from the Centre for American Progress …..

The Stain Of Gitmo

Since its creation over five years ago, Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba has been a source of human rights abuses that has tarnished the reputation of the United States. Leaders across the world have called for the closure of the facility, including, for example, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and even President Bush's ally outgoing-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The facility faces widespread criticism at home as well. A poll conducted last year showed that over two-thirds of Americans believe the United States "should change the way it treats detainees." Bush claimed last year, "I'd like to close Guantanamo." But recent actions from the Bush administration reveal that this was simply a PR stunt. Earlier this month, a new detainee was transferred to Guantanamo in "the latest signal sent by the Bush administration that it was not committed to any plan to close the facility." Congress and the administration must take action to close Guantanamo and restore basic rights and dignities to detainees.

The longer Guantanamo remains open, the more isolated Bush grows from his own military leaders. In the wake of a recent report saying servicemembers in Iraq overwhelmingly favored the use of torture tactics, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wrote a letter yesterday condemning the practice. "Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture...to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they are also frequently neither useful or necessary," he declared. In a hearing in March, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has broken with the Bush line multiple times before, told Congress that he wanted to close Guantanamo and transfer detainees to the United States for trial. "There is a taint about it," Gates said about the perception of torture in the international community. "I [feel] that no matter how transparent, no matter how open the trials, if they took place at Guantanamo, in the international community, they would lack credibility." In fact, in his first weeks as defense secretary, Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both "told President George W. Bush and others that [the prison] should be shut as quickly as possible." Unfortunately, their views were quickly muzzled by Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

In 2005, Center for American Progress senior analyst Ken Gude produced a report that proposed the administration "close the prison at Guantanamo and shift detainee operations to Ft. Leavenworth, KS." This year, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) raised this strategy raised in Congress, yet conservatives twisted it into an effort to scare the public into opposing Guantanamo's closure. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) sounded the alarm that congressional leaders were trying to "import dangerous terrorists into American communities" and could "potentially endanger thousands of American civilians." But his fear-mongering was rebuked by the citizens of Ft. Leavenworth. The area was "accustomed to high-profile prisoners," as it already had a maximum-security federal prison. "We are a prison friendly town and do support our local penitentiaries," declared a local official, dismissing the scare tactics. Even war proponents like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) believe such a shift would be prudent. "I would probably announce the closing of Guantanamo Bay. I would move those detainees to Fort Leavenworth. I would announce we will not torture anyone," he said last month.

Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks was held at Guantanamo for five years prior to pleading guilty to "knowingly assisting a terrorist organization" earlier this year. On the other hand, John Walker Lindh, the so-called "Taliban American," was tried under the American court system with full due process and received a much longer 20-year sentence for similar charges. "Like Lindh, Hicks was apprehended overseas. Like Lindh, Hicks was initially accused of being a terrorist. Like Lindh, the government eventually narrowed the charges down to providing material support to the Taliban." The military commission system was less effective than U.S. courts in putting a convicted terrorist behind bars, as Hicks will be walking free by winter while Lindh still has 15 years of his sentence to serve. Additionally, Hicks's case calls attention to a continuing concern about the strength of evidence linking the detainees to terrorist activity. "Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members. ... Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans." The AP found that once Guantanamo detainees were returned to their home country, four-fifths of them "were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention."

Last October, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which retained language stripping detainees of habeas corpus rights. Without habeas corpus rights, detainees at Guantanamo have no ability to question their detention. "It's one of the core rights that makes the United States different from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran and Kim Jong Il's North Korea," notes USA Today. Both the Washington Post and New York Times also published strongly worded editorials advocating the restoration of habeas rights this week. Furthermore, habeas restoration is favored by families of 9/11 victims, former diplomats, and many military and religious leaders. But Bush has pledged to veto any bill from Congress that restores habeas corpus rights to detainees. Congress recently passed up an opportunity to include provisions to restore habeas corpus to detainees in a new Defense Department authorization bill. "My judgment is that the House is best able to undertake this effort and to be successful by acting on this issue as a separate bill," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO). Bills to restore habeas corpus rights have been proposed in both the House and Senate. But the administration has made clear it is not a priority. Yesterday, Gonzales said, "I haven't really thought about" whether U.S. citizens were being held without habeas corpus.