Rumsfeld Defends Treatment of Prisoners. Spat over Gitmo is growing into a Feud

This is from the Associated Press:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the military's handling of detained terror suspects Wednesday while acknowledging that some have been mistreated, "sometimes grievously.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld criticized Amnesty International, the human rights group, for calling the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our time." The group has urged the United States to close the prison, where about 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban or the al-Qaida terror network. Some have been there for more than three years without charges.

Rumsfeld doesn't get it. The reason why Amnesty International has called Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time" is not because of the poor treatment in living conditions on the prisoners, but rather the lack of any legal rights, or due process for these prisoners. The Bush Administration and the military have captured these insurgents, locked them up and thrown away the key, allowing them to rot in jail. The Bush Administration has classified them as "enemy combatants," which became another fancy term for saying these prisoners have no legal rights as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, nor do they have any legal rights under the laws of the United States. They have become non-citizens...non-soldiers. They are never going to be tried since the government probably doesn't have much of a case against them. Most of these prisoners also probably don't have much valuable intelligence in the terror fight. And if they do, the Bush Administration is not going to try them in court or release them. The Administration is certainly not going to allow them to be released--once they're released, they'll probably go back to the Middle East where they will join the insurgency in Iraq. Or they will tell their stories of their captivity among the inhabitants of the Middle East, inciting more hatred and ant-American views among the region. To try them in court would force the government to produce evidence to the public and the accused--but the government evidence has been deemed classified and cannot be released to the accused, their legal counsel if they have any, or the public. Of course, who's to say that the government has any evidence against these prisoners, or how much of this evidence would become a greater embarrassment to the Administration war on terror or Iraq. Finally, the prisoners can't be identified as prisoners-of-war since that would force the U.S. to conform to the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners during war. And these conventions specifically state how prisoners should be treated during questioning along with the outlawing of torture against the prisoners. Rumsfeld states in the AP article that while there were some instances where detainees have been mistreated, there were 370 investigations into charges of prisoner misconduct since September 11. What Rumsfeld did not mention was that the investigations resulted in 130 military personnel being punished for the misconduct. Can't have prisoners telling the Middle East on how they were tortured by their American captures.

So, Bush and Rummy will lock the prisoners up, throw away the key, and probably hope the prisoners will die quickly--opening up new spaces for new "enemy combatants."