From the editorial in the
Cleveland Plain Dealer (see the second entry on the
TruthOut link):
Calls to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay have diverted attention from what we should be concerned about - the policies that have made both Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib infamous.
Perhaps Guantánamo should be shut down because of all it symbolizes. But without a serious policy change in our treatment of prisoners abroad, the problem will stand unchanged. Even Vice President Dick Cheney knows this, saying (and sending a chill to the human rights community) on June 13, "If we didn't have that facility at Guantánamo to undertake this activity, we'd have to have it someplace else."
Astoundingly, the White House is claiming it would "restrict the president's authority" to pass bipartisan legislation prohibiting the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of detainees, and Cheney is saying the president will veto any such bill.
The Guantánamo tactics spread long before Cheney's statement. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, whose guards' ruthlessness in questioning prisoners at Guantánamo is infamous, was promoted to do more of the same in Iraq at Abu Ghraib. There, the military created jargon, saying Miller "Gitmoized" Iraq prison interrogations. The torture strategy we've seen was hardly accidental or random. The Department of Defense's only justification, as recently as May 25 by Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is that this is a new war and these are bad people: "They would slit our throats and our children's throats" in this "different kind of struggle."
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