Joint Chiefs Chairman: Close Guantanamo
By Nicole Belle Monday Jan 14, 2008 8:38am
The chief of the U.S. military said he favors closing the prison here as soon as possible because he believes negative publicity worldwide about treatment of terrorist suspects has been ``pretty damaging'' to the image of the United States.
``I'd like to see it shut down,'' Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday in an interview with three reporters who toured the detention center with him on his first visit since becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last October.
His visit came two days after the sixth anniversary of the prison's opening in January 2002. He stressed that a closure decision was not his to make and that he understands there are numerous complex legal questions the administration believes would have to be settled first, such as where to move prisoners.
George W. Bush likes to say that he listens to his military expert...would that he would start with this. However, Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel has a slightly more extreme answer:
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"Pretty damaging," huh Admiral Mullen?
How about "a great recruiting tool for lots more al-Qaeda types."
This is the same Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who at first agreed with the 'official' story of the Iranian provocation in the Straits of Hormuz, then admitted he hadn't seen the video.
Tool.
They need to dismantle the base for thug reasons, too, not just those of humanity in general (which they don't really care for).
They have a lot of sins they'll one day wish they had erased. Teh physical evidence of your crimes is something a criminal tries to eliminate.
I think his comment was more for show than for reality.
This morning when I heard that the Israeli tanks had killed 15 people, I saw the results of bush's trip over there. The success number is 0.
As for Gravel, well, let's just say he is Gravel and leave it there.
Bush isn't going to close Gitmo. And neither would any of the Republicans if they got in.
Would the Dems? Maybe.
It would be a damn good signal to the rest of the world that maybe our "crazy" phase is beginning to subside ever so slightly.
We should not be in Cuba anyway. Bay of Pigs or not. We should not be in Germany or South Korea, either.
We should not be the police of the world.
Charge the men in Gitmo with a crime or set them free.
Anyway, Gitmo is not going to be shut down by anyone, ever.
Mike Gravel is far too intelligent to be president. Presidential material nowadays seems to mean something scraped off the floor of a public restroom. Wait a minute, that would be republican wouldn't it?
AT least he said something,that's a start. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080115/ap_on_bi_ge/citigroup .
You really should read this.....Citibank loses 10 billion.
Bush only listens to military experts if they endorse his Pinochetist fantasies
CORRECTION:
tomorrow this will read:
EX-Joint Chiefs Chairman...
It was said--Mike Gravel has a slightly more extreme answer:
But I guess Mc' Asscain's--Bomb Bomb Iran is less extreme answer or the @sshole front runners who agree in using nukes.I say Edwards as Pres and Bull Dog Gravel as VP.
mudshark @ 7:
You have to wonder, what will the golden parachute for the CEO be with his wise decision to lay off 4,200 employees.
Remember, Mittens said he would double the size of Gitmo. So I don't think we could count on him shutting it down.
I agree with commenter #4, it would surely be symbolic to the rest of the world that we are changing the ways things are done. But we will probably never live down the reputation of what it stands for. History can't erase what it was and what happened there, in our name.
pissed off patricia @ 3:
You mean about his being the only rational, moral, decent candidate? Other then Kucinich. He's certainly the most intellegent.
Ron @ 10:
Probably over 100 million.
When I hear officials who aren't democrats say close guantanamo I think they just mean the facility - not the program. In other words, "Let's open up shop someplace else with a new name and do the same shit we've been doing. No cameras allowed this time."
I don't think you have to be an Admiral to say it:
Close Guantanamo!
mudshark @ 13:
I also have to wonder how many of the laid off employees will have their homes foreclosed on by Citibank.
Close Guantanamo? Why does Adm. Mike Mullen hate the troops? He must be on the side of Al Quada! Get him, get him now!!
CafeenMan is right. Bush/Cheney won't do anything, but if we actually have "elections" and a Dem gets "installed" I think s/he will likely close Gitmo and do the dirty deeds somwhere off the radar screen. I'm sure the Israelis have some nice vacant buildings somwhere in a desert......
Hey Admiral - I'd like a ham and cheese sandwich with mustard and extra pickles on wheat bread delivered to my office by Faith Hill in something low cut. Think you can scare that up for me too?
Are we talking about closing these camps. Or destroying the evidence?
Looks like another Gitmo, Camp Justice in Diego Garcia, has been "erased" already.
Curiously, there are a number of container ships in the atoll...
