by Justin Barnes

Created on: August 18, 2007

Detaining prisoners without trial is quite simply, Un-American. I recently saw a news article where Dick Cheney contended that the Gitmo facility cannot be closed because if it were, the inmates there would have to be transported to other prisons within the continental U.S. In Cheney's words, being on U.S. soil would "give unlawful enemy combatants rights that they don't deserve". Now I don't have a lot of sympathy for terrorists, but this point of view is so wrong and amoral that I hardly know where to start in criticizing it.

First off, what exactly is an unlawful enemy combatant? Don't know? Then I'll tell you. It's a made up word that people are using to justify denying the basic principles of due process to terror suspects. In reality, the people being held at Gitmo are one of two things. They are either prisoners of war, who should be protected by the Geneva Convention, or they are criminal suspects, who should be protected by the principles of our domestic justice system. We may not sympathize with their cause, we may hate some of the things that they believe in, but hey, I'm not a big fan of the multitude of murderers, rapists, and child molesters who live in this country either. So we suspect that some of these people have conspired to murder innocent people. So what? That makes them no different than a lot of people who currently reside in our jails. Even Timothy McVeigh, Charles Manson, and Ted Bundy got a trial, and that's exactly how it should be unless we want to return to the days when you could have your neighbor denounced as a witch because your chickens stopped laying eggs.

So they attacked our soldiers with improvised devices? Big deal. Looks like Cheney has forgotten that sometimes when you invade a country, the people living there won't like it and might fight back. What difference does it make if they have official military uniforms or not? We're acting like their cause is so much worse than Germany's, Italy's, or Japan's in WWII. Yeah, WWII, remember, that time when a bunch of fascist dictators tried to take over the world.

On another point, lets keep in mind that the people being held in Gitmo are suspects; they haven't been convicted of anything. No doubt plenty of them are guilty of some pretty bad things and ought to be in prison somewhere, but what about the innocent ones? I can think of better ways of instilling good will towards America than falsely imprisoning someone for years at a time. Are we going to keep them there indefinitely,

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