On My Mind Today...Guantanamo Bay

I’m going to attempt to talk about something that I have little historical knowledge about…hey what’s new right? But also something that I feel is critically important for the citizens of our country to understand.

The right to formally and legally question, test or challenge being detained, in front of a judge or a court, is to me, one of the most basic and primal defenses against subjective detention and the violation of fundamental rights as a human, but especially a human living in America. Habeas Corpus makes me proud to be an American and proud that our founding fathers understood the importance of continuing Habeas Corpus even though other writs were specifically abolished from our early law practices that were taken from England.

To me, it is one of the things that say “we are a civilized people”. It’s just that simple.

That is what scares me I think about Guantanamo Bay. It seems like we are sending a very clear message to the world that we are not civilized and that we do whatever the heck we please, when it pleases us and how it pleases us. How can we be leaders of the free world, how can we call ourselves a free world, when we are selective about when to extend basic civil liberties?

I know that many people think we are talking about a few detainees…but just so you know, over 700 men have been detained at Guantanamo Bay without ever being convicted of a crime.

In 2004, The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Rasul v. Bush that the men being detained in Guantanamo do have access to the federal courts. Since then, hundreds of detainees filed writs of habeas corpus, challenging the conditions and basis of their detention. However, Bushco has been working to keep these habeas cases from happening. Then in 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). The DTA robbed Guantanamo detainees of the right to file habeas cases in federal court. But then in 2006, in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court held that the DTA was not retroactive and therefore did not affect the hundreds of habeas cases in federal court. But then in October of 2006, The Pres signed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) into law which is a bill that robbed Guantanamo detainees and others of fundamental human rights, including the right to habeas. Since the bill was signed into law, courts have dismissed cases and others have been stripped of their chance to challenge being detained. This law will also potentially affect the rights of legal permanent residents here in the US.

To try to fix all this and reverse damages caused by the MCA (although how can you give a man back 5 years of his life that has been taken?) the “Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007” was introduced.

Now we must focus on closing Guantanamo and restoring our reputation as being civilized people.

According to the ACLU website:

At the prison at Guantánamo Bay, convictions can be based on evidence derived from torture, hearsay and secret evidence. Many of the accused have been held in secret prisons, denied access to lawyers for years and even tortured.
The Guantánamo military commissions are a serious mistake. It's time to shut down Guantánamo Bay, and move proceedings to a civilian court of law or a traditional military court operating in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice where constitutional guarantees apply. We must also end indefinite detention without charge. Detainees who are not charged or convicted must be sent to countries where they will not be tortured or abused.

Guantanamo Bay is not civilized and not American…not even close.

To read more and to sign the petition go to Close Guantanamo.