Student Reading 1

Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp: A Lightning

Rod
of Controversy
January 11, 2012 marked the 10-year anniversary of the creation of the
U.S. government detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base
in Cuba. The Guantanamo Bay facility was established under the Bush
administration as a place to detain and interrogate prisoners captured
as part of Bush's "global war on terror," including enemy combatants
captured in Afghanistan and Iraq. The facility's main compound
consists of six detention camps, with a total of 612 units, and is
operated by a joint task force of the U.S. military. In total, the complex
has housed over 770 inmates. Currently 171 prisoners remain there.
Since opening, the base has been beset by criticism from human rights
advocates in the U.S. and abroad. Former inmates as well as observers
have spoken out about numerous instances of torture and other forms
of abuse - both physical and psychological - at the camp. Critics have
also denounced the generally poor living conditions at the camp. One
detainee, Jumah al-Dossari, recounted his experiences both as a
witness to and a victim of torture at Guantanamo Bay to Amnesty
International in December of 2005. Al-Dossari stated:
They went to a detainee and put his head in the toilet. The toilets in
Camp Delta are iron, Turkish-style toilets and then they flushed his
head down the toilet until he almost died. They went to a detainee and
started beating his head against the toilet rim until he lost
consciousness and he could not see for more than 10 hours. He
suffered facial spasms as a result. They went to a detainee when he
was praying the maghrib [sunset] prayer and beat him severely... On
that same day, they came and beat me. At that time, we were angry
because the duty chief supervisor cursed Allah and banged on the
doors of our cells and said, "Merry Christmas;" that was on Christmas
day 2002. There were many, many attempts to gouge the eyes of the
detainees and to hit them in their private parts. They would beat them
when they were ill and would hit them on their injuries.
Such actions would normally represent a breach of the Third Geneva
Convention, which regulates the treatment of prisoners of war.
However, supporters of the Guantanamo detention facility argue that

this convention does not apply to those captured in the "war on terror"
because these "enemy combatants" are not part of any country's
military, do not clearly identify themselves as soldiers, and, thus, are
themselves in violation of the rules of war. As Jim Phillips of the
conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation said in 2006:
"Everybody that is deemed to fall under the criteria for Geneva should
be treated that way," Phillips says. "But some of these terrorists who
are not recognized as soldiers don't deserve to be treated as soldiers. I
think part of the question is: 'What is humiliating?' They would - may argue that just being put in jail is humiliating, since they're doing the
work of God, as they see it. If they're not deemed to qualify for
Geneva-type treatment, I don't think they should be [given Geneva
protections]."
(http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1069767.html(link is external))
One of the core principles of the U.S. system of justice is "due
process": People who are arrested must be told the charges against
them and have the right to answer to the charges in a fair trail. But at
Guantanamo, detainees can and have been held indefinitely without a
trial and even without charges. For instance, one detainee, Shaker
Aamer, who was captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in the early stages
of the war in 2001 and was transferred to Guantanamo in February of
2002 - just a month after it opened - still remains there today, without
being charged and without a trial.
(UK Independent(link is external))
In 2008, former Vice President Dick Cheney argued that the "unlawful
combatants" being held at Guantanamo aren't entitled to due process:
"Once you go out and capture a bunch of terrorists, as we did in
Afghanistan and elsewhere, then you've got to have some place to put
them," he said. "If you bring them here to the U.S. and put them in our
local court system, then they are entitled to all kinds of rights that we
extend only to American citizens. Remember, these are unlawful
combatants." He added, "Guantanamo has been very, very valuable.
And I think [the Obama administration] will discover that trying to close
it is a very hard proposition." (Reuters, 12/15/08(link is external))
But Guantanamo's opponents have denounced the facility on human
rights grounds. Critics include Amnesty International, which in 2005
stated that "Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching

the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the
law."
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served in the Bush
Administration, has also condemned the facility. Powell stated in
2007: "Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in
America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open
and creating things like the military commission. We don't need it and
it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it."
(Reuters, 6/10/07(link is external))