For the Admiral it's a public relations problem, not a human rights problem. About what you'd expect from a beribboned tool.
And what about this Gitmo to be coming a "refugee" camp tacked onto the end of the article:
Before he finished his Guantanmo Bay visit and flew to Key West, Fla., Mullen got a look at a site on the eastern shore of Guantanamo Bay - opposite the terrorist detention center - where the U.S. military is building a new refugee camp that would be used in the event of a sudden, major influx of refugees in the area. Initially the camp will be designed to hold 10,000 refugees and is scheduled to be finished by June.
Refugees from where?
I wait for commander codpiece to weigh in on this one.
They need to empty gitmo and use it for the most evil people. The ones who want to hurt the country and don't care what they have to do to get their way.
Like shrub, cheney, rumsfeld, gonzales, etc...
Lock them in and throw away the keys.
Hell, lock them in and THEN close it.
Thing Fish @ 22:
Well, we know there are millions of unhappy Iraqis looking for a place to live. Bring them here and maybe they will forget about losing their homes and the family members killed in Iraq.
Thing Fish @ 22:
A major influx of refugees into Cuba? I agree, from where?
Simon White-Thatch Potentloins @ 4:
SUBSIDE!!?!?!?! It's just getting started, my dear.
Apparently, they're building a bigger prison than the one at Guantanamo (may already be bigger) quietly at or near Bagram airbase in Uzbekistan as we speak ...
Thing Fish @ 22:
South Florida maybe?
The scorecard:
Guantanamo is primarily a prison for a bunch of schmucks we picked off a battlefield and labelled illegal enemy combatants. They remain in prison, detained without charges, some without access to counsel, and amid allegations of torture and seeing their holy text profaned by American soldiers.
We are told that if we were to release them, they'd simply go back to attacking America and American troops. Thus, their detention is supposed to make us safer.
Yet, that is clearly not the case.
Casualties in Iraq continue to mount, and despite efforts like Operation Phantom Pokemon, continued assertions that we're winning, that the place is like an open market in Indiana, that it's safe to stroll about.
We seem to be hip-deep in al-Qaeda all of a sudden. Pakistan. Iraq. Afghanistan. (The latter targeted for an increase of 3,000 Marines by the Spring ... the rationale being that, hey, we took the troops out of al-Anbar, so now they can go to Kabul.)
There's a difference between understanding the harsh realities of a world where terrorism exists, and the 'they hate us and wanna come here an' kill us' pitch line constantly hammered by Bush, Giuliani, and others who want us to believe they will be the hero to save the day.
But is Guantanamo the tipping point, the critical factor standing between America's safety and another (noun, verb) 9/11? Doubtful. Do we honestly believe we could be holding on to a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda? That locked within someone's head are the plans for the Next Big Attack? That a bunch of schlmiels captured on the battlefield are the crack troops that will carry it out?
Right.
The truth is, fear has made this nation stupid. And keeping Guantanamo open demonstrates how much space we've rented to the terrorists in our collective consciousness. We need smart security, not retreads of failed policies (like the Japanese internment) and attempts to lock the barn door after the horses have bolted.
pissed off patricia @ 3:
Bush went to the Middle East to sell more weapons of mass destruction...or should I say weapons to destroy the masses.
Playin' both sides of the street as usual. The weak get killed and the "defense" industry gets paid.
most disturbing to me is that the loss of rights is NOT the reason for this, but the perception of the US by the rest of the world. so 'making nice' about imprisonment without trial by closing a prison is supposed to make the world all gushy and fuzzy for the US? :lol:
I'm still waiting for the tortured jose padilla, alleged dirty-stove bomber-would-have-been, to get a public trial.
Or the prisoners who kill themselves to get back at the US.
"Refugees" are what they call the people they displace and kill when they're digging for oil or ripping down forests or just need to remove an inconvenient population from some valuable land. "refugees" are the annoying left over people who won't run away or give in or die. "refugees" include anyone who doesn't immediately welcome the shrub co. crime syndicate into their lives. And I suspect they will soon include anyone who won't carry a national ID or allow themselves to be tattooed, bar-coded or chipped.
Shan @ 28:
blackwater has built eight prisons in the US. All are 'private', as far as I know. We'll never know what goes on in one of those prisons
Liberal AND Proud @ 31:
bush promised Israel 'smarter' bombs than the ones they sell the arabs, did he not? what a shit!
