Why is the USA operating a madrassa in Cuba?
"A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.
"The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system.
"Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.
"The Taliban and al Qaida leaders in the cells around them were ready to preach their firebrand interpretation of Islam and the need to wage jihad, Islamic holy war, against the West. Guantanamo became a school for jihad, complete with a council of elders who issued fatwas, binding religious instructions, to the other detainees."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38779.html
The Bush administration is not interested in "fighting terrorism." If they were, they would not follow so many obviously counter-productive strategies (like this one)--nor would they be inciting radicals by continuing their occupation of Iraq--a country which--based on the Bush administration's own statements--did not have WMDs, did not attack us, and had nothing to do with those who did.
Why is a good question (the above just points out this is part of a pattern). One fact is clear, however. The Bush administration (and NOT just Bush, but the leadership of the "neoconservative movement) has again and again tried to use "terrorists" as a scare tactic to grab powers not allowed to them under the Constitution. The use of such scare tactics is common among would-be dictators throwout history. And it serves NO purpose (fro the wold-be dictator) to actually eliminate the "threat"--that would end their excuse for seeking absolute powers.
There is a second reason--the Bush regim simply miscalculated. They underestimated the strength of American legal and civil institutions. Consequently they found themselves saddled with a concentration camp filled with a few terrorists and hundreds of people who should have never been detained in the first place. To release the bulk of the prisoners woudl have been an open admission of the real Nazi-like nature of their tactics. And they could not put these people on trial--or the proof that they were knowingly holding people who were not terrorists would have quickly been proven for all to see. In either case, cleaning up Gitmo meant--and means--a profound discrediting of an already failed regime. Even many of their followers on the right would drop away in the face of a clear proof the Bush administration ws holding people who were not terrorists--and doing so knowingly. In the worst--but very possible scenario, Bush himself would have been shown to know the true situation. And--wven with the opposition of the far right group within the GOP in Congress--would have led to an actual impeachment and conviction--not just talk.
The actual status (and , one way or another, this is the implication ofthe Supreme Court decision last week):
>if these people are prisoners of war, then they will have to be accorded the rights and treatment due same under US law and the Geneva convention
or
>if they are in fact real suspects in criminal acts against the United States then they will have to be put on trial and the evidence presented to establish their guildt (and any so proved guilty should be punished--no one disputes that).
or
> if it proves to be the case they are not being held based on evidence of such crimes (MOST of the detainees, as the story you are talking about shows) they must be released.
Now, if in the time of their internment people who were not initially sympathetic to the terrorists have become so--that is not a crime (except in the minds of the right wing). US law and the Constitution forbids sanctions against anyone for political opinions alone, no matter what those opinions are. If the right-wing adherents who are now whining about "releasing terrorists" don't like that--they should not have been running what you aptly called a madrassa for the terroirsts. If anyone now likely to commit a terroist act against the United States is released as a result of this whole deplorable mess--it will be the fault (entirely so) of the Bush adminstration.
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