US to Free 141 Terror Suspects
Rumsfeld notoriously referred to them as, "The worst of the worst".
They were transported, hooded and shackled, half way across the world to a place where they have endured what any civilised person would describe as torture. It has been reported that some of them have been subjected to sleep deprivation, white noise and forced into stress positions; some have even been physically and sexually abused.
And now after, in some cases, four years detention at Guantanamo Bay; it has been announced that 141 of them are to be released. With no charges being brought against them.
Now, whilst it cannot be proven that every single person due to be released has had any, or all, of the above done to them; every person who leaves Guantanamo has lost years of their lives. And the US government are today admitting they have practically nothing on them. Certainly nothing that the government feels confident about presenting in a court of law.
Indeed, of the roughly 490 "enemy combatants" presently held there, the government plans to bring 10 of them to trial. I'll say that again. 10.
In addition to the 141 due to be released, previously about 250 people have left Guantanamo with no charges being brought against them.
That's 391 people, just 100 short of the amount currently held in captivity, that the US now admit posed no threat to the international community.
This should be a source of national shame in the United States.
The US government caused international outrage, and evaporated the sympathy felt towards Americans post 9-11, by embarking on a course of action that violated every international and domestic law we have. They suspended Habeas Corpus and spirited these people into a carefully constructed legal black hole, denying them access to lawyers or to their families, and now they are telling us.... that they got it wrong.
Or that's what any logical mind would surmise.
However, Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler of the Pentagon office in charge of reviewing detainee status has a different phraseology. He states, that the men "are no longer enemy combatants" and attempts to argue that their detention was justified.Battlefield commanders in Afghanistan and Pakistan had determined when the men were arrested that they were a threat to U.S. forces in the region, he said.
That's an exercise in semantics. We were not told at the time that they "were a threat to US forces in the region"; which basically means anyone who objected to being bombed by US forces in Afghanistan. We were told that they were al Qaeda - and not only were they al Qaeda - they were "the worst of the worst" of al Qaeda.
It now transpires that they weren't.
The whole thing is best described by Al-Qahtani's lawyer, who expressed bafflement at the government's handling of the whole Guantamo escapade."I can't for the life of me figure out how they picked the people they've picked," he said. "If these are the worst of the worst, as the secretary of Defense alleges, then someone other than Osama bin Laden's chauffeur would be here."
Guantanamo will forever be a dark smear on the American conscience. A moment when, post 9-11, the country that Reagan described as "The Shining City Upon a Hill", lost it's collective marbles, and betrayed the very principles upon which it was formed.
It would be asking too much to expect the Michelle Malkin's, Bill O'Reilly's and other hate spewers of the right, to ever admit that the US - whilst understandably consumed by grief and, more importantly, led by arrogant ideologues - stumbled, and took a path down which she must never again tread.
But, there are many of us out here, who still believe in the fundamental goodness of most Americans, who fervently hope that the citizens - if not the government - of that great nation, will one day come to this conclusion.
Click title for TruthOut article.
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