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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