The closer it gets to Barack Obama's inauguration, the more talk we're hearing about closing Guantanamo Bay -- and what to do with the 250 supposed Islamic radicals who are still there.
Last week, Kansas Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts said no way do they want the suspected terrorists shipped to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. On Monday, Brownback issued a press release inviting Obama to tour the USDB.
"I would be honored to show him first hand why Fort Leavenworth is not
an acceptable facility to house enemy combatants and he will find that
once you see the base up close, it's hard to show why terror suspects
should be housed in Kansas," Brownback wrote, sounding a lot like he might be trying to dodge some of the duties and responsibilities that sometimes come
with fighting a war.
"Transferring Guantanamo detainees to Fort Leavenworth would be unwise
and unsafe," Brownback continued. "If the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay
is closed, a new facility should be built, designed specifically to
handle detainees." Building a whole new prison? That doesn't exactly sound like a fiscal conservative talking, especially during a time of economic distress when we have a perfectly good prison for them right here at home.
What's the point of being the only maximum security correctional
facility in the Department of Defense if you
can't take the world's worst criminals?
After
all, the USDB has adopted the motto, "'Our Mission, Your Future,"
which, according to its Web site, "symbolizes the 'Can Do'
attitude; the spirit of teamwork; and the philosophy of the USDB." The
515-bed prison is a "state-of-the-art" facility, where "the staff
balances their critical duty to incarcerate, ensure good
order and discipline, and to maintain a safe environment, with
providing an opportunity for rehabilitation, hope, and a new start."
(It's the first part of the duty that matters here; I doubt that thing about rehab, hope and a new start
will apply to the lost men of Gitmo.)
But Brownback argued that it's "for good reason" that "federal law prohibits the
co-mingling of military prisoners with a detainee population and
detainees to Fort Leavenworth would disrupt the Fort's primary mission
as the intellectual center of the Army at the Command General Staff
College." Also, his press release noted, Fort Leavenworth is close to "a community airport, farms and the surrounding
community; and the lack of medical facilities on site ... which would
require transporting combatants through town to be treated in community
hospitals."
I called the Fort's public affairs office to see whether they agreed with Brownback's assessment -- which strikes me as an insult to the people who run the Fort -- or whether they might have, in fact, asked for his help in keeping Gitmo's prisoners away from Kansas.
The media professionals there were polite and efficient, but predictably stoic about whatever orders they may or may not have to carry out. They issued the following statement:
"The U.S. Army will continue to work with the Congress, the Joint Staff, the Department of Defense and the American public on how best to handle this issue in the future. It's
presently a matter for the Defense Department."
I, for one, would be proud if Fort Leavenworth took them. Recalling George W. Bush's famous phrase, I say: Bring 'em on.
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This is lotsa words from folks mostly bamboozled into a Nazi-like nationalism, so your Plogland scourge takes it upon himself to provide you with a brief summary of what he believes is the case, but admits, unlike you, the real truth is unknown.
Once upon a time the United States government decided that it would suspend belief in �innocent until proven guilty� in order to imprison folks using a great new buzzword called �security�. Cool and calculating, the government realized it would be folly to bring these prisoners to the United States, because doing so would constitute breaking the laws of the land on the land itself. Hence, holding them abroad was a tidy way to be above the law. Toss in a few �legislating-from-the-bench� comments and a couple �national-security� transparency blockers and torture was the next reasonable step on the slippery slope.
Unfortunately, lack of transparency breeds folks like arctiredriver. These folks read a few .orgs or blogs and somehow determine that the thoughts of others are indeed their own and that the thoughts are somehow factual.
So, here we are today, a mess of will-buy-any-story-on-a-.org citizens, a corrupt government, no transparency, a sleeping watchdog press, and a mess of who-knows-what locked up in Cuba as we are sliding and slipping completely out of control. Much like the economic crisis, it seems convenient to just blindly accept that this too shall pass�as long as we keep throwing money at it and do not ask for any meaningful accountability. These folks will not be coming to Kansas because incumbents like their entitlements and there ain�t nothing pretty under that opaque Gitmo blanket.
Avery, thanks for the reply.
WRT to captives "returning to the fight". Some have. DoD spin-doctors have vastly exaggerated the number who have done so. They have claimed "over thirty". But, they include the three British lads who agreed to have the documentary "The Road to Guantanamo" filmed about them. It is highly intellectually dishonest of the DoD spin-doctors to assert that working on a reasonably mainstream documentary is an act of terrorism. And, even if, for the sake of argument, this was an act of terrorism, it is highly intellectually dishonest of them to claim those three British men were returning to terrorism, when their total innocence had already been established. Investigations in Britain proved the men had been in Britain when the allegations put forward to justify their detention put them in Afghanistan.
The five Uyghurs, who had been determined not to have been enemy combatants, released to Albania in 2006 are also on the list -- because they granted interviews where they criticized conditions in Guantanamo.
