Gitmo

I haven't had a chance to write about the three suicides at Guantanamo. Gitmo is nothing but a disgrace to this country and an affront to everything we hold dear. American values, American principles. We decry the rampant violations of human rights every year when our Department of State issues its annual report card. All the while, because of Gitmo, we've become one of the worst offenders.

We swept men off the streets in Afghanistan and elsewhere, sometimes men who were only guilty of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, called them the worst terrorists in the world, and flew them to the legal no man's land of Guantanamo Bay. We have no evidence of any wrongdoing against many of these men. We took them there precisely because it was a place with no legal protections. Because we could torture these men and not allow the Red Cross the right to monitor their treatment.

We proceeded to deny them all their human rights with no legal justification. We violated the terms of our international agreements and treaties and all the standards America once stood for. We became what we hated in other countries, especially the former Soviet Union. Face it, Gitmo is a gulag. We swept these men to Cuba the way the Soviets swept men off the streets and sent them to Siberia.

While some of them may indeed be dangerous international terrorists we may never really know. Torture doesn't work because a tortured prisoner will eventually tell you whatever it is they think you want to know. Torture is basically worthless. Using it however, has so violated the human rights of these prisoners we can never try them in a legitimate court. No judge would allow a trial for these men after the extent of the human rights violations involved. Using Gitmo voided any other options.

Now three of the prisoners have committed suicide. They were never allowed to even meet with their attorneys. Perhaps if they had and knew there may someday be some hope to leave Gitmo these suicides may have been averted. The BBC reports:

The adverse reaction to a claim by a senior US official that the suicides of three Guantanamo Bay detainees was a "good PR move" adds to the growing international pressure for the camp to be closed.

The comment was made by Colleen Graffy, deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and reflected what the camp commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris had said about the suicides being "an act of warfare waged against us".

This is just so absurd. I doubt these people were thinking about making a "good PR move" by dying. I think they were so desperate and so tired of the treatment and torture they thought they had no other options. For our government to spin this into a "good PR move" or an "act of warfare against us" shows how weak Gitmo has made us. It's made us weak because these three suicides have had such an adverse effect on us we need to make such absurd statements to explain them. It's made us weak because it violates everything this nation has stood for for a hundred years.

It's time to close Gitmo. Unfortunately all we can do with those imprisoned there is to release them. How can we justify holding them any longer when we've become as bad as them? We're as bad as them because we've become just like them, having no respect for human rights.