With your experience I really appreciate your thoughts on this. I sure don't want these awful people on our soil. Any community which they would be in would be in danger of a terrorist attack trying to free them and our courts are not meant for this. Thanks for offering your experienced opinion.
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LINK: President Obama Plans to Close Gitmo: Task Force Should Consider Geneva
Date: Saturday, January 24, 2009, 9:05 PM EST, 9:05 PM EST from Kyndra Rotunda
President Obama Plans to Close Gitmo: Task Force Should Consider Geneva
by
Kyndra Rotunda*
by
Kyndra Rotunda*
Within hours of taking the oath of office, President Obama announced his plan to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. But it isn’t much of a plan, because he’s not sure where to put the 245 detainees living on Guantanamo’s Naval Base. If he were Sarah Palin, Katie Couric would be asking, what specifically he plans to do. But, he’s not; and she isn’t.
The Pentagon is considering bringing Gitmo’s worst of the worst to the United States. Originally, it was leaning toward Kansas. But Senator Brownback says no way, because Fort Leavenworth is only a medium, not maximum security prison. What’s more, Leavenworth doesn’t have an adequate hospital, so the Army would be required to truck detainees somewhere else for medical care. What if one escapes? What if a sympathetic suicide bomber decides to blow-up the base and everyone on it?
Now the Pentagon is considering other new homes for the detainees, including North Carolina, or California. These options involve holding the detainees on a boat just off the cost.
President Obama has declared that detainees will be treated as POWs. So, before making any decisions, President Obama’s Task Force should consult the Geneva Conventions.
For instance, Geneva opposes holding enemy combatants in prisons with convicted criminals. They can’t be interned in penitentiaries. They should be held separately. Also, according to Geneva, holding enemy combatants on a boat is also a big no, no. It says that prisoners” may be interned only in premises located on land.” It couldn’t be clearer.
Wherever we put the detainees, Geneva allows the Government to require POWs to work (so long as they’re paid in Swiss Francs). Prisoners can even been required to build their own prison. That’s a good idea. But, try telling this to detainees living in Gitmo, who are accustomed spending up to twelve hours a day outside of their cells recreating. During this time they usually visit the weight room, check out library books (Harry Potter is their favorite), watch videos, garden, play sports like basketball or volleyball, or take classes in their native language (or even in English.)
No option that involves holding the detainees on American soil is a good one. It would only invite another terrorist attack; we would only have ourselves to blame. Instead, the U.S. should consider relocating the detainees to one of the U.S. operated POW camps in Iraq or Afghanistan (which Geneva would allow).
* Rotunda is a Professor at Chapman Law School in Orange California and a Major in the Army Reserves. She has served three tours in the Global War on Terror, including a tour as the advisor to the Guantanamo Camp Commander; one as a legal advisor to investigators pursuing worldwide leads in GWOT; and one as a prosecutor at the Office of Military Commissions. She is author of Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials (Carolina Academic Press, June 2008).
With your experience I really appreciate your thoughts on this. I sure don't want these awful people on our soil. Any community which they would be in would be in danger of a terrorist attack trying to free them and our courts are not meant for this. Thanks for offering your experienced opinion.
Kyndra, excellent writing, and factual due to your experience in this matter. I feel BHO really put one over on us, all that we've done to secure our Nation from further attack he wisks away in a stroke of a pen. I just hope someone talks some common sense into him on this matter, but I don't see that happening. Keep up your great work! God bless you too!
This isn't the only thing BO put over on us. Fasten your seat belts....it's gonna
be a bumpy ride. On the other hand, the masses are asses, and are getting
what they voted for. A sad day for my country....Helen S,,
Wonderful post. I have a suggestion for a place to put the detainees -the nex democratic convention. Just let the dems shake their hand as they walk out the front door. Maybe we should have a gun show right across the street...
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