Opinion:

For those on the right-wing...

...who cannot understand my fundamental reason for wanting to close the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo, perhaps this will provide sufficient incentive.

If we closed that prison and kept our "enemy combatants" in prisons that were both open to inspection and judicial review, we could refute accusations such as this:

Bush Issues a New Warning to Syria

June 11th, 2005 : Filed by ~A!

In a display of his colossal arrogance yet again, “president” George W. Bush issued another warning to Damascus yesterday, warning them to pull intelligence personnel out of Lebanon.

Our message to Syria – and it’s not just the message of the US; the UN has said the same thing – is that in order for Lebanon to be free,” Syria needs to “not only remove their military, but to remove intelligence officers as well.”

I’m not sure about anyone else who might be reading this, but I was taught that people in glass houses weren’t supposed to throw stones.

Bush talks a good game on freedom, and likes to tell other countries how they should run their elections, their governments, and treat their people. Meanwhile, we have how many people locked up in our gulag in Cuba without being charged with a crime? How many people abused and tortured by a military acting out the whims of their superiors?

There should be some kind of common-sense law that says you can’t tell people how to treat others until you can illustrate some ability to treat them yourself. If we’re going to be a model of human rights in the world, don’t we need to have some record of decent human rights?

I know, I know, “America has spread more freedom and liberty… blah blah blah” I’m not disputing the fact that America has done many, many things to further the safety and security of the people of this world. Of course we have. That doesn’t mean Bush has done any of it, nor his administration.

What the Bush administration has said about human rights and what they have done to erode them are two completely different things.

When Amnesty International was calling Saddam Hussein’s Baathists an oppressive regime, The US government was all too happy to use them as a source:

We know that it’s a repressive regime…Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people…

   Secretary Rumsfeld, 3/27/2003

But when it’s the US they’re talking about…..

Free societies depend on oversight and they welcome informed criticism, particularly on human rights issues. But those who make such outlandish charges lose any claim to objectivity or seriousness

Yes, Donny, free societies depend on oversight and welcome informed criticism. Good point. The Bush administration welcomes NO criticism, and suppresses oversight at every opportunity.

Truthfully, the people who have lost any claim to objectivity or seriousness are the people running the United States of America.

~A!

As was written in The Economist over a year ago:

This claim that America is free do whatever it wishes with the Guantanamo prisoners is unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of law from its very birth, and represents a more extreme approach than it has taken even during periods of all-out war. It has alienated many other governments at a time when the effort to defeat terrorism requires more international co-operation in law enforcement than ever before. America's casual brushing aside of the Geneva Conventions, which require at least a review of each prisoner's status by an independent tribunal, made America's invocation of these same conventions on behalf of its own soldiers during the recent Iraq conflict sound hypocritical.

I have recently written of honor besmirched, a concept that I thought was at least held by those in our Armed Forces, along with those who had served in that cause.

Do any of you now understand why I oppose the prison at Guantanamo?