GUANTANAMO PRISON & ORANGE JUMPSUITS: SYMBOLS AGAINST AMERICA

 

…Sunrise in Guantanamo Bay

 

From his first day in office, the president has wanted to close Guantanamo, but the Republicans in Congress want it open.

I wonder if conservative Americans or America’s Republicans are aware that some senior US Senators such as Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and John McCain (R-AZ), who will now be chairing the major military and defense committees in the US Senate, are all for keeping the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center open and full. 

In addition, they both think we should have left a large group of US troops stationed in Iraq.  Today, these individuals also want the US to send 10,000 additional US troops for putting “boots-on-the-ground” in both Iraq and Syria.

This is all very sad but true.  However, for the moment, let’s just focus on the issues around the Guantanamo Bay prison.

For more than a decade, we have been told by the congressional hawks, that holding prisoners at Guantanamo is a “necessary price for freedom”.  However, these conservatives must have forgotten that their own president, George W. Bush, had set “closing the prison at Guantanamo in a responsible way” as a goal for his final term.

The real truth is that the prison in Cuba is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, and because of the way Guantanamo is viewed by America’s enemies, it makes Americans less safe and it is totally contrary to our values as Americans.

We must realize that: the combination of using torture on the Guantanamo detainees; the pictures that were released showing what went on in the military’s Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; and the detaining for years without charges of those Guantanamo prisoners, (some totally innocent), these are the #1 recruiting tools for all the various terrorist groups from al Qaeda in the middle east, to ISIL in Syria and Iraq, and even to the Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Many of the congresspersons that have recently visited the Guantanamo prison have stated that it is a dilapidated relic that symbolizes a flawed strategy for housing an ever-dwindling number of detainees.

Of the 779 detainees who have been held in the prison, 657 have been transferred to the few countries that are willing to take them. The current prison population is down to 122, 54 of whom are slated for release.  But instead of closing the center, the Pentagon has now asked for $290 million for new upgrades.  And with the new Republican Senate committee chairmen I referenced, they may just get that requested financing.

Here is some info about being a detainee in Guantanamo:

·       It costs $3.3 million per year per prisoner, which is more than 40 times the cost of holding a prisoner in a “Supermax” prison in the United States.

·       The logistics required to support the facility contributes big to this price tag.  The reason being that all supplies for the facility must either be flown in or sent by military barge.

·       A desalination plant provides water, but all the food and other supplies must be shipped in.

·       There are 2,268 staffers, including the medical personnel at Guantanamo.  That’s 18.5 support personnel for every current prisoner.

·       According to a New York Times report, when a recent detainee needed a heart stent, $1 million was spent on a mobile cardiac catheterization lab. The detainee refused the procedure, and the equipment was left to decay outdoors.

·       Overall medical costs are a growing portion of facility costs. When a detainee needed a kidney stone removed, the military imported a laser lithotripsy machine along with a urologist, all at massive expense to taxpayers.

·       Such medical procedures will become only more complicated and expensive as these detainees continue to age.

The current president had wanted to close Guantanamo even before he was elected, and he tried to do so right after he took office in 2009. 

So, why are detainees still being held at Guantanamo?

Well, the Republicans in Congress continues to argue that it is the only facility capable of securely housing these dangerous men.  But, our federal Supermax prisons are the most secure in the world. They’re more than equipped to securely house anyone

Keeping terrorists in a federal prison system is not unprecedented. Omar ­Abdel-Rahman, “the blind sheik,” responsible for the first attack on the Twin Towers in New York in 1993, he is serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison. In addition, only blocks from the nation’s capitol, Ahmed Abu Khattala is being tried as a central suspect in the 2012 attack on the US diplomatic mission at Benghazi, Libya. If convicted, he will serve his sentence in a federal Supermax prison.

Those who seek to keep Guantanamo open also rely on the false assertions and fears about detainees going “back to the fight” in the field after release.  But recidivism rates are extremely low. Only 7% of the detainees released during the Obama administration have reengaged, compared with 19% during the Bush-Cheney administration.  It must also be noted, since some of the detainees have been in Guantanamo for more than a decade, many have grown too old or are physically incapable of returning to fight in the harsh environments of the middle east.

Meanwhile, Guantanamo has become a rallying cry for many others to take up arms against the United States. The brutal interrogation (torture) techniques at the facility that I mentioned were well documented by the Senate intelligence committee’s report on CIA torture.  Of course, these are the key issues that are used for recruiting young Muslims by such groups as the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as well as for all the world’s other “lone-wolf” growing terror groups.

These past brutal US actions have fueled hatred abroad and provided potent imagery for terrorist propaganda.  Even Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called Guantanamo a “recruiting symbol” for terrorists and jihadists, which he saw as “the heart of the concern for Guantanamo’s continued existence.”

…The now famous Guantanamo orange Jumpsuits

Before the beheading of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, the ISIL terrorists evoked Guantanamo imagery by dressing the men in orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by Guantanamo detainees. The orange jumpsuit resonates in their propaganda because it is so contrary to our values as Americans and it continues to endure, as it has for more than a decade.

Unfortunately, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act continues to tie the president’s hands for not closing the prison by preventing the transfer of prisoners to the Supernax prisons on the US mainland.

The Republican Congress must eventually end the status quo. We should not consider waiting another decade. We need to shut down Guantanamo now.

But with a Republican Congress and their hawkish committee chairman, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.

Copyright G.Ater  2015