"The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts," The Washington Post reported Sunday.
"Citing intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials, the newspaper said the Pentagon and the CIA had asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it would not set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad.
As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence.
The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share," The Post said.
So let me get this straight... we don't have enough evidence to charge them, so we're going to indefinitely detain them instead! Despite the fact that they probably have no more information, if they had any at all. Now whether you're liberal or conservative, anyone being intellectually honest (and well, quite frankly moral) realizes how wrong that is. Any debate over whether it breaks international or U.S. law or not is nothing more than semantic and political. Many people will shrug this off since it involves foreigners (although several held in Gitmo have been Americans) but it doesn't really take a genuis to see how scary this all is. Any government that will so willfully strip anyone of their human rights cannot be trusted to ensure those of their own citizens.
1 comment:
I can't see how this is going to go over at all, considering the recent Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court declared quite plainly that all detainees should have a right to challenge their detention. Now the Bush administration seems to think that means they can challenege it in a pro forma procedure, but that it ultimately won't change how the administration will treat them. That's baloney; the Supreme Court meant they can challenege it with an eye towards those who cannot be legally detained being released, or otherwise dealt with differently. I think we're another decision or two away from this idea being shot down as well, and the administration being pretty well reigned in on this.
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