The Bush Administration is
currently contemplating holding certain suspected terrorists in custody for their entire lives,
despite a lack of evidence against them, according to the Washington Post.
This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. White House staff have never let little things like a lack of evidence, international law or the Constitution stop them from waging war on terror in the past.
Nor have they let themselves be handicapped by trying to maintain the moral high ground while prosecuting the war on terror — just ask the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We have been perfectly happy to be known throughout the world as more moral than Saddam Hussein and the murderous insurgents. Why set the bar too high? Morality is a national security risk. Lowering the world’s expectations is simply part of protecting ourselves.
But detaining innocent people without judicial review until they die seems too horrific even for this White House to contemplate. One option under review involves transferring the detainees from Guantanamo Bay to U.S.-style prisons in their home countries, according to the Post.
In another proposal, the Defense Department would ask Congress for $25 million to build a more comfortable prison for the detainees, called Camp 6. This facility would hold around 200
inmates that are no longer useful from an intelligence standpoint but cannot go through a military tribunal because the government lacks evidence against them. Here the inmates would live a more comfortable existence and be allowed to socialize with other inmates. Think of it as a suspected terrorist retirement village.
Not everyone is loving these plans. Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar, chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee, called the proposal a “bad idea.” Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, on the Senate Armed Services Committee,
questioned the proposal’s constitutionality. “There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process,” he said. One CIA officer quoted in the Post called the
practice “kidnapping.”
It is time that we abandon this barbaric form of justice popularized by right wing pundits and country music singers. It is time for real American justice to reach the detainees. If the government has evidence of their links to
terrorism, then they should be brought before a court of law. If there is not enough evidence, then they should be freed.
We are a strong and secure superpower. We do not need to lower ourselves to the terrorists’ level in order to protect
ourselves. We can have both
security and liberty. Anybody who says otherwise is giving the terrorists too much credit.

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