lose to home is the continuing embarrassment of Gitmo. It is so "un-American." I'd love to know how President Bush had the power to create this prison system in the first place. Gitmo: the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Years are passing and hundreds are still being held there without basic human rights or judicial process.
Why should that be. The inmates, many of whom might well be horrendous and dangerous people, are given no chance to defend themselves. Last year, when the Republicans were still in the majority in the House and Senate, the President rammed through passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, to give legality to the detention camp. Congress, now under Democratic control, should restore the rights of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their detentions. Even the administration claims that only a small minority of the inmates deserves a trial. The others should be released and sent home, wherever that may be.
Gitmo should be closed down and detainees should be screened by real courts.
Somehow, soon, Congress should repeal the Military Commissions Act and commence a new system for determining whether prisoners really are deserving of a trial...or whether they should be sent home to face trial.
There are many of us who believe that the Guantanamo camp was created on a myth - that the American judicial system could not handle prisoners of the War on Terror.
It was built on a lie - that the hundreds of detainees at Gitmo are all dangerous terrorists. And it was organized around a fiction - that Br.Bush had the power to create this rogue system in the first place.
These detainees should be brought before real courts and those who are truly illegal combatants should be sent off to either military or civilian jails; some should be sent home to face trial or be freed, and some sent to an international tribunal.
What we have are military tribunals which give the inmates no chance to defend themselves and allow evidence that was obtained through torture. Remember, The Geneva Conventions?