Annual Report


Opinion Roundup


President Bill Clinton
Financial Times
June 19

"Well it [Guantánamo Bay] either needs to be closed down or cleaned up. It's time that there are no more stories coming out of there about people being abused."


Senator John McCain
June 19

"The key to this is to move the judicial process forward so that these individuals will be brought to trial for any crime that they are accused of rather than residing in the Guantánamo facility in perpetuity."


Senator Russell Feingold
June 15

"It may be that the word Guantánamo has become so synonymous in the Arab and Muslim world with American abuses that we must close the prison down."


Senator Chuck Hagel
CNN
June 12

"The fact is that we are losing the diplomatic war around the world. We're losing the image war around the world…And certainly Guantánamo is one that's hurt us.

...It is not at all within the standards of who we are as a civilized people, what our laws are, who we represent.

...At a time that we need to reach out to the world, we need to enlist the world, we need to form alliances to battle these insidious forces against us and other nations, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, this is not how you win the people of the world over to our side, especially the Muslim world."


Senator Dianne Feinstein
CNN
June 12

"And the question always comes: How many of these people held are really terrorists, and how many of them are just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

There needs to be a defined process that sorts that out, and has some public part of it, so that people gain confidence that what the United States is doing with people they pick up in communities, on a battlefield, wherever, are treated with the values that we say we treat people with."


Senator Patrick Leahy
CBS
June 12

"We're the country that tells people that we adhere to the rule of law. We want other countries to adhere to the rule of law. And in Guantánamo, we are not...

I think that eventually we have to [close it] because either that or at least have the administration come out and be honest about it, say who's being held there, why they're being held there. We understand that there's even some people that were there because bounty hunters in Afghanistan just turned them over to us and said, 'Here, give us money. These are bad guys,' and so they're put in this black hole. I think as long as that exists, we're going to have one more rallying cry against the United States and it does reflect poorly on a country that believes in the rule."


Senator Mel Martinez
Florida Society of Newspaper Editors
June 10

"Guantánamo has become an icon for bad stories and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio… How much do you get out of having that facility there? Is it serving all the purposes you thought it would serve when initially you began it, or can this be done some other way a little better?"


The Baltimore Sun
June 10

"It [Guantánamo Bay] is a limbo, where more than 500 men sit more or less patiently as Americans debate what to call them, what to charge them with and what to do with them.

This limbo state is not defined in the U.S. Constitution, nor in treaties our government has signed with other powers. The legal processes followed at Guantánamo are distinctly un-American: What hearings and tribunals have occurred do not follow such bedrock U.S. civilian and military laws as those requiring that detainees know the charges against them; that they have access to legal help, Red Cross workers and consular officials; even that the jailers name the people they are jailing. The alleged mistreatment of prisoners — and some acknowledged mistreatment - also is un-American.

President Bush just this week repeated Americans' commitment to promoting democracy and human freedom across the world. The word "Guantánamo" now conjures the exact opposite. The prison must be closed."


H.D.S. Greenway
Boston Globe
June 10

"The United States is engaged in a long- term effort to persuade an alienated Muslim world that the United States stands for justice. By allowing systematic torture and indefinite detention to sully our system, we have handed our enemies the most perfect recruiting tool we could devise, for it exposes all our high ideals about democracy to the charges of hypocrisy.

Rather than heap contempt on Amnesty International, the Bush administration should take the organization's advice and convene an independent investigation on how the circumvention of international standards of detention and torture came about. The administration should seek to remove all the similarities between what a prisoner in Guantánamo might endure and the experience of a Russian prisoner of yore rather than attempt to change the subject because of a single word. Accountability starts at the top, not by the conviction of a few low—level underlings. Accountability should start with the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, as he reportedly contemplated after the scandals of Abu Ghraib."


Roanoke Times & World News
June 10

"Like the Soviets, the White House twists or spurns domestic law and treaties such as the Geneva Conventions to operate with impunity. Contrary to all U.S. principles, the administration created an extra-legal prison system overseas in which unaccountable jail keepers dispense arbitrary justice to the indefinitely detained.

Also like the Soviets, the administration maintains a veil of secrecy and denial. Human rights inspectors have little access to the camps in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Feeble U.S. investigations of abuses reported by the International Red Cross, the FBI and the Army produced only low-ranking scapegoats.

…Rather than scorning Amnesty, the administration should accede to its demand for transparency and accountability, beginning with outside inspections."


