KLP, regarding Gitmo you write: "I think things are OK there, and in fact, from the looks of things, better than most any prison in the world."
Does that mean you're OK with the idea of keeping uncharged, unrepresented and unconvicted foreign nationals incarcerated for years or even lifetimes?
As far as I'm concerned they could make that a country club and I'd be against it given the current procedural safeguards. Think about how a month of separation from your life, your family, your future and your children would feel. Think about how long a year is, or three years. Think about the fact that not all of them are guilty of anything serious. Think about the people we "let go" because they were no threat, but only after years of imprisonment.
I don't want to be a part of doing that to any innocent people and therefor I'd like to see some standards established to delineate what does, and does not, justify incarceration there, and I'd like to see some quality procedural protections to be sure we have the right people imprisoned. Because you can say as often as you'd like that "we wouldn't be holding them if they were innocent" but the fact is that petty bureaucrats get things really, really wrong all the time.
And of course the world is watching us and assessing "American justice" not just by our words but by our actions. So far we aren't doing too well in the eyes of most people in the world.
By the way, when the Bush people claimed that they'd imprisoned the right people because some of them later engaged in anti-American violence following their release, am I the only one that found that a stretch? If you'd been held for years thousands of miles from home in a desolate prison, kept in fear and possibly been subjected to "pressures," do you think you might be violently anti-American when you finally got out? Might you join with those who were determined to harm America, even if you hadn't felt that way before your incarceration? If you say "no," then you're far different in temperment than I am. Ed |
