The very word Guantanamo carries a negative connotation throughout much of the world, one that is antithetical to American values and America’s strategy of spreading freedom and democracy. It’s time for the United States to cut its losses there, while salvaging what it can.
Attorney Phil Carter (government contracts and international law for the LA firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge) and Intel Dump blogger, wrote these suggestions for the July Foreign Policy.
His analysis deserves some objective debate. The outline headings are:
- Get Congress off the Sidelines
- Clarify the President’s War Power
- Determine Who’s Who
- Embed Reporters at Guantánamo
- Retain the Most Dangerous
- Send the Rest Home
For those of us without both access and “need to know” it is a challenge to assess the overall interrogation policy. My working hypothesis, from all the sources I’ve been able to access, is that administration and military policy has been carefully designed but extraordinarily poorly explained. From my research I am quite confident it is not as flawed as trumpeted in the press. The just released independent report on Gitmo is clear: Only Three Violations Of Rules At Gitmo - No Torture
E.g., if challenged in the Comments, I’ll search up my source on the original Bush directive that states that illegal combatant Afghanistan detainees, while not entitled, are to be treated as if they are entitled
to Geneva Convention protocols.
Phil’s thesis, which I believe is accurate, is that the public relations have been such a disaster that the Guantanamo operation is a net-net liability. In addition to the headlined six themes, his conclusion is that the function of Guantanamo should be relocated to new facilities, perhaps Diego Garcia and separate conflict-specific facilities in secure areas of Iraq or Afghanistan.
A confidently-held speculation: had the U.S. sponsored Phil’s #4 “Embed Reporters
at Guantanamo” the media frenzy might not have developed - and if it did, would certainly
have been far more factually founded.
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