Carl Leubsdorf
Dallas Morning News
June 9

"Presidents hate to admit mistakes. This one seems to hate it even more than his predecessors.

After all, it's easier to blame one's problems on someone else — especially an inviting political target. But history will render the ultimate verdict.
For President Bush and other top officials, the most obvious example has been the war in Iraq, both the course of the conflict in general and the handling of Iraqi and other prisoners in particular.

They insist things are going well, despite a steadily growing death toll and the failure of U.S. troops and the new government to curb violence by insurgent forces. They have been reluctant to admit wrongdoing in handling prisoners, and their first reaction is usually to criticize their critics."


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PA
June 9

"Whatever would transpire with the closure of Guantánamo, it is likely that the new disposition of prisoners would correspond more closely to standards of U.S. justice. Guantánamo is a growing embarrassment to the United States and its professed championing of freedom overseas. The best reason for closing the prison is that it has become evident, including to Americans, that what our leaders are saying about freedom is hypocrisy, given U.S. practices not only at Guantánamo but also at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan."


Port Huron Times Herald
MI
June 9

"If Guantánamo was difficult to justify from its inception after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, its continued existence today is a far greater challenge. Whatever its value might have been in the war against terrorism, Guantánamo's perception today is that of a prison camp that belies America's image as a fair and just nation. The detention center should be closed."


Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan
SD
June 9

"Americans who were aghast at the pictures from Abu Ghraib should be equally disturbed by the verbal account from Bagram and by two of Amnesty International's conclusions: The United States tried to dilute the generally accepted torture ban, and its mistreatment of prisoners has granted a license to other nations to do the same. This is not the kind of light this nation wants to shine, nor is it likely to get would-be attackers and their allies to buy President Bush's argument that we are the country that 'promotes freedom around the world.'"


Columbian Editorial Writers
The Columbian
June 8

"President Bush did himself and his country no favors in the eyes of the world Tuesday when he dismissed as “absurd” last week's report by Amnesty International, which called the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, “the gulag of our time.”

That response by Bush at a Rose Garden news conference might have worked before the crush of revelations about treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, and how prisoners have been spirited off to Egypt for interrogation and torture."


Daytona Beach News Journal
June 8

"Newsweek wasn't wrong after all about Quran desecration at Guantánamo Bay. Nor for that matter was Amnesty International's description of the place as an American “gulag” — unless semantics matter more to one's conscience than indisputable and disgraceful acts perpetrated at Guantánamo in freedom's name.

President Bush finds it “absurd” and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld finds it “reprehensible” to compare Guantánamo to a gulag. But what would they call a lock-up that's more dungeon than prison, a place where more than 500 individuals live in chains without ever having been charged, where they know no true legal representation, where their imprisonment is indefinite, where they may as well not exist anymore? "


Maria Elena Salina
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
June 8

"You might already have heard the one line in the report about the United States that made news — the one that calls the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, “the gulag of our time.” That one made news because of the Bush administration's reaction: President Bush called the report “absurd,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it was “reprehensible and outlandish,” and Vice President Richard Cheney said he was insulted by it. But there were other charges in the report that were just as strong.

...But by discrediting Amnesty's findings in the United States, the administration is also casting doubts on the group's assessment of human rights abuses in other parts of the world."


Ann Walker
Yuma Sun, AZ
June 7

"If there are truly criminals and terrorists there, charge and try them. If there are prisoners of war there, grant them that status and hold them according to the Geneva convention. And if there are prisoners who were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time and swept up in military or intelligence operations, release them to their countries and their families."


Barre Montpelier Times
Argus, VT
June 7

"Some are now calling for a nonpartisan panel, similar to the 9/11 Commission, to take a critical look at how our country handles detainees. The White House will resist, of course, but then it also initially resisted the creation of the 9/11 panel. So the American public, if it cares, needs to speak up, loud and clear. It does care, doesn't it?"


Newsday
June 7

"Amnesty International is not alone in its criticism. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the FBI have voiced similar misgivings about abuses at Guantánamo. And the federal courts and some members of Congress have decried the lack of due process for detainees trapped there in legal limbo.

Instead of angling for political advantage by attacking over-the-top rhetoric or erroneous details from anonymous sources, President George W. Bush should bring U.S. detention practices into line with U.S. law and tradition, which demand due process, adherence to international conventions and respect for human rights." more »