Let's begin...

You really are the most frustrating piece of work I have ever met! I don’t even know where to begin rebutting this massive a load of crap… but I guess I’ll try.

Let’s begin with GITMO. 355 detainees left, and only 6 of them will ever be charged and tried in the US for crimes against the US. SIX. That means the other 349 detainees can be kept or charged or tried somewhere else… end of story. What is the gray area here? If they KNOW they are going to charge 6 of these men, then why don’t they do so NOW and get it over with? There is no chance of bail, no chance of escape, and no chance of rescue by fellow terrorists… charge them and let the process take its course.

No “new” detainees have been taken to GITMO and its three camps since early in 2005. That’s three years plus with no new prisoners that are deemed the “worst of the worst” by Donald Rumsfeld (and that is the ONLY source I have found for that quote… he said it first, and it has been repeated ever since… more on this in a minute). That’s three years plus to wring as much out of these guys as they have ever known about plans and strategies and rosters and “who’s who” lists… so the potential of getting new VIABLE intel out of these guys is next to zero. That’s 349 men that are being kept without charge or redress, with no representation outside of 4 JAG lawyers representing them all “collectively”.

As for their being the “worst of the worst”… lets look at some of the people that were kept there, but released since 2004. All 750+ had taken up arms against the US in one fashion or another, but we are talking about people like “Jihad Johnny” and that fruit-loop British kid (forgot his name)… these punks were barely able to point and shoot a rifle across a dry-rock wall without killing themselves. Jihad Johnny got caught because he was shot by his own comrades in the foot! He constitutes the “worst of the worst”? He’s out of GITMO as we speak, and has all the representation he could hope for… is that because he is American? Should HE have his rights and privileges protected under the Constitution, but no one else? Doesn’t the Constitution guarantee the rights of ALL men as equal and god-given? Doesn’t the Declaration of Independence state quite clearly that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, and are endowed with UNALIENABLE RIGHTS given by their CREATOR and not the Constitution? Where does it say that only US Citizens are guaranteed these rights from the American government? Where does it say that you DON’T have these rights protected by the US Government, unless you are found guilty of crimes against the PEOPLE of the US? Have these men been charged and found guilty of a crime that I am unaware of?

I’m not saying they should be set free right now… I’m not that stupid. These men did commit a crime according to the prima fascia evidence of their shooting at US troops, but they haven’t been tried or convicted by a court of law. If we don’t want to do it, then send them somewhere that WILL do it.

And I am really getting sick of all this UCMJ crap you keep spitting up. There is only one Rule of Law in this country, and that is the Rule of Law as defined by the Constitution of the United States of America. That instrument of government that we hold so dear protects and guarantees UNIVERSAL rights granted by God to all men, and those protections and guarantees are meted out in two separate but equally valid rules of jurisprudence: the US Code of Federal Regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. BOTH are measured and regulated by the limits of the Constitution, but the UCMJ is SUBORDINATE to the US Code… in fact, it is defined WITHIN the US Code, as I think I have pointed out to you on numerous occasions. These men would face no more stringent a trial in the tribunal than they would in criminal court, the only difference would be the appeals process (which would be denied them because they are not citizens) and the penalty phase, which would be determined by the Judge Advocate, and not a jury. So, can we stop with the “tribunal vs. court” bit, please? The laws would be the same, the process too similar to debate, and the end result would be a mirror image 99.99% of the time… GUILTY.

Explain to me in detail WHY closing GITMO would be bad for the US. Because we would be seen as “giving in” to liberal European pressure? Or because we would be following established US laws as they exist RIGHT NOW? Doesn’t this attitude fly in the face of “enforcement first”? We are talking about established US LAW… it is illegal to detain, incarcerate, hold, or imprison anyone for more than 48 hours without charges and legal representation (I’ll forgo the right to face one’s accusers for now)… this is one of the most cherished and valuable aspects of the US legal system… habeas corpus. I don’t recall the President or Congress suspending that right in the last 165 years….

Now, you could give me the old “they aren’t Americans” bit again, as if I didn’t know that. Of course they aren’t Americans… but aren’t you one of the ones that was willing to put US lives in harms way to remove Saddam from his tyrannical reign to protect the rights of Iraqis to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”… or at least a fair approximation thereof? If the Iraqis that American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are dying for every day have those same rights, then surely THESE men do, as well? At least until it has been proven to a jury of their piers that they have forfeited those rights by committing crimes against the US, right?

Or you could bring up past occasions where an executive order has superseded the law… perhaps the internment of Japanese and German Americans during WWII, or the illegal prosecution of Castro’s regime by the Kennedy/Johnson Administrations, or the questionable (if not illegal) investigations into such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and a dozen others by the CIA on behalf of the FBI… but these have all been determined to be ILLEGAL actions by the Executive Branch. Doesn’t that mean anything today?

See, this all boils down to the OTHER part of my McCain comments… that doing the honorable thing and keeping to the “moral high-ground” at all times (as Mac said he would) is as sure-fire a way to keep the US out of trouble as any I know of. If what we are implementing as policy is morally and ethically impeachable, then who could complain with any real intent? You will always have detractors, but their credibility will suffer in light of the policies they are fighting… instead of the opposite being true, as it is so often today.

I am not one of the people that think that GITMO is simply another Nazi death camp with an American flag on the pole… I see the rational behind the policy (even if I don’t agree with it). I simply no longer see any purpose to continuing the policy, and obviously the Administration doesn’t either, or they would still be putting people INTO the camps, rather than talking about getting them out (eventually).

Let’s be honest, okay? GITMO was the perfect place to stick these guys… really. It is as far from the area of operations as you could conceivably get, it was VERY secure, the chances of attacks or rescue attempts were nil, and it is isolated from the rest of the world (literally). This would have been a PERFECT place for this kind of detention, had the Administration not screwed up by placing them in the camps before such basic human necessities were installed as running water, toilets, walls, roofs, or medical facilities. The fact that 268 of the first detainees had to spend the first 4 months of their detention in dog kennels, sleeping on concrete and only allowed to use the Port-o-John once a day (all other times they were forced to use their cells/kennels) certainly doesn’t do the Administration or the US any justice in its fight for “justice”, does it? Simply MORE bad policy, MORE bad planning, MORE failed strategy… all stemming from very specific offices in the White House. How is this defensible? Where is the benefit in this kind of thinking?

I know this post is rather disjointed... but I wrote half of it at work last night, and the other half this morning after a few hours of sleep. You can probably tell where the one ends and the other begins. I apologize for that here and now.

My point is simply this: If there ever was a need for GITMO (and I question that), it is past for now. If there ever was a need to re-establish our foreign policy and military position on detention of enemy combatants, it is RIGHT now. We are fighting a war that hasn't been fought by the US previously, but we can see the mistakes that nations who have fought this kind of war in the past have made, and we should be learning from their mistakes. The UK, Israel, Russia, Italy, Turkey... even Iraq and Iran. All have shown us the ways NOT to fight a terror-based insurgent or guerrilla enemy. Yet, in my opinion, we have fallen in-step with the same failed policy that nearly all of these nations have used in the past. That makes no sense to me.