Guantanamo Bay: Revelations

It is doubtful that you have not heard of Guantanamo Bay or GITMO by now (the name made infamous by the Bush Administration).  The facility is located at the United States’ Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the island of Cuba. The Bush Administration established the facility in 2002 to house detainees from the war in Afghanistan and then later Iraq. The facility originally operated three detainment “camps” one of which is now closed. The first captives arrived at Guantanamo on January 11th, 2002 after the Justice Department determined that it could be classified outside the legal jurisdiction of the U.S.  Some 800 detainees or “enemy combatants” were housed at the facility of which (as of February 2011) 172 detainees remain.

            It is now apparent that the creation of Guantanamo Bay detention facility manifested itself out of fear and the need for retribution by the Bush Administration, following the attacks of September 11, 2001, without a careful examination beforehand of what the resounding consequences would be. This facility led the United States down a misguided, slippery slope, away from the freedoms we were founded upon and blurred the lines of the inherent rights of human beings that we supposedly fight for worldwide.   
            If you can imagine having minimal rights, no outside contact or legal representation and no idea when or if you may be released (or how you will be treated), you have Guantanamo Bay.

But who were (are) these detainees that were whisked away in the night without any legal process to be housed at Guantanamo Bay and what happened to them while they were (are) there? Is this justice at its’ finest? In my opinion the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is one of Americas’ darkest hours.

According to recent revelations in documents leaked to the website WikiLeaks, classified reports have showed how many innocent people (due to mistaken identities) and failures in military intelligence were detained and interrogated for years. These people were just apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Hundreds of men were held without reliable evidence or trial solely based on vague, bewildering or inaccurate information. Can you imagine being detained and tortured (according to former detainees) and then to later be told that you were innocent all along and you can now go home? Many of these men lost years of their lives and their families lived day by day wondering if their loved ones were dead or alive--and this just scratches the surface. Is this how justice works? Who is to be held accountable?

 Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders in January of '09, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year. The President said "the United States does not have" to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals." The President said he was issuing the order to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism." However, this order was later thwarted by Congress.
               Until the remaining 172 detainees receive proper legal representation and recourse and Guantanamo Bay detention facility is closed for good, in my opinion, the United States’ vision of liberty and justice will forever be tainted in the eyes of the world. Read More From Wikileaks...