collected snippets of immediate importance...


Friday, April 27, 2007

guantanamo bay:
The real problem -- the conundrum wrapped in an enigma -- comes with another group. At present, there are in Gitmo perhaps 160 detainees (as the public affairs staff at the facility told me), who will most likely never be charged, never be tried, and may nonetheless never be sent home. It's a category without a name, or really any precedent -- a category that all too conveniently defies solution and so keeps Guantanamo in operation.
(...) How could a new president extricate us from this mess? The next occupant of the White House should start by accepting the following very American principle: Those who are not going to be charged with a crime should be returned to their home country, a third country, or the country where they were initially captured .
(...) The current Guantanamo debacle has little to do with the rule of law, the Geneva Conventions, or even, for that matter, a realistic assessment of the more pressing terrorist threats to the United States. At its heart of hearts lies a simple fear of political embarrassment.
(...) Privately, even Bush administration officials will acknowledge that the detainees were captured and sent to Gitmo capriciously. Rather than housing the "worst of the worst" (as the administration has regularly bragged), Gitmo penned up the easiest to grab, especially in Afghanistan. Often these were simply the individuals that local bounty hunters could provide or who were found on or near the battlefield. Many were put on planes to Guantanamo based on nothing but an American unwillingness to assert with confidence that they would never be a threat to the United States. Instead of masterminds, what the Bush administration netted were cooks, chauffeurs, wanderers, the mentally deranged, and -- sometimes -- children.
(...) The Bush administration is already releasing the wrongly detained. Detainee by detainee, it has been quietly whittling away at its mistakes, sending home 385 detainees who look no more or less guilty than those remaining in custody.
(...) Those at Gitmo convicted of crimes should serve their sentences in U.S. military prisons on U.S. soil. Opponents insist that this would "endanger" Americans. According to Senator Jim DeMint, "To bring known terrorists, many of whom have killed Americans, to our shores risks the lives of additional Americans and encourages more attacks on our soil." Does Senator DeMint actually believe this? Does he truly consider the U.S. military incapable of keeping convicted prisoners under lock and key? How would a future president weigh such doubts against the giant sigh of relief the world at large would heave when the last door opened on the last cell in Guantanamo.
(...) I assured them that, outside of the 14 high-value detainees, the Bush administration hasn't sent a single new prisoner to Guantanamo since late 2004. But, as it turned out, they knew something I didn't. Last month, a little story appeared in the back pages of some American newspapers. The United States had indeed moved its first new captive to Guantanamo in over two years -- and, according to the Washington buzz, more such detainees can be expected sooner or later, either from a war in Iran or some other "front" in the administration's global counterterrorism offensive.

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