Sunday, April 30, 2006

Sorry, but the US has to violate your rights to protect them...

If I've ever seen a cynical, hypocritical, inhuman argument, it is this one by the bushbaby playpen: that they just can't release those people that have been held in Guantánamo without charges, lawyers, judicial review, trials for nearly five years because their home countries might treat them badly. I think I'd rather take my chances....
See this NY Times article for the complete information. What follows is just a short bit from the beginning...

U.S. Says It Fears Detainee Abuse in Repatriation
By Tim
Golden
Published: April 30, 2006, NYT
A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said. Administration officials have said they hope eventually to transfer or release many of the roughly 490 suspects now held at Guantánamo. As of February, military officials said, the Pentagon was ready to repatriate more than 150 of the detainees once arrangements could be made with their home countries. But those arrangements have been more difficult to broker than officials in Washington anticipated or have previously acknowledged, raising questions about how quickly the administration can meet its goal of scaling back detention operations at Guantánamo. "The Pentagon has no plans to release any detainees in the immediate future," said a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon of the Navy. He said the negotiations with foreign governments "have proven to be a complex, time-consuming and difficult process."
The military has so far sent home 267 detainees from Guantánamo after finding that they had no further intelligence value and either posed no long-term security threat or would reliably be imprisoned or monitored by their own governments. Most of those who remain are considered more dangerous militants; many also come from nations with poor human rights records and ineffective justice systems.
But Washington's insistence on humane treatment for the detainees in their native countries comes after years in which Guantánamo has been assailed as a symbol of American abuse and hypocrisy — a fact not lost on the governments with which the United States is now negotiating.
That can hardly be topped. It's a lot like the playpen's policy with its own citizens: Deny rights to prevent terrorists from destroying the system of democratic rights they're supposedly protecting/fighting against. Who's on which side????

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