Student Reading 2:
Broken Promises: President Obama and
Guantanamo
While on the campaign trail in 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama
joined the chorus of voices criticizing the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility. Indeed, in his campaign stump speeches, Obama regularly
vowed to the close the camp. Yet, three years into his presidency, the
camp remains open.
On December 15, 2009, Obama issued a Presidential memorandum
calling for the facility to be closed and ordering the prisoners to be
transferred to Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois. But Obama's
plan quickly faced bipartisan opposition in Congress as well as legal
challenges. Ultimately, the administration abandoned its plan.
Some commentators suggest that President Obama's failure to deliver
on his promise has been due primarily to his style of leadership. Facing
a legislature that is hostile to his aims, they argue, the president has
sought compromise instead of being firm in his demands. As Peter Finn
and Anne E. Kornblut wrote for theWashington Post(link is
external) (link is external)in April 2011:
For more than two years, the White House's plans had been
undermined by political miscalculations, confusion and timidity in the
face of mounting congressional opposition, according to some inside
the administration as well as on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the failed effort to
close Guantanamo was reflective of the aspects of Obama's leadership
style that continue to distress his liberal base - a willingness to allow

room for compromise and a passivity that at times permits opponents

to set the agenda.
But others contend that while Obama has paid lip service to closing the
facility at Guantanamo Bay, he is not opposed to some of its basic
features. As Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com(link is external) wrote:
It is true that Congress - with the overwhelming support of both parties
- has enacted several measures making it much more difficult, indeed
impossible, to transfer Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. But long
before that ever happened, Obama made clear that he wanted to
continue the twin defining pillars of the Bush detention regime:
namely, (1) indefinite, charge-free detention and (2) military
commissions (for those lucky enough to be charged with something).
Obama never had a plan for "closing Guantanamo" in any meaningful
sense; the most he sought to do was to move it a few thousand miles
north to Illinois, where its defining injustices would endure.
On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed into law the National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012. Among other
things, the bill affirms the president's authority to indefinitely detain
enemy combatants captured in the "war on terror." The bill also gives
the government the power to detain American citizens without trial.
Although Obama has stated he will not exercise this power, advocates
of civil liberties have expressed alarm. Baher Azmy, the legal director
of the Center for Constitutional Rights, was interviewed
by RawStory.com(link is external):
"It has no real geographical limitation, it has no temporal limitation,"
[Azmy] said, summarizing key provisions in the NDAA. "It basically puts
into law, into permanent law, the ability to indefinitely detain, outside
of a constitutional justice system, individuals the president picks up
anywhere in the world that the president thinks might have some
connection to terrorism. The United States Congress, with the support
of the president, has now put into law the possibility of indefinite
detention, where the entire world, including the United States, is a
battlefield."
The National Defense Authorization Act also creates barriers to closing
the facility at Guantanamo Bay - making it unlikely that, even if
President Obama wis reelected, he'll be able to follow through on his
campaign promise during his first term. As Azmy said:

"[There are] really dangerous provisions here that would make it nearly
impossible to close Guantanamo," Azmy explained. "Congress has
forbidden from transferring or releasing any detainees from
Guantanamo to their home countries or third countries willing to take
them as refugees unless the Defense Department can meet this
exceedingly onerous certification requirement. Basically, before
anyone can be released, the Defense Department has to certify that
the individual will not engage in any hostile acts when they are
returned - something that the Defense Department cannot certify."
The 10-year anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay on January
11 sparked protest by opponents of the camp. A coalition of human
rights groups held a national "Day of Action" in Washington, DC,
featuring a solemn march of activists (dressed as prisoners in black
hoods and orange jumpsuits) from the White House to the Supreme
Court. The protesters aim to shine a public spotlight on this stillpressing human rights issue.