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| THE UGLY POLITICS OF GITMO |
| Wednesday, June 15, 2005 |
| I don't automatically accept everything Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, but he is in a position to know a whole lot more about the value of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp than any of its critics. So, when he answers their rhetorical questions about the value of the camp, I listen. I think you should too.
In recent days, following the now retracted Newsweek article about guards throwing Kurans into toilets, and the outrageous Amnesty International comparison of the camp known as "Gitmo" to the Russian gulags, Democrats and other Bush administration critics have publicly speculated about the value of Guantanamo Bay. They claim it has become an icon for alleged American bullying, and it may be doing more harm to our public image around the world that any good it might be producing.
Before I get to Rumsfeld's answer, let me remind you just how that image was crafted. It started with the detainees themselves, the vast majority of which were plucked from the battlefields of Afghanistan. They are, in every sense of the word, prisoners of war, not alleged criminals awaiting charges and a trial. They don't fit nicely into the outdated definitions of a prisoner of war, but you may have noticed that our war against al Qaeda and its allies is not exactly a traditional war, whose combatants wear uniforms and fight for a recognized country. Nevertheless, this war is as real as any we have fought before, and the enemy is as crafty, large and dangerous as any.
If we need to rewrite the definitions, so be it, but the detainees at Gitmo are prisoners of war - plain and simple - and there are two reasons to hold prisoners of war. One is to keep them from rejoining the battle. The second is to extract useful information from them that will help us win the war.
Our allies, the British, got hold of the training manual for al Qaeda operatives, and the Washington Times published an instructive chapter from the manual. It specifically instructs our enemy, in the event of their capture, to complain about their conditions - to claim mistreatment. They have followed their instructions well. International groups like Amnesty International and the Red Cross have helped to add credibility to their claims, as have the American news media and domestic political opponents of the Bush Administration. The image that the detainees were instructed to paint has been finished by international and domestic political enemies of President Bush and his war on terrorists.
Some of the information being published is true, but some (or much) of it is not, and its abusive nature is being exaggerated for the sole purpose of embarrassing the Bush administration, forcing a change in policy, and/or giving Democrats an edge in the next election.
It must be a source of great comfort to Usama bin Laden that, while he is currently losing the actual war, he is scoring major propaganda victories, thanks mostly to the efforts of President Bush's domestic political enemies and critics in Congress and the media.
Now to Rumsfeld's answer to the question about the strategic value of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
According to Secretary of Defense, information extracted at Gitmo from Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker," and others led to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11; the identities of 20 bodyguards of Usama bin Laden; and the disruption of planned terror attacks around the world.
I cannot guarantee that Rumsfeld's answer is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but Americans should find it to be a lot more credible than the allegations of abuse being leveled by enemy detainees who were trained to make such allegations.
If Guantanamo Bay has become a more useful propaganda tool of the enemy than a strategic tool of the U.S., it is only because some of President Bush's domestic political opponents are willing to sacrifice national security for potential political gain. Ralph Bristol
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posted by Jack Mercer @ 6/15/2005 09:22:00 AM   |
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| 2 Comments: |
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So, in all this news coverage, I still haven't figured out what we're gonna git mo of...
Tee hee! Sorry, couldn't resist.
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ha!
K, you're one of a kind!
-Jack
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So, in all this news coverage, I still haven't figured out what we're gonna git mo of...
Tee hee! Sorry, couldn't resist.