The recent suicide of three inmates has brought the US facility at Guantanimo bay back to the headlines again. Personally, the three suicides does not strike me as that big a deal on its own, suicides happen, and they happen in prison more than normal.

However, the very existence of the base after 4 years is still a going concern, and its legality still a question.

‘Gitmo’ opened in 2002, and has long been the subject of controversy, mostly stemming from the fact that its prisoners were denied legal council, consular council or even legal charge, as required by the US constitution. The prisoners cannot be called ‘prisoners of war’, as the US has violated several of the international codes for treatment of POWs, so the new group of ‘illegal combatants’ was created. The White House has maintained that some of the ‘worst of the worst’ (to quote Rumsfeld) are detained there, and that accounts for this murky legal status.

Among the original inmates at Gitmo were several children, one 12 years old who was imprisoned for over a year. However in 2004 the US released three inmates ages 13 to 15, and publicly stated that all other camp inmates were at least 16 years or older.

There are widespread accusations, though no actual proof, of torture being used at Gitmo, though the Pentagon did admit (following the publication of a leaked document) that sleep deprivation, exposure to hot and cold, bright lights, force feeding and loud noises were used on prisoners during and between interrogations, but maintained these did not constitute ‘torture’. The Red Cross condemnned the base after being allowed limited access in 2004 , saying:

“Noted humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes and use of forced positions. The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture.” 'Harsh interrogation' was considered to be justified by some at the time considering the fresh status of the war on terror, but four years later, one has to wonder what relevant 'intel' these people could possibly have.

Four years later, there are currently 465 inmates at Gitmo, most of whom have been there since 2002 or early 2003. Only 10 of these prisoners have been charged with crimes. The single largest national representation is Saudi, of whom there are more than 150 citizens interned. On the other hand, about 170 prisoners have been released over the years. Some of these have laid charges of torture against the United States government, though to date nothing has been proven.

Many Inmates have tried to seek help from the American courts, but most of these were squashed by the pentagon citing ‘national security’. To quote the Herald Tribune:

“Any appeals (to the US criminal system) will now fall under the shocking new law that deprives inmates of their centuries old right to challenge their imprisonment. Government lawyers have even tried to use this law retroactively, to dismiss all pending appeals.”

1. Is there a justification for the continued detention of these people in Guantanimo bay without charge or legal representation?

(My opinion) I understand some of these prisoners might be really, really bad people or terrorist members, but if that is the case, all the US has to do is charge them with a crime. Is 4 years not enough to build a case?

2. If ‘Yes’ to the above, how long can the US government justify keeping these people locked up without charge or representation?

3. Is this an unfortunate but necessary compromise on freedom which is needed to win the war on terror, or is something else?

1. Is there a justification for the continued detention of these people in Guantanimo bay without charge or legal representation?
No

2. (My opinion) I understand some of these prisoners might be really, really bad people or terrorist members, but if that is the case, all the US has to do is charge them with a crime. Is 4 years not enough to build a case?
Rhetorical question?

2.a. If ‘Yes’ to the above, how long can the US government justify keeping these people locked up without charge or representation?
It was not justifiable in the first place, and the longer it goes on, the greater the strategic damage.

3. Is this an unfortunate but necessary compromise on freedom which is needed to win the war on terror, or is something else?
It was unnecessary to begin with, and compromised the values we were fighting for from the start.

The entire process has disturbed me greatly from the beginning. Our military prisoner processing and interrogation capabilities were cut by more than half in the mid '90s. After 9/11, the national decision-making authority implemented measures contrary to law and good sense, then put amateurs in charge of execution. Civilian interrogators in the federal agencies failed to distinguish themselves in the effort. The very few military professionals we had left at the time were immediately stretched across the world, many getting burnt out in continuous ops in Bagram, Kandahar and elsewhere long before OIF ever kicked off. Abuses in the interrogations conducted at many locations are directly traceable to a combination of direct guidance and heavy pressure coming from the highest levels. Leadership failure is the only way to describe what has occurred. History will not look kindly upon senior decision-makers when it all eventually comes to light.