CoIntelPro @ 34:
Or who's in them.
They won't ever close Gitmo. It's an excuse to stay in Cuba, who even after all these years, are still the dreaded eeevil Communists....oh, in other news, thought this was interesting:
FORT MONROE, Va. — The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.
this will not be a problem for bush. let me look into my crystal ball which brings the past into the future:
dateline: tomorrow
president bush today echoed the sentiments of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff today, who said he would "like to see [guantanamo bay] shut down."
"i'd like to see it shut down, too," said bush. "we all would. but we have to wait until all the terrorists have been rounded up and dealt with in the freedom-protectingest way possible. see, that's my job. beeing freedom-protectingest."
he added, "heh heh heh."
I thought we're going to build 2 of them?
Guantanamo is primarily a prison for a bunch of schmucks we picked off a battlefield and labelled illegal enemy combatants</i.
we didn't even pick a lot of them up. we bought them from bounty hunters and took it on faith that they were bad guys.
Ron @ 36:
Unless it's us...
What...close down Bush's private torture-house?
I say we free the innocent people we've kidnaped & keep it open, when we finally decide to do the right thing & prosecute Bush & Cheney, we can send those two pricks there to serve-out their sentences.
He sounds like a nutjob in the way that Ron Paul is a nut-job. Some good ideas expressed in a way that makes regular people laugh nervously...
dirk gently @ 40:
Thanks dirk! I was going to point that out too.
Are the joint chiefs giggling and raiding the refrigerator?
For once, I agree with all of you, that Gitmo must be shutdown. Gitmo represent incarceration of individuals of acts that are unaccountable for eternity. We are not GODs, we are humans, and to push such measures to another humans is an absolute atrocity. This is against Christ's teaching. Gitmo must be shutdown.
However, closing down Gitmo also signifies that terrorism has no repercussion. One can commit terrorism without any impunity. There are no rule of Law to abide to, no consequences, and no accountability. A Rule of Law and a dogma must be preserved by society so that we cannot and do not commit the same sins again and again. For this preventive reasons, Gitmo cannot be closed down. This order must be uphold, for it preserves the society as a whole, and this is a higher authority than closing down Gitmo. I fully support Bush decision to keep Gitmo around as long as possible, this order is a progressive movement in our society, to protect us and the world from committing un-Godly sins.
DJ, The Arlington Group
Do joint chiefs do circle jerks?
Someone please tell me how batshit crazy Gravel is, because I don't see it.
It's a sign of how far we've fallen that the truly moral are discredited while the most immoral dine in luxury among the princes.
dj @ 46:
sounds like a literate fux viewer to me... terrah!
dj @ 46:
Please spare us the bible lessons...
truglass @ 48:
unfortunately, our extremely f'd up society now requires extreme solutions and we can't face that! we have to marginalize anyone who wants to actually fix things and right things. Lord help that person if they want to move faster than a snail's pace
CoIntelPro @ 32:
Terrible @ 44:
I also agree.
Guantanamo isn't the problem. The problem is that we have people in power who believe that we need such places.
If and when Guantanamo is shut down/destroyed/turned into Republican beachfront condos, there will only be two more, secret, ones that pop up. It's like the Hydra; cut off one head and two more replace it. Our "elected" dictator Generalisimo Busholini is a figurehead for the MIC that wants to rule the world as a theocratic totalitarianism. It doesn't matter who is "elected" (we the people have no say - it's our secretive Electoral College that chooses the figurehead), the results are the same.
All these talking heads i.e. Clinton, Obama, Romney, etc. are a diversion, like the magician using mumbo jumbo and gestures to fool the audience. We are being fooled.
more at my blog...
CoIntelPro @ 49:
Or an attempt at sarcasm. What with signing it Arlington Group...
Thing Fish @ 22:
Those would be refugees from democratic strongholds in this country silly...
"However, closing down Gitmo also signifies that terrorism has no repercussion. One can commit terrorism without any impunity. There are no rule of Law to abide to, no consequences, and no accountability. "
I guess murdering 1.5 MILLION Iraqis, god only knows how many Afgahnis, and soon to be untold numbers of Iranians counts way less than holding a few dozen people in prison huh "DJ, The Arlington Group". Yup, them people over there are so sub-human, death isn't even noticed by them. Fuck your religion, your Jesus and your God, but mostly, fuck you....
pissed off patricia @ 26:
U.S. closed Haitian refugee camp back in 1992 "because it was increasingly clear that it was acting as a magnet and causing more Haitians to get on boats in the hopes of getting there."
