US to reduce the headcount detained in Gitmo?

bonkey

this article reerences a NYT article, which clamis that the US is set to significantly reduce the number of inmates detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Unfortunately, if the report is correct, the US intends to achieve this by shippnig the detainees out to other prisons in those well-known bastions of human rights : Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen.

If these articles are truem then isn't this a case where teh US had these nations ship the men to the US because teh US wanted them, and is now shippnig them back from whence they came without ever having been charged by the US to return them to prison in what will presumably be their country of origin/capture.

If I was even just a touch more cynical than I am, I'd suggest that this could only be because the US government have realised that its court system won't actually play ball and trample rough-shod over the laws it is sworn to uphold, but instead has had the temerity to do its job and insist that the government is wrong in denying these people their rights.

But why should a government do what its own court system tells it it should, when it can just export its injustice to other nations who will do the dirty work for it, where its dissenting courts have no authority, and where the injustice can continue only even more out of sight (and thus even more out of mind).

The linked article mentions that tehre are 540 suspected Al Qaeda / Taliban prisoners. 211 prisoners have "left the prison" to date. Whether or not we do the US the courtesy of assuming that "left" means "was released" in every case and not "was transferred to someone else's prison" for some, these figures are once more a shocking indictment of Bush's insistence that these ppl should be locked up because they were really bad men.

You locked 'em up George. Then -, even though you didn't have to according to your interpretation of how the law should work - you let them go. So either you're deliberately letting really bad men back out to wreak havoc, or its time to own up that you were talking cr@p from day one and that this is just a continuation of an unjust-but-convenient policy.

At this point in time, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Bush's Administration (and the man himself) have already realised that Gitmo was and is a bad idea...but have now walked themselves into a situation where actually admitting it would be a worse scenario than perpetuating it.

Does anyone still honestly buy into the notion that Gitmo was, is, and will continue to be be both justified and just?

jc

Hobbes

This is nothing new, except that they are doing it in larger numbers. Its been well known that they outsource the torture to other countries that allow it.