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  • WEDNESDAY JUNE 14 2006 3:00 PM

The Shining City on the Hill

Submitted by politicalsuicide

Edited by politicalsuicide

Tags: Guantanamo, Bush

Since the viral marketing explanation didn't exactly resonate as a way to explain away the suicides at Guantanamo Bay, the President is taking a new direction:

President George W. Bush acknowledged on Wednesday that the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where three detainees committed suicide, has damaged the U.S. image abroad and said it should be shut down.



Wait, what?

"I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people there that are darn dangerous and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush told a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.
[...]
"No question, Guantanamo sends, you know, a signal to some of our friends -- provides an excuse, for example, to say, 'The United States is not upholding the values that they're trying encourage other countries to adhere to,'" Bush said.



The "darn dangerous" people could be held in any number of other locations. The reason Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has been busy building out Guantanamo is the same reason that other countries have "an excuse" as Bush calls it: the prison camps there have been deemed outside of the laws of the United States. As long as Bush's little torture fetish outweighs his desire to comply with the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution, Guantanamo will be open for business, damaged image be damned.

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Comments
formerviking

formerviking

Denver, PA
May 2006

JUN 14, 2006 03:22 PM

I know we all get tired of reading folks complaining about how Bush speaks , but isn't there some kind of remedial class we can send him to or something . I'm not the greatest person at getting my point across sometimes , but then again I'm not the leader of a country either .

Adroitbeing

Adroitbeing

I'm lost
September 2003

JUN 14, 2006 03:43 PM

Hmmm, must be an election appearing on the horizon.
What does it mean when you combine transparency with poor speaking skills?

vampiresoldier

vampiresoldier

Oakland, CA
March 2004

JUN 14, 2006 05:20 PM

formerviking said:
but isn't there some kind of remedial class we can send him to or something .



Yeah, we can send him to a pretzel factory , hopefully this time he will choke and not just tease us.

waldo

waldo

I'm lost
June 2004

JUN 14, 2006 06:20 PM

Adroitbeing said:
Hmmm, must be an election appearing on the horizon.
What does it mean when you combine transparency with poor speaking skills?



It means everyone can hear you, but nobody knows what you meant.

IKCSmiley

ikcsmiley

Asheville, NC
July 2003

JUN 14, 2006 08:04 PM

Does he realize he is the commander-in-chief of the same country that is running Gitmo right? That if he ordered the people below him "Close Gitmo, and get the people held there into a court system" it would happen? He sounds like he's requesting China to release political prisoners..."Ow well it'd be nice if it was closed down - hopefully it'll happen soon when a way to prosecute the people there is found"....you're the leader - SO LEAD!

doozer

doozer

I'm lost
October 2005

JUN 14, 2006 10:12 PM

Charge detainees with a crime, or let them go! Fuck it's been years now.

quagmirething

quagmirething

I'm lost
June 2005

JUN 14, 2006 10:55 PM

The Defense Department plans to construct a permanent medium-security prison facility here as part of an effort to transform the U.S. naval base from a makeshift detention camp to a state-of-the-art penitentiary for terrorist agents the government considers too dangerous to set free.


Errr... Cuba for the Cubans? Whatever they might think of Castro I somehow doubt they'll be happy with the idea of hosting someone else's state-of-the-art penitentiary.

And should we get into the mood of returning land to the people who were living there, then the Chagos refugees have been in line for a while now.

Reaver

Reaver

I'm lost
August 2003

JUN 15, 2006 12:19 AM

So did the terrotists sign the Genova Conventions yet?

Just wondering.

Adroitbeing

Adroitbeing

I'm lost
September 2003

JUN 15, 2006 07:01 AM

Reaver said:
So did the terrotists sign the Genova Conventions yet?

Just wondering.



Oh, the "we are not as bad as they are" argument. This always makes sense and fills in those messy gaps in logic.

FilthPig

FilthPig

Portland, OR
December 2005

JUN 15, 2006 10:52 AM

Maybe we should be as bad as they are and just cut off their heads and post it on the internet.

GramNegative

GramNegative

I'm lost
October 2004

JUN 15, 2006 11:24 AM

FilthPig said:
Maybe we should be as bad as they are and just cut off their heads and post it on the internet.



If we were occupied by a foreign power, I don't doubt that some americans would do that. We do have a lot of crazy people here. Doesn't mean I would want the our captured people getting the gitmo treatment.

Reaver

Reaver

I'm lost
August 2003

JUN 15, 2006 11:52 AM

Since they likely already are.....

I keep forgetting how clearly civilized the rest of the world is compared to us 'evil americans'!

GramNegative

GramNegative

I'm lost
October 2004

JUN 15, 2006 12:12 PM

Reaver said:
Since they likely already are.....


who is they, and they likely already are ... what ?


I keep forgetting how clearly civilized the rest of the world is compared to us 'evil americans'!



Yeah, don't get that either.

But I gave up coffee today, so maybe that explains it.

PatrickY

PatrickY

Vancouver, WA
December 2003

JUN 15, 2006 12:15 PM

Reaver said:
Since they likely already are.....

I keep forgetting how clearly civilized the rest of the world is compared to us 'evil americans'!



You know, you can try and dance around it all you want, but the fact remains that we have set up a prison where hundreds of people have been held for years without any form of legal charge - we don't know who they all are, we don't know how they're being treated, and we don't get anything but evasive answers from those who put them there.

20 years ago, we called places like this "morally indefensible", and the nations that ran them "evil empires". Now, we call places like this "ours", and the nation that runs them "home".


Can you not see how might rankle?

malkav11

malkav11

Saint Paul, MN
July 2003

JUN 15, 2006 06:48 PM

It's impossible to have a useful discussion about Guantanamo until people realize that the people being held there are not confirmed terrorists. They are people that the government has labelled as "suspected" terrorists, which means exactly squat without evidence that would support that suspicion. Evidence that the government refuses to provide. I would go so far as to say that given that some of those people have been in Guantanamo for years without any sort of legal process, trial, etc, that they probably cannot provide that evidence, because they don't have it.

I think you will find that most liberals would also like the terrorists stopped, yes, and arrested and tried and convicted, preferably. And *then* sent to rot in prison for the rest of their lives. But we are, I think justifiably, worried about the government grabbing people and throwing them in prison indefinitely on their say-so that that person *might* be a terrorist.

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