We will be discussing Guantanamo Bay’s prison facility this week. We will be discussing it because more than 700 highly classified documents pertaining to the detainees housed there have been leaked to the press. The New York Times makes an accurate assessment:
The Guantánamo assessments seem unlikely to end the long-running debate about America’s most controversial prison. The documents can be mined for evidence supporting beliefs across the political spectrum about the relative perils posed by the detainees and whether the government’s system of holding most without trials is justified.
The documents confirm that the Bush administration created an unholy mess when they set up this prison as an extralegal detention facility and then proceeded to populate it with a hodge-podge of the innocent and the dangerous alike. The documents confirm the mistreatment of prisoners, in violation of international law. But they also highlight the dangers of letting people sworn to do us harm go free to plot against us again.
Depending on what you want to focus on, you can use these documents to bolster diametrically opposed arguments. In other words, they probably won’t nudge us an inch closer to consensus on how to deal with the mess that Bush left us.
The starting point for discussing this should be the May 20, 2009 vote on Sen. Daniel Inouye’s amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act. That amendment forbade “funding to transfer, release, or incarcerate detainees detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to or within the United States.” It passed in the U.S. Senate by a 90-6 tally, with noted liberals like Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Barbara Boxer of California, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio all voting in the affirmative. This was followed up in December 2010 by another vote in the Senate.
One of its provisions bans using its funds to transfer into the United States any Guantánamo detainee this fiscal year — even for the purpose of prosecution.
A second provision bans the purchase or construction of any facility inside the United States for housing detainees now being held at Guantánamo. The administration has proposed acquiring a prison in Thomson, Ill., for the purpose of holding several dozen detainees it says are too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute.
A third provision forbids the transfer of any detainee to another country unless Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signs off on the safety of doing so. That ban would not apply to any detainees who are ordered released by federal judges.
These provisions passed in the still-Democratic House by 341-48, and in the Democratically-controlled Senate by unanimous consent.
These were not close votes. They were not votes that could be flipped through presidential pressure. The Democrats abandoned the president on Gitmo. They abandoned him so completely that it became impossible to close the prison or to try the detainees in civilian courts on American soil. The primary blame for this lies with the Republicans’ willingness to fearmonger the issue, but secondary blame falls with Democrats from the far left to the center-right.
And the result is a national failure and one more stain on our nation’s history and reputation.
You’re not telling the truth as to why some Democrats — and independents — voted no. Feingold, and I assume other liberals voted no because Obama gave no plan for how the money and funding was to be used. He’s not going to write you a check with $X amount on it without the blank that says “For” filled in. And besides, Gitmo North is still Gitmo.
What do you mean I am not telling the truth? They abandoned him completely. He had no cover, even from the people who should have been his staunchest supporters on the issue. Feingold was worried about reelection. You can make any kind of excuses you want, but they only valid one is that they thought they’d be voted out of office if they didn’t abandon the president.
And your response to Sanders? He wasn’t up for re-election, he’s better on every issue than the president, he’s taken far more risks than the president, and he’s from the most liberal state in the Union. What did he have to fear?
I’m not taking all of the blame away from the Senators — they could have shown leadership themselves rather than deferring to the president — but Obama wasn’t exactly being brave. It was kabuki to take the issue off the table while he was busy making plans for indefinite detention and his show trials.
You might have the wrong impression about Vermont. It has the the most lax gun control laws in the country. It’s filled with dairy farmers. They like Bernie, but he’s no lock to win reelection. You might note that Vermont often elects Republican governors. You also might note that it is not as dissimilar from New Hampshire as most people think.
Sanders voted to prevent the president from even repatriating detainees, or moving them here for trial.
“They elect Republican governors.” So does Massachusetts. If Vermont isn’t the most liberal state in the Union, I’d like to know which state you think holds the crown of that title. Rhode Island elected Lincoln Chafee, an ex-Republican, yet there Sheldon Whitehouse was voting yes, as did Reed. Moreover, Sanders’ colleague voted yes, and Sanders is arguably more liberal than Pat Leahy.
Your argument that they were afraid of their re-election prospects would hold more water if it were more consistent around the board, with everyone who voted no being up for re-election. I find it more consistent to follow what Feingold said on the matter, that the president lacked a real plan to which he would use the money.
And this still doesn’t stop the criticism of Obama’s indefinite detention in the first place. Let’s assume that they gave him the funding. What would be legal about what Obama would be planning to do (which was still very hazy when he first requested the money)?
I’d say that Rhode Island is the most Democratic-voting state in the country. But, as you note, even there a Republican can win state-wide.
They had an empty prison in Illinois that the state didn’t want and the feds were willing to buy, and fix up to supermax standards, just for GITMO inmates.
The Thomson Correctional Center.
Durbin and Kirk nixed the deal.
Bipartisanship you can believe in.
Discuss away, but for those of us who have written extensively about the so-called War on Terror and its demented bastard child, the Bush Torture Regime, the latest revelations break little new ground. They are, however, a reminder that while things have gotten better under the Obama administration, the president has not broken completely with the past despite campaign promises to the contrary.
And while we’re discussing away, let’s remember that not a single torture regime perp has been prosecuted for their criminality, although key administration players have heeded warnings that they face arrest if they travel to European countries where the Geneva Conventions are taken seriously.
But I’m sure they will be content to stay in the U.S. because it’s a great country. Or what?
As I understand these documents, they are sanitized summaries of the evidence against the 700 persons named. They try to draw the best narrative available to justify prosecution and depart from that only when the case has already resulted in release in some form. They are still US government briefs.
What is striking is how flimsy the evidence is and how much other agendas than trial and bringing to justice were at play. And how contradictory. Classic totalitarian operation: torture to get intelligence then torture someone else when the intelligence that proves your preconceptions turns out to be false. Make broad assumptions about who is affiliated with al Quaeda.
It will take a generation before there is symbolic justice, just like with the Japanese internment camps.
Or there will never be even an apology, just like all he careers ruined, campaigns of innuendo, and false imprisonment during the various Red Scares that punctuated the 20th century.
Hehe. This is so funny. Let me get this straight. You acknowledge “mistreatment” (NYT-style euphemism alert!) of likely innocent peop…, er “prisoners.” But not for the arrests, rendering and torture, there would be no fear. But let’s just overlook that part.
Duck and cover, Boo. Duck and cover.