Why reopening it now would not make it a magnet... I don't know. This administration stopped making sense years ago.
GITMO is a crime against humanity and everyone who has participated in that atrocity is a war criminal. From top to bottom, they all belong in prison. They have disgraced the nation, they have disgraced their uniforms.
fwacbar @ 56:
Hehehehe...you forgot "and the horse you rode in on!"
Terrible @ 12:
There is absolutely nothing rational in blowing up an American prison. It's an enormous waste of money when the news (and coverage) of the camps being shut down would be sufficient. I can't even believe he suggested that. It's childish. It doesn't even make sense.
I saw a news report the other day about a former Guantanamo-prisoner. an Uygurian applesalesman from China. Uygurs are persecuted by the Chinese government and he had also been subject to torture by Chinese military.
So he decided to leave his family and make his way to freedom in the US hoping his wife and children could join him later. He was in Afghanistan when US invaded in late 2001, and he and other Uygurs fled south to Pakistan to escape the bombing. Peasants reading American flyers offering 5000 dollars for every Al Qaeda member, captured and sold them to the US.
They were held in a US prison in Kandahar for 6 months and then, chained to the floor of an airplane, flown to Guanatanamo were he was locked up another 4 years in a 6 by 6 feet iron prisoncell. Found to be innocent, he was released and flown to Albania where he has no connections whatsoever. He managed to make his way to Sweden where he has a relative but his future is now very uncertain. He cant return to China and its been 8 years since he last saw his wife and children. I wonder if he still regards the US as the country of freedom? But he is one of the lucky ones. 18 innocent Uygurs are still locked up at Guantanamo.
Thing Fish @ 54:
think tank? or
thought controlled?
Gravel has an interesting perspective. Blow up all the symbols of where we lost our way, turn our military industrial complex upside down to shake all the cockroaches out and say everything with cheap iMovie special effects all over the video.
I'm on board for everything but that last one. :)
Well, bombing Guantanamo will serve two purposes. It will show the rest of the world that the U.S. is coming back to its senses, and it will show the world that the U.S. still a power/force to be reckoned with.
Nonetheless, Guantanamo should be shut down.
Shawnmeat @ 60:
it's not childish, but what if he said 'biullozed' instead. your outrage might better be directed at a hellhole where people are tortured at the whim of a petty dicktator. It makes plenty of sense that the outrageous prison be leveled and buried. Explosive pyrotechnics is cheaper, faster and more socially demonstrative than slowly knocking it down.
what if hillobama said 'blow it up' eh?
below_me @ 9:
Agreed. He signed his pink slip by making those remarks.
dj @ 46:
Then I challenge you to name what, exactly, the detention facility at Gitmo is preventing. More terrorism? It seems to be flourishing quite well regardless. I doubt any of the insurgents in Iraq, al-Qaeda or not, are crapping their pants over possibly ending up in an orange jumpsuit for the rest of their lives.
No consequences? What do you call having the United States military tromp in and depose a bunch of religious fanatics (that we're shaping up to have to do so again, in the very same country, is more a reflection of our own incompetence than any resilience of the Taliban).
The 'rule of law' you tout has been repeatedly flaunted by Bush and his gang of thugs. The dogma we hold - the Constitution - has been subverted by con men intimating that their actions have God's approval, and if you dare to question their authority, you're a traitor and a godless liberal.
And the most ungodly act of all is to endorse torture as a means of protecting our liberties, when Christ Jesus himself was made to suffer physical torture and degradation. Nations came together after World War II and endorsed the Geneva Conventions, denouncing cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners - but the Bush Administration offers morally weak and ethically bankrupt justifications as to why we need not concern ourselves over such things.
The only 'higher order' here is that of pathetic, wannabe dictators and sorry excuses for people who call themselves 'Christian,' trying to convince themselves that they're doing God's work.
"he believes negative publicity worldwide about treatment of terrorist suspects has been “pretty damaging” to the image of the United States Note: He's not primarily concerned that the abuse was torture, or a violation of Geneva; only concerned with the "public reaction" to the disclosures. Hardly putting attention where it is needed: Oversight, accountability, and better respect for the JAGs within DoD on issues of Geneva, prisoner treatment, and ICC interest areas.
