OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: The Illegitmo Legacy

Polls taken since the infamous attack have consistently shown that Americans have been overwhelmingly convinced that these horrific monsters needed to be corralled, chained to the ground, and watched over indefinitely. The torture methods described in the countless documentaries surrounding Gitmo, which are the same ones eventually used at Abu Ghraib, have been tacitly accepted and condoned ever so quietly by the American public because of the hype the Bush Administration kept pouring on about their evil ways.

The National Journal published the results of several national polls regarding terrorism in their "2006 Polling On Terrorism"

A poll conducted 6/22-25/06 by TNS, showed that 57% of Americans support the federal government holding suspected terrorists without trial at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their poll also showed that one in four Americans agreed that the detainees should be held indefinitely without charges. Two in three Americans felt confident that the US was adequately protecting the rights of those held at Gitmo even though it had already been shown that widespread torture and abuse started there before moving on to Abu Ghraib. And two thirds acknowledged that Gitmo had damaged the image of the US in the rest of the world even though over half felt safer from terrorism as a result.

In a nationwide poll conducted 7/21-25/06, nine out of ten respondents stated that they had heard about the detention facility at Gitmo and over half said they favored its continued role in the war on terror. Only one in three said they wanted it shut down.

But in what has to be one of the most worrisome and controversial results in the US, a poll conducted 7/28-8/1/06, asked this: "As you may know, since 2001, the United States has held foreign terrorist suspects at a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Supreme Court recently ruled that before the United States military can imprison or execute suspected terrorists, it must give them a fair trial under military rules adopted by Congress. In your view, what legal rights should be given to these detainees? Do you think they should have the same rights American civilians receive in U.S. courts, or should they have the same rights that American military personnel receive in military courts, or should they have some rights, but not all those that are given to American military personnel, or should they have no rights?"

The result, 38% of respondents stated that they deserved only a few rights while 23% stated that they deserve no rights at all. This answer demonstrates clearly that nearly two thirds of the public prefer to ignore Supreme Court Constitutionally-based rulings if they hear something different from the main stream media and the government. In other words, the false rhetoric of the administration, e.g. Rumsfeld's erroneous claim about the worst of the worst, along with its nonstop repetition by the MSM, is more highly valued and believed by the US public. Even though the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled that some of Bush's policy was unconstitutional, the vast majority of Americans will still side with Bush and his lies rather than uphold the Constitution. That, in and of itself, should raise alarm bells across the country that so many would be willing to trash the Constitution in favor of unconstitutional rhetoric, lies and policy.

The Bush Administration has steadfastly insisted that those who were put into detention at Gitmo represent the most cruel, inhuman and barbaric terrorists on the planet. Many in Congress have echoed his sentiments time and again.

Jim Ryun, Republican Representative from Kansas noted, "Guantanamo allows us to secure dangerous detainees without the risk of escape, while at the same time providing us with valuable intelligence information on how best to proceed in the war against terror and prevent future attacks."

He's was also quoted as saying, "I was most impressed with the professionalism of our soldiers stationed there, and I am now more confident than ever that that the operations at Guantanamo are being conducted in a humane and necessary manner."

Joseph Christopher "Chris" Chocola, Republican Representative from Indiana until 2007 offered, "Guantanamo Bay houses enemy combatants ranging from terrorist trainers and recruiters to bomb makers, would-be suicide bombers, and terrorist financiers."

It was later found out that President Bush had ordered specific torture techniques in 2004 when he signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees. An uncovered FBI memo from May 22, 2004, stated specifically that the Bush Administration authorized all torture techniques so minutely that they even went so far as to provide the maximum number of times a certain torture technique could be used against a prisoner.

At the same time, White House Council, Alberto Gonzales, pointed out that President Bush had determined, "that Geneva does not apply with respect to our conflict with al-Qaeda. Geneva applies with respect to our conflict with the Taliban. Neither the Taliban or al Qaeda are entitled to POW protections."

At the same time, John Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, presented a legal opinion on torture to the Bush Administration on March 14, 2003. It essentially provided military interrogators with legal cover if they resorted to brutal and violent methods to extract information from prisoners. "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the Executive Branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

The legal opinion for military interrogators was virtually identical to an earlier memo that Yoo had written in August 2002 for CIA interrogators. Widely called the "Torture Memo," it provided CIA interrogators with the legal authority to use long-outlawed tactics, such as waterboarding, when interrogating so-called high-level terrorist suspects.

From the very outset, Guantanamo Bay has been set up to detain people who had fallen into the vast outstretched web of capture created by the Bush Administration and implemented by the soldiers in the field. There appears to be almost no set procedure in place at any time that the soldiers could use to make a meaningful and qualified assessment of the person in question. Many times the soldiers had to accept the word of a total stranger. The fact that rewards were given to those who brought in suspected terrorists only further muddy the process.

Once these suspects arrived at Gitmo, they were stripped of almost all connections with the outside world. It is obvious from the earliest records from Gitmo that torture was authorized as per John Yoo's torture memo and other documents, that the torture was approved in the oval office with VP Dick Cheney, Sec. of State Donald Rumsfeld, NSA Chief Condoleeza Rice, and President George Bush present, and that it was carried out, not only at Gitmo but at Abu Ghraib as well.

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