The Times has another article on the treatment of prisoners in detention in Cuba. Don't be surprised when I tell you I have a few problems with the piece.
My biggest problem is the overall thrust of the piece: that the detainees have been useful in intelligence gathering. While I'm sure that's true, and I'm glad that the press is finally pointing it out (since it makes it apparent these aren't all innocent lambs, since innocent lambs don't have actionable intell) it makes it look as if we are holding these guys (hence presumably violating their rights) because there is a utilitarian calculus at play. Sure, we're violating their rights, but we get something important out of it, and it may be important enough to justify violating their rights. In fact, gaining intelligence is important, but we're holding them to keep them off the streets, which is the same reason POWs have always been held. They don't have the status of POWs because we don't want to give terrorists the legitimacy of soldiers, but they are the equivalent of POWs, to be sure.
But there are other problems. The article doesn't detail the specific charges made by released detainees to the British papers, but does mention them, and then repeats a claim the paper has made before:
There is no way so far to verify the situation of the detainees as described by the American officials, nor the charges of mistreatment.
But that is simply false and it is false for a reason the reporter himself notes later in the article:
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside group that visits the detainees, has not publicly complained about physical mistreatment. But it has said the prolonged detention without any certainty for the inmates about their future is inhumane and psychologically debilitating.
While you'll forgive me if I don't give a good rat's ass if one of the price's of terrorism is being bored once your caught, don't you think the ICRC would be screaming out to the world if these guys were physically mistreated? And since they do visit the prisoners precisely in order to check for such mistreatment, yes, there is in fact a way to verify whether the claims of the detainees are correct or not (not to mention that the Commander has noted that interactions are videotaped for precisely that reason.)
I was also struck by this:
Human rights groups and relatives of those detained have said the United States has committed a gross injustice by imprisoning many people who were in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons other than joining the Taliban or fighting for Al Qaeda.
Families will always say their guys didn't do it. But if the Human Rights groups' complaint is that there isn't a fair form of tribunal in place, then what makes them so sure these guys are innocent?
Have you noticed that there are really only two or three kinds of article about Guantanamo, and they just seem to get perpetually recycled?
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