Regardless the status of the detainee -- and invoking Geneva as a shield to protect prisoners -- there is a second prong to Geneva: As a leash on US government power. Regardless the prisoner's conduct, Geneva imposes legal obligations on the detaining power.
Questions the public needs to coordinate through HASC and SASC, for written responses from Chairman JCS:
bout fucking time you guys wake up to Gravel. hes been out here kicking ass for months and months and you guys have hardly given him an ounce of credit. why i stopped coming here cuz you guys seem so damned bias towards the system. you want the power as a liberal democrat instead of just wanting to fix things as an american.
watch the air america interviews i posted on my ytube page
itll blow your mind. him and Ralph Nader tearing the corporate establishment apart.
White House responds to concerns about JAGs: Boston Globe reports White House will oversee JAG promotions.
Anonymous @ 68:
I want to keep Gitmo open. I have a few ideas for some new occupants. I'd Bush, Cheney and the rest of this criminal gang to spend the rest of their lives sitting in their own shit.
noen @ 71:
When it comes to punishing corrupt leaders, I'm more in favor of Lord Ishido's fate from Shogun ... Toranaga had Ishido buried up to his neck in the town square. A samurai stood nearby and offered any villager who passed by a chance to take a wooden practice sword and whack at Ishido's head.
"He lingered for three days, and died horribly."
Ultimately, 'Guantanamo should be closed' is about as meaningful as 'it depends on how it's done' regarding waterboarding. These statements keep treating our actions as justifiable, that torture really is okay under the right circumstances, or that indefinite detention is protecting us from harm.
I'm not sure if this is because they realize W. is a hair short of being completely unglued and ready to button-mash his way to Armageddon, or if we've fallen so far as to promote and recognize precisely the wrong elements in this country, and are now reaping the inevitable consequences.
CafeenMan @ 15:
You're right. You can't have a secret prison where you hold people without charge & torture that everyone knows about.
Closing the facility without doing as much to close down the values & ideals Guantanamo represents is, in my view, dangerous. Until that happens, there is a real risk that it all just goes underground & possibly in an expanded manner.
=my2c
BC
CoIntelPro @ 66:
Then I'd think that they had completely lost their minds.
Bear in mind that I am not 'outraged'; for the most part I like Gravel and I agree with a lot of what he says. He is a little eccentric at times, however, and this is an obvious example of the overkill he has in mind. Blowing it up is just a silly idea, so much so that I'm puzzled as to how to properly respond. I'm at a loss for words.
I remember watching "Road to Guantanamo," a disturbing docu-drama if ever there was one. As a vocal supporter of human rights, obviously I find the prison at Guantanamo Bay both angering and heart-wrenching. Furthermore, its existence undermines US credibility almost entirely. So long as it is open, how can the government criticize another nation's human rights record and hope to be taken seriously?
Guantanamo Bay being closed wouldn't 'embolden the enemy,' but its existence currently reaffirms their beliefs that Americans are soulless, sadistic hedonists and hypocrites. So, yes - don't worry about me and my priorities. On the other hand, I'm simply a news- and politics-addicted Canadian and it's hard enough to battle my own conservative government, let alone assist all that much in helping Americans take their country back from closed-minded, egomaniacal imperialists.
but then Rush Limbaugh (you know; that fat, sack-of-shit pedophile who personifies the "drive-by media" he so loves to talk about) will be stuck with a bunch of his "Club Gitmo" t-shirts..
anyways it's too late 'cuz the rest of the world already sees what we're all about:
we're a nation of hypocritical torturers.. thank the pRESIDENT for that.
LOL, the headline in a recent issue of the Onion read "Bush prepares for last year of the nation"
game, set, match.
Nicole, thank you for posting Mike Gravel's comments.
You say "Mike Gravel has a slightly more extreme answer".
These days, rationality is extreme. It's all a matter of contrast.
The cost of blowing up these torture centers in IRAQ - let's say it costs us $100,000 in bombs. Even $1 Million.
A SMALL price to pay to send a message to the world that WE HAVE CHANGED.
That is, unless you like 'Murca just the way she is.
Mark Richards @ 79:
Right. 'If you don't support blowing up Guantanamo Bay, you hate America!'
I cannot even fathom how such a ludicruous idea is seen as 'rational,' but it does explain a lot about the US.
I love listening to Gravel's rants. He doesn't stand a chance but he has managed to get some hard reality in front of the public that most wouldn't hear or want to hear, nice job.
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