It's the policy, not the base (Gitmo)

[tk2kewl]

It's the policy, not the base

Guantanamo isnot the problem; it's U.S. insistenceon violating the rights of detainees

BY ERIC UMANSKY
Eric Umansky is a columnist for Slate. This first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

June 16, 2005

Closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay has suddenly become a hot topic. Since Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) broached the idea, the notion has been gaining steam.

<snip>

Gitmo has come to represent the lack of accountability and the extralegal aspects of the war on terrorism. Shuttering it would be a grand gesture. The symbolism would be important and could help improve the U.S. image. But if that is all that is done, a closure risks obscuring a more important issue and could even be counterproductive: If the U.S. is to really regain its standing as a defender of human rights, it needs to do more than mothball a single jail; it needs to change its policies.

<snip>

It's important to remember that Gitmo is only one of a group of U.S. prisons around the globe set up to hold "enemy combatants" captured in the war on terrorism. Far less is known about other jails, reportedly run by the CIA. There's one at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. As The New York Times reported, two detainees have been killed at Bagram. More obscure is the reported facility at a base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Unlike at Guantanamo Bay, no reporters have been allowed to visit these jails. And unlike at Guantanamo Bay, which is quasi-U.S. territory, prisoners at these less-prominent locales aren't covered by court judgments that allow them to challenge their detentions; they don't have access to military tribunals, and they are not registered with the Red Cross. The prisoners are, as the term goes, "ghost detainees."

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[Kraklen]

1. The whole point of Guantanamo...

is that it's not officially on U.S. soil, so they argue Constitutional guarantees of due process don't apply.

So it's the base AND the policy.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. However, Gitmo isn't the only place where this is happening

It may not even be the worst case. There have been over a hundred reported deaths of POWs and other detainees in US custody in these facilities; not one of these deaths has occurred at Guantanamo.

The issue is the persistent violations of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. These violations are a matter of Bush regime policy. They are crimes against humanity. It is those violations that must stop.

The conditions in any one of the gulags is a red herring. Closing just one of them won't stop crimes in the others.

[getmeouttahere]

3. Exactly! And I've always wondered....

why Cuba??? You would think this admin in particular wouldn't want to have anything to do with those commmunists!