Pentagon says Guantanamo critics show 'ignorance'

Reuters ^ | 6/16/05 | Will Dunham

[mdittmar]

The Pentagon on Thursday invited more members of Congress to visit the Guantanamo jail for foreign terrorism suspects, saying criticism by some U.S. lawmakers showed "a real ignorance of what's really going on."

"We invite more members to go down to Guantanamo and see what's going on, because what's going on down there is not the way it's being described by certain members of Congress," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

And the way they are describing it is unfortunate, and in some places I believe those people will regret having made those kind of comments," Di Rita added.

The Pentagon said it holds approximately 520 men at the Guantanamo prison camp, which was opened in January 2002. Many have been held for more than three years. Only four have been charged. Most were detained in Afghanistan.

Di Rita's remarks came a day after a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which some senators, including Republican Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said congressional action may be needed to define detainees' legal rights.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's top Democrat, said the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was "an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security."

Another senior Senate Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, this week compared how U.S. jailers treat Guantanamo prisoners to actions by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and former Cambodian leader Pol Pot. Some lawmakers and former President Jimmy Carter have called for the prison to be closed.

"Comments that are being made up on Capitol Hill about what's happening at Guantanamo reflect a real ignorance of what's really going on," Di Rita said.

The United States has classified the detainees as "enemy combatants" and denied them rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

INDEFINITE DETENTION

Human rights activists have denounced the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, and former detainees have said they were tortured. A Justice department official asserted on Wednesday that the U.S. government can legally hold them men "in perpetuity."

An FBI memo has accused Pentagon personnel at Guantanamo of using "torture techniques," and the Pentagon recently detailed five cases in which U.S. jailers "mishandled" the Koran.

The Pentagon has said that "U.S. policy condemns and prohibits torture" and the United States "operates a safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantanamo."

Di Rita said 11 U.S. senators, 77 members of the House of Representatives and about 100 congressional staff members already have visited Guantanamo. He said the Pentagon would facilitate more visits by lawmakers "so that they would have a much better understanding of what's happening down there."

In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Durbin read from FBI documents describing how U.S. military jailers chained detainees hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 to 24 hours at a time, with the prisoners urinating and defecating on themselves, placed them in frigid or very hot rooms and played extremely loud rap music.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot, or others that had no concern for human beings," Durbin said.

The Pentagon is investigating the allegations made in FBI documents about the actions by military personnel at Guantanamo.

[mdittmar]

'ignorance' my a$$,they know exactly what they're saying and doing,it's called treachery.

[demlosers]

With enough ignorance to fill 1,000 Grand Canyons.

[Travis McGee]

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. "For the traitor appears not a traitor – he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." – Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 B.C

[Mr. Keys]

Took the words right out of my mouth. These traitors need more than just a visit to Gitmo. They are the enemy within.

[demlosers]

I say they are both ignorant and traitorous.

[OldFriend]

TREASON IS THE REASON

[Rumplemeyer]

Reminding us of the ignorance in Congress is like reminding us that night is dark.

The Democrats are certainly not a brain trust, and remarks such as these remind us of it daily.

I can imagine the Republican campaign adds for this dolt's reelection attempt.

[TexasCajun]

Jane Fonda comes to mind.

[C210N]

The critics are no more interested in getting actual Gitmo data than the Senators during the Impeachment wanted to get info from the records office. The purpose of criticizing Gitmo is just to attack Bush.

If Bush had initially come out to close Gitmo, the Rat's would be picking an opposing angle to complain about that.

[b4its2late]

Bullseye.

Durbin, Kennedy, Biden, Clinton, Schumer, Kerry, Boxer, Byrd, Dodd, Feinstein, Leheay, Levin (and others) are all prime examples of ignorance.

[newsgatherer]

ah, you beat me to it, so just DITTO!