Democratic lawmakers to work on shutting down Guantanamo: Senate amendment would grant legal rights

[DeepModem Mom]

USA TODAY: Lawmakers to work on shutting down Guantanamo facility
Senate amendment would grant legal rights to detainees
By Richard Willing

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress plan to push measures to stop funding for the Guantanamo Bay detention center and grant new legal rights to detainees when Congress returns this week.

"As long as Guantanamo stays open, it undermines our defining principles as a nation of equal justice under law," said Rep Jim Moran, D-Va., author of a funding proposal that would give the Bush administration six months to close the Cuban facility....

Moran says he will propose that funding for Guantanamo, pegged at $150 million a year, be phased out and that most of the estimated 375 detainees be brought to the USA and tried in civilian or military courts. In a bow to (Defense Secretary) Gates, Moran will propose that the government be permitted to hold a small number of the "worst of the worst" detainees without bringing charges....

***

In the Senate, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., plans to attach to a defense spending bill an amendment that would grant detainees the right to challenge their detentions through habeas corpus petitions, spokesman David Carle said. A law passed by Congress last year eliminated habeas corpus rights for detainees. The defense bill is to be taken up by the full Senate on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Two other Democratic senators, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Dianne Feinstein of California, have filed bills that would close Guantanamo, Harkin spokeswoman Jennifer Mullin said....

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070709/a_gitmo09.art.htm

[bryant69]

1. That paper must be from an alternate univers

Our Democratic law makers would never do anything like that; they are too busy selling out and taking stuff off the table.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[sharp_stick]

2. So even good news pissed you off today huh?

Jesus this whining is getting out of hand. Does it always get like this between election cycles around here.

[bryant69]

3. It was intended as a joke but guess i didn't fine tune it right. n/t

[sharp_stick]

4. Sorry, I must have missed it

It seems like every time I turn around in this place recently people are calling Pelosi a traitor. I think it's made me a little touchy. It's not even this bad at the land of the freepers.

[Solly Mack]

5. Will moving the people elsewhere stop the abuses?

Will it result in those who implemented a torture policy being held accountable?

For the knee-jerkers: I never once said GTMO shouldn't be closed.

If I snatch and grab people illegally, detain them illegally, torture them, deny them due process for years, violate both international and federal law at every turn, set up mock trials and sham justice to make others feel better - and then one day close my doors and move some of the people to another location and say, "let's put them on trial here" - am I suddenly not guilty of past abuses?

I'm still guilty - regardless of where my victims end up. My "image" is still in tatters. That "defining principles as a nation of equal justice under law" has still been undermined - and the damage has still been done.

Closing GTMO isn't enough - accountability is demanded.

Closing GTMO is but a step in a process that will never be completed until there is FULL accountability for ALL the abuses and violations of law.

and these so-called "worst of the worst" - what about them? They're bad so they don't deserve equal protection under the law? They don't deserve a hearing? They don't deserve to be treated decently and humanly? It's OK to deny them due process? That's an acceptable compromise? Bush and Cheney can hold those people indefinitely and they can be abused and tortured because they are the "worst of the worst"?

How we treat people - even the "worst of the worst" is a measure of our national character.

If we deny even those we find repulsive equal protection under the law, we are no better than what we claim to despise.

We can't just close GTMO and pretend the abuses and the crimes all just went away. We can't pretend closing GTMO means the torture and the abuse and the violations are over.

Close GTMO - yes....but don't once think that's the end of it. That it will all just go away or that America's image will improve without accountability...because it won't.

It's a start - but only a start.