February 13, 2008 at 19:56:38

Guantanamo is not Nuremburg

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By Chris Gelken (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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What happened at Guantanamo was a template for Abu Ghraib in Iraq. If you accept that premise, then allow your imagination to consider what happens at the secret prisons of the American Gulag where there is no law, no oversight, and no repercussions.

After years of essential isolation, most of the detainees at Gitmo now have access to lawyers – but no direct access to their families. The only communication with loved ones being through messages passed by their legal representatives. There is no direct contact, and this is in violation of any number of US and international laws. It violates the rights of the detainees, and it violates the rights of the families.

As for the prisoners in the secret prisons, obviously no legal or family support whatsoever. Total isolation from anything even remotely familiar – itself considered a form a torture.

Anything could, and probably does, happen in these places. And another irony is that it is being done in the name of liberty, democracy, and justice.

Legal experts say all of this is so unnecessary. The arrests, detentions and trials could have been adequately handled by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or the civil Justice Department in the United States.

Everything open to scrutiny, above suspicion.

But that was never the plan. What the US hoped to gain was the terror element. Isolation, and the threat of torture. Has it worked? Is the world a safer place by playing the game, as the Bush administration would have us believe, by the same rules employed by our alleged enemies?

Or has the distinction now blurred regarding what constitutes terrorism or a terrorist act. Obviously, the Bush administration is confused over what constitutes torture to the point where they openly admit that under certain circumstances they may consider the use of waterboarding again in the future.

Amnesty International and other rights organizations have called for the closure of Guantanamo, the tarnished jewel in Dick Cheney’s American Gulag. But its closure will only remove the most visible of Washington’s illegal activities.

The operation will just be moved elsewhere, to some secret location that defies any scrutiny whatsoever.

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