Club Gitmo's Five Star Review

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

What frightened sensitive nihilists more than the terrorist attacks and carnage of 9/11 was the war on terrorism itself. In general, what horrified them most was the treatment of captured terrorists held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, “The majority of men in Guantanamo Bay have not committed a crime. There is no basis for detaining them.”
Gutierrez charged that many Gitmo detainees committed suicide due to the stressful conditions at the tropical detention center and not because the prisoners religious ideology holds self-annihilation as a central component. “To characterize their suicides as acts of war is offensive and shows a disrespect for human life and humanity that is rampant at Guantanamo,” said Gutierrez to The Los Angeles Times. “It’s very simple and very clear what happened: We are detaining people indefinitely in conditions that are oppressive.”

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, then candidate Barack Obama promised to “close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.”

Two days after taking office, President Obama ordered an investigative review of conditions at Gitmo to uncover abuses of captured jihadists. That report, however, is likely to put President Obama in the hot seat with the vocal Bush/Cheney/ Rumsfeld conspiracy-obsessed lunatic fringe of the Democratic Party. According to The New York Times, the report, authored by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh “…is being presented to a White House that some government officials have described as caught off-guard by the extreme emotions and political crosscurrents provoked by its plan to close the Guantánamo prison. Some critics said the report’s conclusions could intensify the debate about the prison, and put the Obama White House for the first time in the position of defending it.”

That’s right, defending it. And why? Because, as the Times’ described it, “The report concluded that the Pentagon was in compliance with the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. The review included some of the most contentious issues, including the forced feeding of hunger-striking detainees and claims that many prisoners were suffering from psychosis as a result of conditions in the detention center.” In a supreme irony, the report suggests that transferring Gitmo prisoners to detention facilities in other nations means some jihadist prisoners might, as the report states, “go from a humane environment to a less humane environment.”

Commenting on elements of the leaked Pentagon report, attorney Gutierrez told The New York Times, “This is really running the risk that the review is just a big whitewash…and we expect more of the new [Obama] administration.”

Charlie Savage, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and New York Times blogger, expressed alarm at President Obama’s slow approach to Gitmo’s closing. Like most of the Left, Savage can’t understand Obama’s inability to reconcile the Utopian approach to dealing with Islamic terror (i.e., let the courts handle it) with the demands placed on the new Commander In Chief by tangible, three-dimensional reality.

“These and other signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped…prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies,” wrote Savage.

His last sentence is the most telling and portends danger for our new President. Though George W. Bush’s handling of the global war on terror was anemic and less than competent, the former President momentarily marshaled the mental wherewithal to recognize the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as acts of war and not criminal infractions for adjudication. The “Community Organizer” is about to shatter the utopian illusions of his more hysterical and child-like constituents. To maintain the most meager Bush-era anti-terror policy might just expand the list of lunatic fringe “war criminals” to include Bush/Cheney/ Rumsfeld and now Barack Hussein Obama. But I won’t hold my breath.