What Guantanamo Isn’t
It is not at all what the media have succeeded in painting it to be. Nor are the people being held there at all what the press informs us they are. James Taranto has an extensive talk with the commander at Guantanamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris.
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba–You might call Rear Adm. Harry Harris a jailer. As commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, a job he has held for six months, he is in charge of one of the world's best-known detention facilities. But if you call this place a prison, he will correct you.
"Prisons are about rehabilitation and punishment," Adm. Harris told me in a phone conversation last week, reiterating a point he had made a few days earlier in a briefing for visiting journalists here. "What we are about is keeping enemy combatants off the battlefield. . . . The enemy combatants that we have here were captured on the battlefield or running from the battlefield, and they were engaged in combat operations against Americans, and in many cases killed Americans. What we're trying to do here in Guantanamo is simply keep them off the battlefield, because we know that many of them would go back to the fight."
In fact, Adm. Harris says, many of them have kept fighting even while in captivity. They are carrying out coordinated actions with the apparent goals of disrupting the camp's operations, furthering anti-American propaganda, and wounding and intimidating the servicemen who guard them.
One such action unfolded on May 18. Early that Thursday morning, guards patrolling the high-security Camp 1 (one of five numbered detention areas, with a sixth under construction) found two detainees who had attempted suicide. "One was found unconscious," Adm. Harris recalls, "and then another one was found a little later, frothing at the mouth, if you will. It looked like . . . poisoning of some sort." Both survived, although one took seven days to regain consciousness, and the other took four days. Neither had a prescription for any drug, "so they had to get the meds from other detainees somehow."
To prevent more suicide attempts, "the detention group commander ordered a shakedown of all the cells. He was going through each of the cells looking for contraband, looking for pills. He found some, throughout the day. He found some hidden around the toilet area; he found some hidden in the bindings of the Holy Quran." (Each detainee receives a personal Quran in his native language, which non-Muslim guards are forbidden to touch.)
This one is a must read. There is much more complexity to this issue, and to dealing with people like this than we are getting from the media or from opponents. There is a long overdue dialog that must be done about captured terrorists, but the debate is being cut off and poisoned by disinformation from the media.
By old_dawg, Saturday, 16 September , 2006 @ 4:50 pm
The problem we have is that we have these people in custody whom we can never release. This is not like WWII, where we released German and Japanese prisoners of war after the end of hostilities, confident that they would not take up arms againt us again.
Since these people are not prisoners of war in any real sense of the term, we should have executed most of them a long time ago. We should also have cut off their access to the outside world from day 1, thus allowing them to disappear from the world.
Unfortunately, it is too late and we have this burden to bear forever. We’ll never close Gitmo.
By Black Jack, Sunday, 17 September , 2006 @ 1:58 pm
I agree, these bloodthirsty monsters, these vicious terrorists, should in no way be treated as POW’s. That status is reserved exclusively for honorable solders, sailors, and airmen fighting in the uniform of their country.
However, those captured terrorists who wish to earn our forbearance and avoid execution should be given an opportunity to demonstrate why we should allow them to remain alive and in custody.
Those unwilling to assist us in the fight against Islamic fascism can go to their god, and let the devil take the hindmost.