Last year there was a flurry of articles in U.S. military professional publications critical of Gitmo. Here are three of them:

From Joint Forces Quarterly: Guantanamo Bay: Undermining the Global War on Terrorism

From Parameters: Six Floors of Detainee Operations in the Post 9/11 World

From Military Review: [URL=Defining Success at Guantanamo Bay: By What Measure?[/URL]

From Osama bin Laden's latest audio tape:



I don't cite Osama bin Laden as a reliable source. He has reason to lie about whether Guantanamo prisoners knew about 9/11. But notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't claim that none of the prisoners are connected with al Qaida, or even that most of them are unconnected. He says many have no connection to al Qaida.



Who are these two "brothers"? I think they must be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, captured in early 2003 and late 2002 in Pakistan. They are probably not in Guantanamo; the US has not disclosed where they're being held. They claimed responsibility for 9/11 in a 2002 interview with an al Jazeera reporter, recounted here:



From the snippets of information that have come out of Guantanamo, and from the jihadis' own mouths, I have to assume that some of the prisoners are from KSM's "Department of Martyrs".

1. Is there a justification for the continued detention of these people in Guantanimo bay without charge or legal representation?

Here's my problem: Consider an "Afghan Arab," one of the mujahideen who went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. More recently, he's fallen in with al Qaida, and trained to wage war against the US. What American law has he broken? If he hasn't broken any, should we let him go?

I think most of them should be sent back to their countries of origin, though there's a pretty good chance they'll experience real torture in some of them.

2. If ‘Yes’ to the above, how long can the US government justify keeping these people locked up without charge or representation?

It's been too long already, but again, I have to pause at the phrase "without charge." There are legitimate reasons to want some of these guys out of circulation even if there isn't a legal case to make against them. If they say "I will kill Americans if you let me out," I think we have to take them at their word... and not let them out.

3. Is this an unfortunate but necessary compromise on freedom which is needed to win the war on terror, or is something else?

It's a mess, is what it is...

Yes. As you mentioned they are really bad people for the most part. Worst of all some of the released prisoners have turned up in Afghanistan fighting with the enemy – again!


some of the more than 100 Gitmo prisoners who have been released have since turned up back in Afghanistan—fighting with Taliban forces against the U.S. military.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4825317/





In a war they can be kept until the war is over. Since we are still engaged fighting the, now hiding, Taliban and AQ we cannot say the war is over. IMO I would like to see them tried (as terrorists) and executed as such. Most were captured fighting us and our allies without uniforms and can be classified as aligned with the terrorists who murdered 3,000 civilians in the US. Reason enough to execute them. My feeling is they are being kept because of the potential to get more intel from them, or that we are reluctant to execute them for some political reason.



I see no “compromise on freedom”. Not sure what is meant here. These people have no right for a “trial” by jury in the US. IMO they can be “interred” for the duration. We must not torture them but have no requirement to make them comfortable either.

I believe that Mustang has provided us with an absolutely convincing argument, from the point of view of a military expert, as to why this special detention center, with a special status for its prisoners, is neither helpful nor justifiable.

(Please note for 2007 "Most Convincing Post" award.)

The article linked by Ted about the "revolving door" which has allowed some released prisoners to return to terrorist activities seems to me to be yet another reason why this special detention center should be phased out; it is not even doing the job it was designed to do.

In addition to this, the whole thing looks bad for the United States. World opinion is no small factor in what will be an international war on terror which may last for decades.

This is not in any way advocating being "soft on terror." Among the prisoners there are no doubt many who are guilty of crimes against humanity almost beyond imagination. Bring them to justice as war criminals indeed; but bring them to justice.

Pardon me, in re-reading this topic, I just noticed that somehow I forgot to place the URL for my third reference. For those who are interested in actually reading the article, here it is:

Defining Success at Guantanamo Bay: By What Measure?

Here is an interesting discussion of the Geneve Convention. I agree strongly with this editorial. The GC is a “pact” and you can expect the benefits of the pact if you abide by the rules which we have for the most part and our enemy has not – at all. The recent torture and butchering of two uniformed soldiers is clear proof of the barbaric nature of the terrorists and insurgents.

The Savages
A barbaric enemy disqualified from the Geneva Conventions.

Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Pentagon yesterday announced the names of seven Marines and a Navy corpsman charged with the April 26 kidnapping and murder of a 52-year-old Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania. The accusations are grave and, if proved, will almost certainly lead to severe sentences. We suspect no parallel process is taking place among Iraqi insurgents for the weekend murders near Yusufiya of U.S. soldiers Thomas L. Tucker and Kristian Menchaca.
That's a distinction worth pondering the next time you hear Iraq war critics carp at the U.S. refusal to apply Geneva Convention privileges to enemy combatants. The Convention extends those privileges to combatants who abide by the laws it sets for war, including the treatment of prisoners.
Combatants who fail to obey those laws--by not wearing distinctive military insignia or targeting civilians--are not entitled to its privileges. If they were, the very purpose of the Convention would be rendered a nonsense. And this is why the U.S. has refused Geneva privileges to the enemy combatants at Guantanamo, which we hope is an argument heeded by the Supreme Court as it decides the Hamdan case.

Especially so given the kinds of combatants the U.S. and the rest of the civilized world now face in Ira
. Privates Tucker and Menchaca were not simply ambushed, taken prisoner and killed. "The torture was something unnatural," said Major General Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim of Iraq's Defense Ministry, hinting at the state of the soldiers' remains. The corpses were so mutilated that they could be positively identified only through DNA testing.
Here, then, is the enemy we face in Iraq: not nationalists or extremists or even fanatics, but something like a band of real-life Hannibal Lecters for whom human slaughter is both business and religious fulfillment. Following the killing, an Internet statement said to be from the Mujahadeen Shura Council praised Abu Hamza al-Muhajir--who is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's successor as head of Al Qaeda in Iraq--with "the implementation of the sentence." Note the legalistic pretensions: This is the kind of "justice" Iraqis could expect should the insurgents come to power. And it is the enemy that might well come to power if the U.S. left Iraq prematurely, as many Senate Democrats urged yesterday.

Ted, your moral arithmetic is suspect. You equate everyone in Gitmo with the al Qaeda jihadists we have attracted to Iraq and then compound the error by identifying them with the jihadists worst acts. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many of those in Gitmo were fingered by informers for a fee and may not even be associated with al Qaeda or even the Taliban let alone with the torture and mutilation of American soldiers.



By this logic British and American prisoners in WWII would have lost all claim to any rights under the Geneva Convention. Civilians were targeted in the bombing of Dresden, where 35 to 100 thousand were killed; in the fire bombing of Tokyo, where 100 thousand were killed; and of course in the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki where 140 and 74 thousand were killed respectively - mostly civilians.

(See Dresden, Tokyo, and Atomic bombing).

I am sure that the vast majority are terrorists. Do you have any proof that any number of them “fingered for a fee” are just innocent bystanders? We have released some of theses men and I assume the ones left are aligned with AQ, Taliban and the people who murdered the soldiers. Please post any proof you have to the contrary. Thanks





Nor were our men accorded all the rights of the Convention. Certainly the Japanese who butchered US soldiers and civilians alike deserved none of the Conventions rights. The Japs, for example, killed 400,000 civilians in Nan King.

http://www.tribo.org/nanking/background.html

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/st/~ehimchak/death_march.html

Needless to say WWII was a war were both sides killed civilians by the thousands. Part of the reason for the Dresden bombing was the V2 attacks on London civilians. Part of the high death tole was because of the lack of precision of weapons. On a documentary recently dealing with bombers it was stated that one B2 bomber could destroy the same number of targets (or more) as a massive 250 plane attack in WWII and without the collateral damage.

IMO the points in the editorial are valid.

You didn't look at the links I provided. A lot of British bombing of Germany and specifically the bombing of Dresden, in which the US Army Air Corp participated, were designed to lower German morale by targeting civilian populations and "terrorizing" them. The same can be said of the fire bombing of Tokyo, although there were some minor industrial targets involved. Dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities is a hotly debated topic and I won't go into it here.

Of course the Japanese committed horrible atrocities and mistreated American prisoners. The Germans generally respected American prisoner rights under the conventions. The same can not be said for Soviet prisoners and we all know the other horrible acts of the Nazis. However, we tried many German and Japanese officers and officials for these specific reasons and a number were hanged!