Dispelling Misconceptions: Guantanamo Bay Detainee Procedures Exceed the Requirements

The Heritage Foundation ^ | July 13, 2007 | by Steven Groves and Brian Walsh

[Delacon]

Recommendations for Congress

Congress should not interfere with the U.S. military's policy of detaining alien enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay for the duration of the war on terrorism. These detainees should not be released until the cessation of hostilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere or until such time that the detainees are no longer a threat to U.S. and Coalition forces. Calls by Members of Congress and the "international legal and human rights community" to release the approximately 380 detainees remaining in Guantanamo are reckless in the extreme and not supported by the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, or customary international law.

Congress should decline to take the extraordinary step of providing the writ of habeas corpus to the unlawful enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, none of whom are U.S. citizens or legal residents. Even if granting non-citizens who are unlawful enemy combatants the right to habeas corpus were the right decision for this war—and it decidedly is not—it would set a dangerous precedent for America's ability to fight future wars, including conventional wars in which enemy combatants are affiliated with nation-states. In any future conflict, the international community, including the United Nations, would surely demand that prisoners of war held by U.S. forces have access to U.S. courts to try their claims that they are being held unjustly. Further, granting the writ of habeas corpus to non-citizens who are unlawful enemy combatants is almost certain to embolden liberal and progressive jurists to "discover" new constitutional rights for U.S. enemies to access U.S. courts to try their claims. Finally, extending habeas corpus to Guantanamo Bay will impede the effectiveness of military operations and place an unnecessary burden on U.S. military forces in the field.[22]

[Delacon]

They left out that there has never been any torture to the prisoners at Gitmo. People must be made to understand that discomfort is not torture. Torture should be defined as processes that cause long term physical and/or psychological damage to a detainee. And at Gitmo the soldiers there do not engage in such practices.

[ken21]

how?

this drives me crazy.

my tv-moron neighbors believe that the u.s. tortures prisoners at guantanamo.

you cannot reason with these people.

[Eagles6]

move

[Eagles6]

Or take up a hobby such as raising wolves or crocodiles or take up pig farming.

[Delacon]

I’d go even a bit further. There is nothing relatively immoral about torture. Not when compared with the killing and maiming that occurs during the “normal” course of war. Remember that all the detainees at Gitmo luckiest day occurred when they were caught instead of killed. Now the Geneva convention is a great thing. It guarantees that our soldiers, when caught, won’t be treated to torture because we have agreed not to torture our prisoners. THATS the only reason to have the Geneva Conventions. Likewise treatment. We have no such agreement with the terrorists. They have taken prisoner treatment attrocities to a level that would make the Vietnamese and the Japanese of WW2 blush. While I don’t think we should sink to the level of the terrorists when it comes to prisoners, I sure as hell think we are allowed a lot more lattitude than detractors of Gitmo would grant us. Especially if it would save one soldier’s or civilian’s life. Remember all the detainees as combatants coulda shoulda been dead.

[Mad_as_heck]

Gitmo is the only place in Cuba where the rights of prisoners are respected. I'd rather be a prisoner in Club Gitmo than walk "free" on the streets of Castro's socialist paradise.

Send any of the scum in Gitmo to a liberal California or Massachusetts state prisons and see which the prefer...