The Real Reason Gonzales/Cheney Opposed Closing Guantánamo / Daily Kos

[Demeter]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/27/17036/6051

This case (Hicks) is a central demonstration of the ongoing effort of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, brought to light last week by the New York Times to close Guantánamo and have the remaining military commission proceedings held in the U.S. Gates has been supported by Secretary of State Rice in this effort.

But that suggestion has been fought hard by the real power in the White House, Dick Cheney who was backed up by Alberto Gonzales. Why? Because Cheney and Gonzales want to keep those trials off of U.S. soil, and in the no man's land of Guantánamo where habeas corpus isn't an issue....

Note: Just to be clear -- I think the Supreme Court, if it reaches the questions, will likely hold that the detainees have due process and habeas rights even at GTMO. Therefore, it's likely that the only "cost" to the Administration of moving the detainees to the continental U.S. would be to foreclose the Department of Justice from arguing to the contrary....

The cost to the administration, and to the nation, has already been wrought. Gates is absolutely right in his conviction that Guantánamo has "become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate." The stain on our country from the very existence of Guantánamo, much less what has transpired there, is a cost that the country will be paying for decades to come. Yet another reason for the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales, architect of torture, denier of habeas corpus.

[MissWaverly]

1. many see his guilty plea as an admission of guilt, NOT ME

He's been held 5 years w/o a trial, now that his trial begins, both his lawyers leave,
he has been told that he will be transported to Australia to serve his sentence, of
course, he will plead guilty to one charge, he can always appeal once he gets home.

[peacetalksforall]

2. They said it early - they didn't want sympathetic and logic minded

jurists deciding the fate of their prisoners. They said it in plain words.

Yes, their prisoners. They wanted to be totally in charge of their prisoners.

They operated 'holding pen prisons' - the got able bodied men off the street to prevent them from blowing up our soldiers or driving trucks with supplies to those who are trying to fight or simply survive in their own country in spite of we invading barbarians.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I don't think we've begun to understand what Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and

the secret torture dungeons in Eastern Europe--and rendition to other torturing countries--is all about.

Just ask yourself this: Do you think that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were torturing people to "keep us safe"? Where else have they shown this motive--keeping us safe, caring for our welfare?

Nope. I think this is a policy for covering up the tracks to other Bushite crimes of even greater magnitude, and--who knows?--maybe in some cases also for business purposes (to do a few favors for their corporate pals). To kill witnesses. To silence potential whistleblowers. To cover money trails. To punish, terrify and eliminate anyone, say, who might have been effectively organizing opposition to the oil contracts in Iraq. To get tortured prisoners to disclose the identities of witnesses and potential whistleblowers, who might get in the Bushites' way. For instance, say there was indeed a plot to plant nukes in Iraq, to be "discovered" by the US troops who were "hunting" for them (a good possibility, I think)--a plot that got foiled, perhaps by Iraqi agents/contacts in that Plame counterproliferation network that the Bushites outed--people who were cooperating with the UN inspectors. How convenient to round up such people, and throw them into a dungeon--in the context of a general, covering roundup of just anybody--petty criminals, innocent people. There WERE a couple of Islamic news source reports of foiled US attempts to plant WMDs in Iraq, around that time. What happened to those witnesses? And I can think of dozens of other potential Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld crimes with the need for torture, secret detention and 'disappearances' to keep a lid on it all.

These are the actions of brutes and gangsters--torture, kidnapping, secret detention. They are not the actions of civilized men. They are the actions of people with big things to hide, things that require strenuous efforts to keep them from the rest of us.

Their fear now may be that it will all come out. That's why they're trying to keep these prisoners under wraps. Their evil deeds, and the complete lack of justification for this behavior--and, most of all, the real reasons for their engaging in it--is what is at issue. Not legal arguments. Not any "theory" of government (all their blather about the "unitary executive" etc). And certainly not any consideration of the safety of the American people. They blew that as an excuse with Katrina.

[Demeter]

4. I Hope You're Just Dropping Tin Foil Here (Chaff in the Radar)

It would be TOO gruesome for words if there was some purpose beyond general malevolence.

[ixion]

6. the 'Murikan Auto De Fe

we should be so proud. :puke:

[yurbud]

5. because they are using it as their gimp ranch?