The Navy Times wants to know if we should close Guantanamo. Go tell them what you think (scroll down for poll).
Before you go, though, I've got a few things you should read. First, read Eugene Robinson's essay, "After Guantanamo."
We will look back on the Bush years and find it incredible, and disgraceful, that individuals were captured in battle or "purchased" from self-interested tribal warlords, whisked to Guantanamo, classified as "enemy combatants" but not accorded the rights that that status should have accorded them, held for years without charges -- and denied the right to prove that they were victims of mistaken identity and never should have been taken into custody.
More after the jump...
A new study by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, based on interviews with 62 men who were held for an average of three years at Guantanamo before being released without being accused of a crime, found that more than a third said they were turned over to their American captors by warlords for a bounty. Those who reported physical abuse said most of it occurred at the United States' Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where about half the men were initially held before being taken to Guantanamo.
In other words, we put a bounty on peoples' heads and then took the word of warlords who delivered up "terrorists."
Where did that get us? This American Life's Jack Hitt tells us:
HITT: As best as we can tell, Badr Zaman Badr and his brother were imprisoned in Guantanamo for three years for telling a joke. Actually, for telling two jokes. They ran a satire magazine in Pakistan that poked fun at corrupt clerics. Sort of the Pashtu edition of "The Onion." The first joke that got them into trouble was when they published a poem about a politician called "I Am Glad to be a Leader." Here’s Badr:
BADR: Let me translate a few lines for you.
HITT: Sure.
BADR: "Before, I was so thin and weak. Now, I have big stomach." Uh, stuff like that. (Laughs)
HITT: So, the guy with the big stomach called up Badr and his brother. He threatened them, and, as best as they can tell, told authorities that they were linked to Al Qaeda, which landed them in Guantanamo, and which leads us to the second joke. This one was in an issue of Badr’s magazine that came out in the ‘90’s, after our government set a $5 million reward for Osama bin Laden. Badr’s magazine issued its own bounty for the capture of an American leader.
BADR: President Bill Clinton, giving the details of how to identify that he has blue eyes, and he’s cleanshaven, and the most important thing is the recent scandal going on between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. (Laughs) Yeah. If someone finds that man, he will be rewarded 5 million Afghani, that’s Afghanistan currency, which was equal to $113 at that time. That’s impossible (unintelligible, laughing.)
HITT: In Guantanamo, were you interrogated about your Clinton satire?
BADR: Exactly. They were serious, if we really wanted to kill President Clinton, and we said "No" that it was only satire, and only a way of expression. It’s allowed, it’s protected, in your country, in American law."
HITT: How many times were you interrogated...about the Clinton article?
BADR: Many times, many times. Me and my brother, each one of us, have been interrogated more than 150 times.
HITT: So after hearing the punch line explained 150 times, we finally got the joke, and sent Badr and his brother home. It had been three years since the Pakistani army surrounded their house in Peshawar, came into their living room which is lined with wall-to-wall bookcases, and arrested them. That’s Badr’s version of why we jailed him; here’s President Bush’s:
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: These are people that got scooped off a battlefield, attempting to kill U.S. troops. And, uh, I want to make sure before they’re released that they don’t come back to kill again.
And you should read the study (pdf link) Robinson mentions.
By adopting a "take the gloves off" approach, top U.S. civilian and military leaders established unprecedented parameters for the treatment of detainees at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and other locations. This permissive environment allowed—if not encouraged—guards and interrogators to dehumanize and, in some cases, torture detainees in their custody. The totality of this experience deeply affected the lives of former detainees—many of whom government officials believe were imprisoned in error. Stigmatized by their imprisonment, a significant number of these detainees now face difficulties finding employment, and some report lasting emotional and psychological scars...
Instead of holding battlefield hearings mandated by the Geneva Conventions to determine the combat status of detainees, President Bush determined unilaterally that all prisoners captured in the "war on terror" were "unlawful enemy combatants" and could be held indefinitely. Yet the Administration failed to employ sufficient procedural safeguards to minimize errors in determining who fell into that category. Ultimately, the incentive to capture suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban became a higher priority than the diligence and investigation necessary to discern accurately whose detention was justified.
Guantanamo, in other words, has been a place where rights were nonexistent and innocence was irrelevant.
Think about that. Then go tell Navy Times what you think.