The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it was unwilling to set free or turn over to U.S. or foreign courts, the Washington Post said in a report that cited intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.
Some detentions could potentially last a lifetime, the newspaper said...
Yeah, "they" hate us. Is it any wonder?
What gets a guy (or gal or kid) hauled off to one of the U.S. offshore gulags? Being caught in the act of wiring a car bomb or IED? Being asleep in bed at night when a U.S. Special Forces unit kicks down the door, because a neighbor with a grudge over fence color ratted him out? Walking down the side of the road with a Kalashnikov slung over the shoulder as a U.S. convoy passes by? I don't know. But that's the point. No one knows. It's all very hush-hush.
It appears more and more that the U.S. gulags, out of the apparent reach of the domestic U.S. justice system by virtue of being offshore, are now a permanent fixture in the shadowy underpinnings of the American intelligence apparatus. There is no "justice" to be meted out in this system, and there was never meant to be.
I'm not advocating a wholesale release of detainees from all of the U.S. gulags, but most certainly, there has to be an accounting of who's being held and why. No doubt the accounting does in fact exist somewhere, but the whole thing is all so nebulous. There also has to be a limit to the value of any "intelligence" that could be gained from someone who's been incarcerated for 3+ years.
Here's the deal: the reason that many (or most) of these PEOPLE will be behind concertina wire for the rest of their lives is that they have stories to tell from inside the gulags. Some of the stories have already leaked out, but have been mostly portrayed by the MSM as fantasies from bad actors.
Maybe so - but there's enough commonality to the tales of torture, abuse, neglect, and natural rights violations that there has to be some connection to a modicum of detention reality. What's simply confounding to me is that the U.S. public, via instructions from the MSM, wouldn't stand for such a thing happening anywhere else in the world by any other government on such a large scale (I know, I know, it happens every day, but not on this scale, and not "in our names").
Yet there are untold thousands of men, women and (yes) children being detained in a legal no-man's land. Al Gonzales and a stable of Heritage Foundation-schooled lawyers may be able to twist logic and jurisprudence in justifying the actions of the U.S. government, but they're sure as hell violating Mother Cranium's First Law of Righteousness:
If it doesn't feel right, it's probably wrong.
Update, 1/3/05: I'm not really a Lew Rockwell kind of guy, but I've been reading Justin Raimondo's work for quite some time at antiwar.com. Today, Justin writes an extended column that riffs a bit on the concepts presented above - but also provides some perspective in how we've arrived at this point.
