So let’s review the math. After four years of holding prisoners without charge, and without affording them the protections of either our legal system or the Geneva Convention, we have:
390 prisoners released without charge;
34 or so charged with various crimes;
300 or so continuing to be held without charge or any effective way to challenge their imprisonment.Then there are the prisoners, such as the pair of Chinese Muslims I’ve written about before, that the U.S. acknowledges are innocent but continues to imprison because they face persecution if sent home.
So we hold 750 people for years so that we can eventually charge fewer than 40. That works out to a false-imprisonment rate of about 95 percent.
People…95 percent? The picture I’ve included here was taken at Guantanamo. How many of those detainees in that picture are innocent? Maybe all of them?
And can you imagine being kidnapped in the middle of the night, being flown overseas and being held for years without access to counsel knowing full well that you’ve done nothing wrong? And then one day the US decides to let you go. Let’s not forget all the interrogation tactics you’ve been subjected to. Let’s not forget all the time you’ve lost apart from your friends, family and livelihood. Because this is the WOT damnit and we can do whatever we want to whomever we want at anytime and in any place. A war against an idea. A war against an -ism. A war without end.
I don’t know about you, but I am done with this ridiculousness. We can’t keep this up and maintain the moral high ground. In fact, we’ve most likely already squandered whatever goodwill we earned after 9/11…and then some. And still, this administration continues to defend its incompetence. It has to stop, and soon.