a propaganda tool for recruiting terrorists
US senator: Shut down Guantanamo
A leading Senate Democrat has said the United States needs to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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A Pentagon report released Friday detailed incidents in which US guards at Guantanamo desecrated the Quran. Last month, Amnesty International called the detention center for alleged terrorists "the gulag of our time," a charge Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed as "reprehensible".
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"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat.
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Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that an independent commission take a look at Guantanamo and make recommendations.
"But the end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners," he told ABC's "This Week" television programme.
"Those that we have reason to keep, keep. And those we don't, let go."
moving one of those prisoners
In other words, Biden wants to close one prison rather than deal with the fact that the entire policy is reprehensible. Is this:
[a] the first step in a plan that could end the absurd and offensive policies of the current administration,
[b] a "limited hang-out", a small concession to all of humanity intended to divert our attention from the much larger problem, or
[c] mere grandstanding by an idiot who thinks he can get re-elected by appealing to the twisted sympathies of those who don't realize that torturing innocent human beings is a worthy endeavor which shows quite clearly that bush is, as he says, spreading freedom to the world?
Some would say that if the answer isn't [a] then this news won't help anything, since there's no sense taking down one island if you leave the rest of the archipelago intact.
Others would say the mere mention of Guantanamo, in less than glowing terms, on national television, is a moral victory.
Which shows how far we have fallen!