Post-Gazette Editorial – 6/26/06

This page was last updated on June 28, 2006.

End of story / Expelling reporters won’t fix Guantanamo prison; Editorial; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; June 26, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Here’s freedom of the press, Pentagon style: When reporters started writing about what was going on at the clandestine military lockup at Guantanamo Bay after the suicides of three ‘indefinite detainees,’ the brass hats put the journalists on the next plane from the Cuban base back to the American mainland.”

[RWC] I don’t know if this assertion is an accurate representation or not. I write that because I saw a news report on TV last week and the reporter was at Club Gitmo.

“But, hey, don’t think it was a cynical attempt to keep the lid on another bad story about one of the darkest chapters in U.S. human rights history. No, according to a Pentagon spokesman, it was all about fairness and impartiality.

“‘We got them on the next flight out of Guantanamo Bay,’ the spokesman asserted, ‘to be fair to the rest of the media outlets that did not get a chance to go down there.’ Now there’s logic worthy of the old Soviet Union.

“The Pentagon chose expulsion and now is conducting a full-blown investigation to learn who gave those nosy reporters access to Guantanamo in the first place.

“It’s all indicative of the Bush administration’s bunker mentality in regard to the Guantanamo Bay prison, which was established four years ago to hold anyone the government deems to be a terrorism suspect -- indefinitely and without charges, in either military or civilian courts. Nearly 500 men are in custody there, many held virtually incommunicado for years.”

[RWC] The editorial conveniently fails to note most prisoners are still there because folks with the same opinion as the PG challenged the government’s authority to try enemy combatants in military tribunals instead of civilian courts. The case is now awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The problem, of course, is that indefinite imprisonment runs contrary to the United States Constitution and more than 200 years of American legal tradition aimed at recognition of basic human rights.”

[RWC] When did illegal – or legal for that matter – enemy combatants captured on foreign battlefields gain protection of the Constitution? These guys don’t even qualify for the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

“It’s what has caused U.S. prestige to drop precipitously in the eyes of an international public that once respected this nation for maintaining these rights, even on occasions when it was not convenient to government interests. Now the administration is digging the hole of condemnation deeper by suggesting that the three men who hanged themselves in their cells at the prison on June 10 did so just to make President Bush look bad.”

[RWC] The editorial fails to note a not insignificant number of released Club Gitmo prisoners were picked up again on the battlefield.

“The truth is, when it comes to botching both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq through extralegal policies, Mr. Bush doesn’t need any help.

[RWC] What are the “extralegal policies” and where is the evidence?

If anything is an extralegal policy, it’s the bizarre idea that illegal (or legal) enemy combatants should be granted constitutional rights and be tried in civilian courts.

“International pressure to close Guantanamo, something even Mr. Bush acknowledged that he favors, continues to build. Kicking journalists off the island can’t hide the ugly truth about the wrongs being committed there in the name of national security.”

[RWC] The editorial failed to provide the context of President Bush’s acknowledgement he’d like to close the prison at Gitmo. He said he’d like for prisons like Club Gitmo and elsewhere to be unnecessary because widespread terrorism had been defeated.