Up until May 2007 DoD spokesmen only named three former captives -- Abdullah Mehsud, Maulvi Abdul Ghafour, and Mullah Shahzada. All three were characterized as former captives who tricked their way out of Guantanamo, who turned out to be leaders of company or battalion sized Taliban units. DoD spokesmen claimed all three were KIA about a year after their release. Granted, these men should not have been released. But I don't believe the public is well served by repeating that these men tricked their way out of Guantanamo. A thorough reading of the public record shows at least one of these three was released through the incompetence that I am afraid is routine at Guantanamo.
Intelligence analysts at Guantanamo totally failed to come up with a single, simple and unambigous naming scheme. When the DoD was forced to publish its first official list of captives names all three of these men who spin-doctors claimed had returned to the battlefield were missing.
What the record shows is that in 2003 there were to different captives who were accused of being Mullah Shahzada, the Taliban leader. Different teams were interrogating the two men -- and, they were unaware of one another.
US military Intelligence analysts failed the public by not making even the first step towards trying to confirm or refute the captives' accounts of themselves. One of the men accused of being Mullah Shahzada was heartbreakingly, obviously innocent. By mid-2003 replies had come back, in response to letters the Red Cross helped him get out. And those replies established his innocence.
In a cruel twist of incompetence, typical of how Guantanamo was run, when these letters establishing the one man's innocence were received, camp authorities -- confused by their frankly unforgivable inability to come up with a single, simple naming scheme, released the wrong guy -- released the guy who actually was a Taliban leader.
Camp authorities continued to keep the obviously innocent man for a further four years.
Was he really obviously innocent? He had left Afghanistan's civil wars, with his family, as a teenage high school student, and lived in exile in Pakistan when the Taliban were in power. He finished his education in Pakistan, and had worked as a high school science teacher -- where he had to sign a time card every day. The allegations he faced stated he had been the Taliban's regional intelligence chief in Mazari Sharif. He asked for the time cards that documented he had been in Pakistan be examined to show he was not serving the Taliban in Mazari Sharif.
Guess what he was told? He was told that his time cards were irrelevant, because he could have served as a Taliban intelligence chief DURING HIS SUMMER VACATION.
I believe you are mistaken to think that continuing to detain a population which continues to include totally innocent bystanders on the grounds of "lets not take any chances", improves public safety. Continuing to detain innocent men, continuing to interrogate them, continuing to pressure them to issue false confessions, and false denunciations, makes the public less safe. Because expending precious counter-terrorism resources on wild-goose-chases means those resources will not be available to counter real threats.
arcticredriver, regarding whether Leavenworth has room, that's a very important question that I don't have answers for yet either.
However, something that I did find was a New York Times article with Brownback saying "Leavenworth doesn�t have an exterior fence. It�s a small facility, about eight miles by eight miles, and a train runs through the property. It could be easily breached by someone bringing in a bomb or something like that." I looked up 550 Pope Ave, Leavenworth KS on Google to pull up a map of the Fort and sure enough, there really is a railroad running right through the property.
Many of Gitmo detainees who were released have returned to the fight and killed people in the name of their cause. It makes no sense whatsoever to take any chances on moving them to a completely inappropriate facility for the sake of making political points or somehow "improving our image" in the international arena. What to do with the remaining detainees is a dead serious issue, it shouldn't be handled like a political football when our own civilians find themselves in harms way.
I am very surprised that another reader here, an author, with a book on Guantanamo to push, is still willing to advance the patent falsehood that detention at Guantanamo was humane, when there is overwhelming evidence that it was not.
This author must be aware that Guantanamo guards unprovoked attacks on the Guantanamo captives were so severe that they broke their bones. Sami Al Laithy -- one of the 38 men whose CSR Tribunal officially determined in 2004 had never been an enemy combatant in the first place was paralyzed when a brutal guard jumped on his back, breaking his spine.
Mishal Al Harbi was beaten so badly he was left with brain damage so severe he will have to live in a shelter for the rest of his life.
Mustafa Ait Idr, one of the Bosnians kidnapped from Bosnia, recently freed when his habeas corpus determined the USA never had a shred of evidence against him -- when guards learned he had been the 1995 Croatian Karate Champ, they hauled him out of his cell and broke his fingers.
I suggest this author's claim that detention in Guantanamo was humane brings further shame on the USA.
I see two kinds of reaction when parents are told their children have committed crimes or misdemeanors. Some react with denial, no matter what. Others want to give their children a fair hearing too -- but they recognize they have a responsibility to listen to any responsible reports their children may have committed a crime. Growing children do commit crimes. They try swiping a chocolate bar from the corner store. Most kids only try it once, because they feel guilty, or they get caught, and their parents explains it was wrong and makes them apologize.
