Editorial
An American gulag
The U.S. plan to lock up suspected terrorists for life in secret
locations without evidence is a horrifying development.
Torturing prisoners, denying them legal safeguards and essentially
refuting their existence is what rogue regimes and lawless nations do.
Reading about it in China's Xinhua News Agency is especially
disconcerting. The Bush administration is not only doing all this now,
but making systematic plans to create an American gulag of prisons and
prisoners without names and cells without numbers. From the old Soviet
Union to Communist China to the banana republics of Latin America and
Castro's Cuba, that's what others do.
According to reports in The Washington Post, the military and CIA have
hundreds of detainees for whom they have no evidence to hold longer or
who have exhausted their usefulness as intelligence sources, or never
provided any information.
U=2ES. authorities refuse to let them go or put them in proximity to U.S.
civilian or military judicial systems.
The options under study include construction of a special prison at
Guant=E1namo Bay, Cuba. Another proposal would transfer Afghan, Saudi
and Yemeni detainees from Cuba back to their home countries, where
they'd reside in U.S.-built prisons.
Another option is sending detainees to U.S.-friendly third countries
where they can be held indefinitely, and tortured if need be,
completely out of sight and mind of U.S. laws and nosy human-rights
organizations.
Detainees have been held at secret locations ranging from Afghanistan
to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and on ships at sea.
Americans were shocked to learn of the torture and abuses at Iraq's Abu
Ghraib prison, and subsequent revelations of other, earlier abuses.
These new proposals are another departure from the values most
Americans believe symbolize their nation at home and abroad.
So what might be the next step: the holding of political prisoners
whose views are considered an unspecified and unproven threat to the
commonweal? Certainly, that is preposterous. Except that extreme
policies predictably debase other standards.
The Post's Dana Priest reported that moving captives to friendly third
countries which hold them without question was a technique used in the
drug wars. Kingpins would be stashed away for later delivery to U.S.
courts. Since 2001, the practice has been used to make sure detainees
do not go to court or back to the streets, Priest reported.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress must challenge the administration
and hold the Pentagon and CIA responsible for behavior that undermines
the values and liberties they profess to protect.
These agencies do not have to operate in the public glare, but they
have to be accountable to civilian law and authority. It's an
abomination to take prisoners, hold them, and indefinitely deny them
access to civilian and military proceedings.
That is not what America stands for, and not what it does.
Seattle Times, 6 January
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| User: "Grantland" |
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| Title: Re: An American gulag |
08 Jan 2005 07:49:03 PM |
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"WH" <bollogs@hotmail.com> wrote:
Editorial
An American gulag
That is not what America stands for, and not what it does.
Seattle Times, 6 January
Yes it is.
Grantland
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| User: "TonyZ2001" |
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| Title: Re: An American gulag |
09 Jan 2005 12:57:16 AM |
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Only very stupid, uninformed people could come to such a conclusion, or
Terrorist supporters such as Chris.
Tony
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| User: "WH" |
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| Title: Re: An American gulag |
09 Jan 2005 06:28:32 AM |
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TonyZ2001 wrote:
Only very stupid, uninformed people could come to such a conclusion,
or
Terrorist supporters such as Chris.
Tony
Try dementing the article pantyboy. Your pathetic replies with no
substance or arguments to the contrary mean absolutely nothing.
WH
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