Winning Hearts and Minds the GITMO Way

Nothing like taking a guy who opposed the Russians and the Taliban, who has reputation in Afghanistan as a hero, and then holding him in GITMO with no real due process until he dies.

The article spotlights the real problem with GITMO and the way that the Baboon King and Vice President Voldemort have (mis)handled their "war on terror". People are held in prison for many years on extremely tenuous evidence and are given no reasonable way to defend themselves or to produce witnesses in their defense. GITMO is antithetical to everything that this nation purports to stand for: Justice and the rule of law.

GITMO is neither. GITMO is a stain on this nation's honor. The ways to fix that are twofold: First, meaningful process for the prisoners. The process has to be open, transparent and free of meddling and interference by superior officers and politicians. The prisoners have to be afforded objectively reasonable opportunities to defend themselves. In short,the process has to be everything that it is not today.

And second, those responsible for the current mess need to be held accountable, and not just by history. We need to clean up our own mess, which means we need to try those responsible. This time, we cannot stop with a bunch of low-ranking enlisted men on the third shift and say that "the problem is fixed", like the whitewashing of Abu Ghraib. We have to try those responsible, and that means, at a minimum, Rumsfeld and probably almost everyone in the Vice President's office above the guy who empties the trash cans.

The only way that we can quickly regain our national honor is to fix the problem, ourselves. But to do that, we have to first admit that there is a problem.

With the Republicans operating reflexively in "Loyalty to Der Monkey Fuhrer" mode, there is little chance of that ever happening.

So it appears that we are going to adopt the Japanese model of "war crimes, who, us" rather than the German model of "yes, we did that, and we are so sorry."

Much to our everlasting shame, I might add.