Americans should not respond to reports of war crimes and abuses by Bush administration officials and by GIs with total denial. By all means give Americans suspects a fair hearing.
But, when there is overwhelming evidence that Guantanamo was not humane, that Americans committed war crimes there, drop the irresponsible denials.
Responsible American should own up that under President Bush's leadership some US officials and some GIs committed serious war crimes.
The article doesn't say how many spaces remain open in Leavenworth. This is important information.
If Guantanamo is closed the right thing would be to send the remaining captives who were innocent bystanders home. And while Guantanamo has held a couple of dozen individuals who could correctly be described as "very bad men", I don't believe they were capable of, or motivated to chew through electrical cable.
Does Leavenworth have room for dozens of new captives?
What about the remainder, those who weren't innocent bystanders, and weren't terrorists? Is it appropriate to hold them in a Supermax? Shouldn't those who would have qualified for POW status if President Bush hadn't flouted the USA's obligations under the Geneva Conventions be held in a conventional POW camp?
Here's an even scarier thought. The Corrections Corporation of America, which spends $3 million yearly lobbying in D.C., has a for-profit prison in an industrial park in Leavenworth. They tried to dump that piece of cardboard crap on JoCo last year, unsuccessfully, thank goodness. They also tried to get KS state law changed to let them take in gang bangers from other states. They're trying now to sell their flaky and dangerous "services" (including transport) to Kansas City. If they can get more $ for detainees than for U.S. Marshals prisoners, you can bet they'll belly up to the bar. These guys can't find their butts if they are standing in fron of a full length mirror, with the lights on and using both hands. They have 30x or so the escape ratio of public prisons and their transport is even more dangerous. Now THAT'S scary!!!
While not a Leavenworth resident, I have spent the past 3 1/2 years working on a soon-to-be-released book titled 'Inside Gitmo: The True Story behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay.'
I cringe at the thought of the remaining hard core detainees at Gitmo being relocated to any community on US soil, especially Leavenworth.
Guantanamo, built and operated at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, is tailored to accommodate detainees: security, safe humane treatment, interrogations, medical, special food, and more.
Leavenworth faces a completely different mission.
To mix jihadist detainees in the US penal populace is dangerous. To bring them into a community like Leavenworth is madness.
Facilities such as Cushing Memorial would be overtaxed by constant to-and-fro transportation of detainees. The community - including schools and public facilities - would be endangered by the irresistible lure for fanatical Islamists to break them out or commit acts of terrorism as a visible display of support.
Closing Gitmo is an easy campaign promise but a challenging operation to carry out.
Reasoned, unemotional debate is necessary, and while that takes place care must be taken not to bring these men into American neighborhoods.
While the brig may be state-of-the-art, Ft. Leavenworth's Munson Army Health Center hasn't been an inpatient facility in more than a decade -- it is a health clinic, not a hospital.
This means detainees -- who visit the Guantanamo hospital an average of 4 times a month (by comparison, the average American male sees a doctor 3.7 times a year) -- would need to be taken to the nearest hospital outside Ft. Leavenworth's walls. The nearest hospital equipped with an emergency room and the kinds of medical facilities required by the detainees is Cushing Memorial Hospital on Marshall Street.
Cushing is not designed handle 30+ detainees -- at least some of them hardened terrorists who are sworn to kill Americans -- *every single day.* Roughly 1,000 trips for medical visits per month in a civilian facility outside the walls of the fort would be an invitation for disaster.
No matter what Brownback has to say, I'm sure the parents of children attending the Ben Day and Nettie Harnett elementary schools and Robinson's Playhouse child care just blocks from Cushing will have plenty to say about any plan to move the Guantanamo detainees to Ft. Leavenworth!
My sense of the military command's response (and here, you know, fuck whatever Brownback says, thinks or does for the rest of his lifetime) is that it may not be the wisest course of action to house rogue US military personnel with people -who though perhaps innocent of anything but existing while President Bush was insane- have been labeled 'terrorists' or 'enemy combatants'.
Yes, of course these individuals would be kept �separated� from the existent population. But that's a lot like saying �I'm only going to slip the head in.�
Sooner rather than later there would be trouble and, undoubtedly, it would involve an innocent detainee�or three�or the whole population.
You won�t hear this from the DOD, which is why Brownback is over-flapping his gums. Should President Obama decide Leavenworth is it, Command will hop to and make it happen to the utmost of their abilities. Which will be very god damned good, I promise you that.
However, (Brownback�s caterwauling aside) what I believe needs be done is an honest, transparent and public assessment of the culpability of each and every GTMO detainee. Then an assignment of their future based on that outcome can occur - outright release, release for time served, minimum security facility, supermax out in Colorado � as well as the litigation process that will also have to happen in order to address government overreach where it occurred and perhaps put an end to the whole sordid mess.
�course, that�s just my opinion; your waterboard may drip at a faster rate.
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