Guantanamo: Using Cacophonous Debate to Hide the Real Issues

There's been a lot of debate in the news over the last couple of weeks about the future of the quasi-military prison at Guantanamo and the prisoners we're housing there. Cheney says the Dems are coddling them, the Dems want to close the place down, the American people are being pictured as cowering from the very thought of "Tear-ists" in their own backyards if they're brought here to the mainland, the democratic house wants to save money by closing the place down, and the republicans, joined by hawkish dems, have refused to allocate any money to close it down. All this yelling and posturing and chest swelling and name calling has managed to do one thing-- it's hidden the fact from the American people that, with the exception of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and one other wingnut whose name escapes me, they've got no one who poses any threat whatsoever to the USA, they've had zero convictions on any of the feckless hateful jerks they've tried, and there's every indication they won't ever be able to convict any of the rest of them, no matter which venue (civilian, military, hybrid) they attempt.

The small fry are just that-- turned in for the reward by their neighbors in Iraq and Afghanistan and various places across Eastern Europe-- and have already served more time than a real conviction of any crime they could be accused of would merit. Look at David Hicks from Australia, who plead guilty to something in exchange for being released back to Australia, where he was freed within months. OBL's driver got the same, though at first the military tribunal acquitted him-- a decision quickly overturned based on what I picture to be a sharp rebuke from the Cheney/Bush White House-- so that even when the guilty verdict came down, he had already served all his time and was free to go.

The basic outline of the situation is, we are holding almost no one of any importance, and at this point those prisoners are proving to be more of a problem to send away somewhere-- and the ones who are important have been tortured and abused and kidnapped and moved around in ways which will make it virtually impossible to convict them.

Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush royally screwed up. They thought there was an international organization who plotted and carried out the terrorist attacks in the US, Britain, and Spain. For a description of that organization, watch any James Bond movie (or read a comic book) from the 60', 70's, and 80's- with names like S.M.I.R.C.H. and C.H.A.O.S. There wasn't-- there were only independent bands of psychotic men with nothing to lose, aligned only in their burning hatred of the West, and even that was mitigated by real political facts-- the European terrorists seemed to be galvanized by segregation, racism, and oppression, while OBL and the 9/11 band seemed to be more concerned with US influence in Saudi Arabia, the suicide bombers in Iraq are establishing power boundaries and settling scores, and the nut jobs in Pakistan are all over the place, and not just literally. Cheney thinks we're in some final war of good against evil (see above-referenced movies and comic books), and Constitutional niceties like due process and guaranteed human rights are just obstacles in the way of victory. Rumsfeld scrambled to find some legal interpretation to make Cheney's nightmare vision fly, and Bush just wanted to know where to sign the checks. Now, in a corner of the faraway island of Cuba, we've got a secret prison where the dirt who got swept up in Kabul and Baghdad are sitting in cells indefinitely, because everyone who knows anything about the situation knows they will never be convicted by any court of law, habeas corpus be damned.

So, when you hear the Republicans try and block the closing of Gitmo, don't be fooled into thinking it's a budget issue, or an attempt to protect US citizens from these dangerous, bearded demons from the East. They're trying to keep them out of the US civilian court system which will free them in a heartbeat. What's become all too clear, however (are you listening Mr. Cheney?), is the military courts are going to free them anyway. Kahlid Sheik Mohammed is doomed to live forever in some sort of limbo-- I doubt any US court would convict him with the torture-induced confessions (and his original kidnapping from Pakistan), and definitely no one is going to set him free. So be it, and I sincerely wish him the worst. Maybe, to spread the costs of his special imprisonment, we could set up some extra cells-- for Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. That would at least shut Cheney up.

The rest should be handed a hundred bucks, a new pair of shoes, a bag lunch, and flown to some destination of their choosing. Their lives are already ruined, and living in any of the places where they might be welcomed-- the Mideast, South Asia, North Africa, Muslim Easterrn Europe-- is its own form of punishment.