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So Pony Up The RIGHT Answer
So be it. What should have been done with the particular inmates? It's easy for people to say - oh you shouldn't have done this, that or the other thing. I never quite hear the same crowd outwardly verbalize the converse - "Prisoner ABC should have been given a suite in the Marriot with an ankle bracelet" or that "Prisoner XYZ should just be sent home."
So - how exactly should they have been detained and under what exact conditions?
RE: Face it. Our government is guilty.
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you what, exactly, happens at Gitmo, 'cause as far as I can tell you people only seem to have a problem with the fact that we actually hold hard-core terrorists prisoner instead of giving them some cash and dropping them off at the mall.
CNN toured Gitmo in July of 2005 and felt the need to put unsubstantiated claims of abuse in their report to to make up for the decidedly non-gulag stuff they actually saw. But screw CNN. How about this for a gulag: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been regularly visiting the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay since early 2002 for the purpose of monitoring that persons held there are treated in accordance with applicable international laws and standards. Maybe you'd like some first hand accounts of the many regular visits (In addition to the ICRC, more than 1,000 journalists have visited Gitmo, plus eleven senators, 77 congressmen, 99 congressional staffers, and, of course, lawyers for the detainees.) there? (Oh, I see, they do the torturing during off peak visiting hours.)
Congressman Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said on FOX:
I sent down yesterday for the menu from Guantanamo so that the average American could understand how we're brutalizing people in Guantanamo, and I've got it right here.
For Sunday, they're going to be having -- let me see -- orange glazed chicken, fresh fruit grupe, steamed peas and mushrooms, rice pilaf -- another form of torture for the hijackers. We treat them very well.
If you go back to Sunday, it looks like it's honey-baked -- or lemon-baked fish as an entree. And if you look at the food and you also look at the list that has been prepared for the Armed Services Committee which lists abuses of the -- a way that you can abuse a prisoner, feeding them the food that we feed our soldiers, that is, the MREs, which is the new C-rations, is considered actually to be a form of abuse, something probably the manufacturers of C-rations or the new rations don't agree with.
Re. Hunter asks a good question:
And so the question is: How can you improve the schedule that we have? There's no allowed touching of the prisoners. You have to wear gloves if you handle their Bible, their Koran. They have a library. We're teaching them to read and write, and we give them excellent food, which is much better than our soldiers who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you'd like, you can read an exclusive interview with an Army nurse who was stationed at Gitmo for a time. Some highlights:
I believe that the majority of the guys there are true terrorists, and they follow the Manchester Document to the letter.
There were a few detainees there who weren’t actually fighting against the Coalition, but they were fighting their own government and would have been executed if we returned them there. Since we are not allowed to ship someone where we have reason to believe they would face torture or death, they are stuck at GTMO until we can find a country to accept them without killing them. But they were combatants of some sort.
if I ever saw a detainee face-to-face here in the States, I would immediately assume that I was targeted and do my best to kill them without further warning. If I turned out to be wrong about their intent, I could live with that
For some, they eagerly await days until “reservation” (interrogation) and there are frequently requests to see their interrogator. This is why I said that some fear to return home or they would be killed as traitors. They get to smoke (sometimes 4 or 5 packs at once, uggh!), watch new-release DVDs that have been screened by Intel so they don’t get current events, eat pizza or fast-food, listen to music, smoke a hooka, etc…. The better stuff they give up, the more the interrogators get for them. All of this has been previously released to the public, but you never hear about it in the MSM.
There was a volleyball court, a basketball court, and a soccer field… all available to detainees who were at the appropriate level in camp. If they were compliant, they were moved to Camp IV (the same one where the fake suicide attempt was used to lure guards into the feces-smeared floor [so the detainees could] assault them).
the vast majority of complaints and allegations have come from detainees through a variety of conduits including the International Committee of the Red Cross, defense lawyers, detainees who were released (and I believe it has been reported that around 20 have been confirmed as returning to the battlefield), and family members receiving letters, among others.
So, there you go. The horrors of Guantanamo Bay. Of course, you're the guy who insists FOX news is secretly run by the Bush Administration and that the Iraq War was launched to make Halliburton money, so I've probably just wasted bandwidth. As for Hollywood, don't make the mistake of thinking they are anti-war-- they're just rooting for the other side.
RE: Face it. Our government is NOT guilty.
Occams, have you ever been to Gitmo, or do you just blindly believe the hype and myth? I'll bet you have never seen a picture of the facility, as the media keeps replaying the old 2001 pics of the old, temporary Camp Bucca. Plenty of media have been there since, yet you never see the actual facility--only old stock footage of the temporary one from seven years ago. The whole Koran flushing thing turned out to be a hoax. Don't you think it's possible that a large amount of this "protest" could be at best misguided, and at worst politically motivated?
Oh, and before you try to say I condone torture, go back and read some of my previous articles on the subject. I am wholly against it, but the crux of the problem is that people define the subject much differently, and al Qaeda has exploited that magnificently. By some people's definition of torture, I am tortured every single day at work.
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Face it. Our government is guilty.
You are in denial Dilly. Those things were done in our name so we are entitled to protest.
Gitmo was used because it was hoped that what happened there would be out of sight. Are you really so innocent as to be fooled by token gestures like ice creams and prayer mats.
Shame is an appropriate reaction for the official American actions being referred to.
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