Guantanamo Is Wrong... So Says The UN... So Says The US

Military Prison's Closure Is Urged: U.N. Panel Faults Detention Policies

A U.N. anti-torture panel Friday called on the United States to close its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to expressly ban controversial interrogation techniques, and to halt the transfer of detainees to countries with a history of abuse and torture.

The U.N. panel, charged with monitoring compliance with the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which the United States has ratified, also asserted that the CIA imprisonment of suspects in secret detention facilities without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross constituted a clear violation of the treaty.

Bush administration officials countered that the U.N. Committee Against Torture had not given the United States a fair hearing, that it had overreached its authority by calling for Guantanamo's closure, and that its report is riddled with errors and misstatements.

"We acknowledge that there were serious incidents of abuse. We've all seen Abu Ghraib," the State Department's top lawyer, John B. Bellinger III, told reporters. But "clearly our record has improved over the last few years," he said.

The 11-page report was issued one day after two Guantanamo Bay detainees tried to kill themselves by overdosing on antidepressants. The attempts brought to 41 the number of inmates who have tried to commit suicide since 2002, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of Guantanamo Bay detainee operations, said Friday.

After the unsuccessful suicide attempts, Guantanamo Bay inmates rioted, attacking guards with electric fans and other improvised weapons after a prisoner lured them into a cell by faking an attempt to hang himself. Guards subdued them by firing sponge grenades and five rounds of rubber balls from a 12-gauge shotgun, Harris said.

The U.N. report was a rebuke for the Bush administration and some of the main counterterrorism approaches it adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was delivered as the United States faces increasing pressure from international critics, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. The administration has engaged in an internal debate over the fate of the controversial island facility.

The members of the Bush gang have rallied around and claimed that the process, procedures and issues at GITMO are completely within the scope of US law, ignoring the treaties clause of our own Constitution and the numerous ratified treaties that the US has signed, as well as the fundamental principles of American jurisprudence, independence and the values of the people.

The Bush gang has led us to believe that we do not torture, that all the people being held at GITMO (and elsewhere) are dangerous and threats to our security, that all these prisoners are enemy combatants and related to Al-Qaeda (or some other terrorist group), and that we can trust them. The Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN and other human rights organizations have not been allowed to visit these internment camps. However, those taking a favorable view toward the Bush gang and the detention of these prisoners have been allowed in for guided tours, including represenatives of The American Legion Magazine (May 2006).

Being a Legion member, I find the editorial from our National Commander and the article "Inside the Wire" so much pro-Bush propaganda that I am disgusted with my Legion leadership for not fulfilling the "one hundred percent Americanism" ideal that is a fundamental principle of the American Legion. The proof of the pudding is provided by the facts that seem to have been ignored by the DOD, the Bush gang and the American Legion correspondent, John Raughter... But not all the news can be spun in the direction of the Bush gang...

4 Men Cleared of Terrorism Links but Still Detained: No Explanation Or Timetable for Release Given

The May 5 release of Chinese Muslims from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, leaves four men there who have been cleared of all connections to terrorism but continue to live in a legal limbo, with no indication of when they will be freed, according to the captives' attorneys and military documents.

The government considers the men ready for outright release -- "no longer enemy combatants" (NLECs) in military jargon. In fact, 38 detainees, 5 percent of the 759 prisoners ever held at Guantanamo Bay, have officially earned NLEC status since the island prison opened in early 2002.

They are men such as Zakirjan Hassam, an Uzbek refugee who was sold to U.S. forces in Afghanistan for $5,000 in May 2002 by people he mistakenly believed would shelter him. He ended up in Guantanamo Bay the following month and is still there today.

According to the U.S. military, Hassam is not an enemy, and a military tribunal decided in 2004 that his stay at Guantanamo Bay had been based on inaccurate information. There is no evidence that Hassam took up arms against anyone or that he ever supported terrorism, and his only apparent link to alleged terrorist groups were conversations with fellow detainees during his imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, according to testimony by Hassam that is not disputed by the government.

"He's lost four years of his life for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and for being sold to U.S. forces," said Christopher Moore, a New York lawyer who represents Hassam.

Earlier this month, the government released five Chinese Uighurs who were among the last nine NLECs at Guantanamo Bay. After years of detention and, ultimately, government efforts to find them a home in a third country, the men were sent to Albania. The U.S. had feared that they would be jailed or tortured if returned to China.

As we can see, these men have been proven to NOT be NCLECs. These men fit into a pattern of over 300 cases of NCLECs that were, according to independent reports, human rights organization reports, media reports, and, eventually, our own DOD records never associated with Al-Qaeda, enemies of US forces, or any threat to US security.

The UN report and the call for the closing of Camp Delta at GITMO is absolutely legitimate. The number of abuses of power, breach of international law and our own Constitution (by virtue of the treaties clause) is proof beyond a doubt that the rationale for GITMO's Camp Delta. Beyond these basic issues of fact, GITMO should be closed on the basis of principles that are the foundation of our way of life... the principles espoused and guaranteed in our US Constitution. The treatment of these detainees is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and unfair to our own troops because our actions at GITMO, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere will be used to justify similar treatment of our soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines.

So, to Commander Thomas L. Bock of the American Legion, George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, Condaleeza Rice, and others that care to justify the existence of GITMO, Camp Delta and other unethical practices and processes, let me just say... "YOU JUST DON'T GET IT!"