Dispelling Misconceptions: Guantanamo Bay Detainee ....

Procedures Exceed the Requirements of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Law, and Customary International Law

Human rights activists, liberal media outlets, and Bush Administration critics have derisively characterized the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the "gulag of our times,"[1] a "legal black hole,"[2] and a "stain on our nation's character."[3] One need not dig too deeply into the facts, however, to discover that the detainees held at Guantanamo receive the most systematic and extensive procedural protections afforded to foreign enemy combatants in the history of armed conflict, including unprecedented access to legal representation and U.S. courts. In order to unearth the reality from the layers of hyperbole, half-truths, and outright lies that have been heaped upon Guantanamo Bay, this paper corrects a few of the more persistent misconceptions relating to the situation.

Other than calling for the immediate release of all detainees and closing Guantanamo, critics provide no solution for how to prevent these former belligerents from returning to the battlefield and killing U.S. and Coalition soldiers. The only sensible solution is the one that the United States and other nations have long employed: hold detainees until the cessation of conflict.

Normally, the Heritage Foundation does excellent, detailed work. They missed the boat a little bit on this paper. They never mentioned the Quirin case from 1942.

Quirin was a unanimous decision concerning eight German saboteurs who came onshore in civilian clothes in the US from two submarines, with plans, maps and funds to blow up military-related targets. They were classified as "illegal enemy combatants" for the reasons stated in the Heritage article, and 6 of the 8 were sentenced to death, by a military tribunal like the ones being used at Guantanamo, today.

The Quirin decision confirmed that as legitimate procedure, under the Law of War as adopted into the US Military Code in 1789, and gave examples of that use in many of America's wars, beginning with the trials and executions of Nathan Hale and Major John Andre in the American Revolution.

Most importantly, the current Supreme Court recognized that Quirin remains good law, only a year ago in the Hamdan case. The Quirin case is available on the Internet, is only 26 pages, and is written in plain English. So whenever the MSM discusses this subject without mentioning the Quirin case, you can rightfully conclude that the reporter and editor involved in that story are dumb as a box of rocks, or they know about that case and are leaving it out to maintain their bias against the US Military.

Congressman Billybob