope... Obama be my hero... he ain't done yet...  it ain't over until it's over...

 bokey wrote:
  Remember that scene in 'Brubaker'? Yeouch.

 cc_rider wrote: 
Torture is not always a physical thing.

 cc_rider wrote: 
No battery charger, no foul.

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
Like Beamends said further up there ^^^, threat of lawsuits etc. However, although I think it's fair game to criticise Obama because of his lack of action in closing the place down, the very fact that this torture chamber was ever even allowed to exist is the much bigger crime in my opinion. Did you criticise Bush when he opened this place? Do you criticise him now, now you know more of the realities of what's going on in there? 

 cc_rider wrote: 
Right, and don't forget, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

 beamends wrote:
  What torture? There was no torture. Sure, there were some 'advanced interrogation techniques', but torture? No way. The Justice Department said so. The Vice President said so. Even the President said so. If we can't trust THEM, who can we trust?

Sheesh. Throw some water on some guys and all'a sudden they start crying 'torture'. What a buncha babies. Besides, you wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
It hasn't been shut down because that would be a huge climb-down, effectively acknowledging is was an illegal farce. I suspect a huge number of massive claims for compensation would follow as current detainees would either have to be released immediately or put into the US justice system. Claims for rendition alone would make WikiLeaks look like mere rumour compared to the damage and embarrassment a trial would cause. And then there's the torture...

As for racism, I suspect Geordie is referring to the endemic assumption that all Muslims are evil, uncultured thicko terrorists that is held my many, or most ?, in the West.

 Monkeysdad wrote: 


Racists? No.

But I'm very disappointed in Obama's about-face on this issue.

 Monkeysdad wrote:
  No, they are politically hamstrung.

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
Key phrase- during his campaign. Now that he's in office nothing he said counts. He sure fooled me, but it's the last time. It's not even worth the gas to drive to the polling place. What a sad joke.

 geordiezimmerman wrote: 
So...why then hasn't President Obama shut down Guantanamo and started the proceedings in civil court as he promised to multiple times during his campaign?!
Do you think President Obama or AG Holder are racists?

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Exactly. How anyone on here can defend Guantanamo is beyond me. Personally i think elements of racism come into it. People have the attitude that if they are Muslim then they must be guilty. 

 dionysius wrote:

We don't have any convicted terrorists at Guantanamo. None of them have been charged with a crime in a criminal court, let alone convicted.

 dionysius wrote:
 
What part of 'War On Terror' do you not understand?

 beamends wrote: 
Nothing new in principle here: our enemies have almost always been of our own making.

 geordiezimmerman wrote: 
If your are uncertain about how you feel about the West, further information and an application form can be obtained from :

al-Qaida Recruitment Services
Guantanamo Bay
Cuba

New Guantanamo files leaked. 

 rosedraws wrote: 

We already house convicted terrorists on US soil. Why would a few hundred more make any difference? Alarmist hysteria over "escape" or "infecting" our good, upright, decent prison population is just that: paranoid hysteria. Any supermax fed pen will do nicely, rather than simply closing Gitmo and opening up another concentration camp elsewhere. If they are criminals, try them and imprison them! If they are prisoners of war (as the president has identified them), then they have rights above that of the "unlawful combatant" designation concocted by the Bush administration. Either way, normalize and legalize all this mess. Restore habeas corpus rights. No more "night and fog" indefinite detention without trial, which is noxious to any notion of civil rights and liberties.