LA Times: Signs that Guantanamo may be closed because of BAD PR!!!

[Nothing Without Hope]

How touching that the self-described moral Christians of the Administration are so moved by the plight of tortured prisoners with no recourse to lawyers or indeed to ANY legal constraint that they are apparently putting up trial balloons for closing Guantanamo. Just kidding - the actual stated reason for the potential closing: all those abuse reports have created "a public relations problem." Yeah, those guys really do have the corner on the "Culture of Life" market. :sarcasm:

OF COURSE there's no administration interest in humanity or legality, or even in exposing the truth - quite the opposite, I'd imagine. But also consider this: If the prison is closed and records and evidence destroyed, many potentially charged war criminals in the Bush administration might be able to breathe easier. THAT'S what I suspect is a major contributing factor to these considerations. Besides, as I explain below, it's not like Guantanamo is their only prison facility, and it's proven to be rather too visible to those who give a damn about human rights and the rule of law.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo13jun13.story
June 13, 2005 latimes.com
THE NATION

Support for Guantanamo Eroding in Bush's Circle

Some think preserving the prison for suspected terrorists isn't worth the bad public relations over reports of abuse, a GOP lawmaker says.

By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Some Bush administration officials have come to believe the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be closed because reports of abuse have created a public relations problem, a senior Republican lawmaker said Sunday.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the administration was divided on the issue, with some officials taking the view that if the facility was shut down, "you shorten the stories, you shorten the heated debate, and you get it off the table and you move on."

Hunter's comments on "Fox News Sunday" were the latest sign that the White House was considering a step that would require it to find other accommodations for about 520 detainees.

After former President Carter urged the closure of the camp and Amnesty International referred to it as a "gulag for our time," President Bush and his aides indicated last week that they were weighing options.

(snip)

But don't worry that they won't have plenty of places to torture and kill as much as they want. Remember that the CIA routinely kidnaps people from wherever they want and flies them in those "ghost planes" owned by shell companies to countries where those pesky human rights organizations can't watch. Outsourcing torture - what smart neocon needs the embarrassment and potential legal consequences of Guantanamo? Ship 'em to where they'll NEVER be found even if they survive.

It's called "extraordinary rendition," and it is a great national scandal that so far has gone almost unreported in this country - but is notorious in the rest of the world. Here is just one story on it. ( Later this week I will post another thread with many informational links including an audio file of a BBC Radio broadcast on it.) In the meantime, here's an article by an authority on extraordinary rendition by the CIA, the British investigative journalist Stephen Grey:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1740193

Finally, please note this very telling paragraph:
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the administration was divided on the issue, with some officials taking the view that if the facility was shut down, "you shorten the stories, you shorten the heated debate, and you get it off the table and you move on."

TRANSLATION: Close the prison and everybody will forget about the abuses. The TV news will be safely back to 100% "pervert-of-the-day" coverage and no one will give a flying damn for the people tortured and killed in Guantanamo and the Administration's other torture farms. Political salvation courtesy of the short attention span of the US TV viewer.

Well, friends? Are we going to let these unspeakable criminals get away with burying what they did?

[radfringe]

1. it's confusion from the GITMO

when the reich hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing...."

Cheney: U.S. Not Aiming To Close Guantanamo
Other GOP Leaders Say Prison Is a Liability
By Marc Kaufman -- Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 13, 2005; Page A02

Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the administration has no plans to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as some prominent Democrats have recommended, but other Republicans said that reports of mistreatment of prisoners there have made the prison a growing global liability.

Additional information about aggressive interrogation tactics at Guantanamo surfaced yesterday that could heighten the debate further.

In remarks to be broadcast today on Fox News, Cheney said the administration was reviewing its options at the prison "on a continuous basis." But he defended its track record, saying, "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people."

-------snip-------

But Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said that the situation in Guantanamo is one reason the United States is "losing the image war around the world," and that closing the prison could help in that contest.

"It's identifiable with, for right or wrong, a part of America that people in the world believe is a power, an empire that pushes people around, we do it our way, we don't live up to our commitments to multilateral institutions," Hagel told CNN's "Late Edition." He said Defense Department leaders have not taken responsibility for the excesses at the prison, which have included controversial harsh treatment of prisoners and desecrations of the Koran.

==============

MEANWHILE.....back at the ranch..........

President calls shuttering camp an 'alternative'; Rumsfeld says it's not under consideration.
By Jennifer Loven - Associated Press

WASHINGTON: President Bush on Wednesday left open the possibility that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be shut down.

"We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America," Bush told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto in an interview.

----snip----

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know of anyone in the administration who was considering closing Guantanamo. The military provides "a stable and secure and safe environment," he told reporters traveling with him in Norway. "Information gained from detainees there has saved the lives of people from our country and from other countries."

==================================================

why do I feel like it's a hokey-POKEY?
Everybody SING!!!! (or is that Sing-Sing?)
You keep the Gitmo open, You close the Gitmo down, you keep the Gitmo open and then you shut it all down. Do the hokey-POKEY, spin it all around - lieing is what it's all about....

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. Great post!!! They really are a pack of criminal fools. And I do think

some of them are starting to wonder if destroying the evidence in addition to getting it off the TV might not be a wise precaution.

And talk about disingenuous! Cheney saying " "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people." How does he know? They're not charged and are not tried. Oh wait - it's that FAITH thing. Sort of the opposite of "faith-based healing" - it's "faith-based torture and killing and raping."

It enrages me to speechlessness to see these monsters in their expensive suits and imported silk ties, their jowls all neatly shaved, expounding on TV and being taken not only seriously, as if they actually tell the truth, but deferentially by the Poodle Press.

[radfringe]

3. the "excuses" are pretty lame and getting lamer by the minute

first they denied torture occured
- it was like a fraternity prank,
-- a "few bad apples"
--- it was Newsweeks fault
---- Prisoners making up stories
----- "...the wind did it..."

however - do I think closing GITMO will stop the abuses? No, the abuses will just continue elsewhere and then what? Close down another prison and move the abuses again....

the issue is not GITMO itself - it's the torture and abuse that is occuring.

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Yes, the administration just wants to hide it in another place.

Read about extraordinary rendition and you'll see - they don't NEED Guanatanamo for their torture games.

Part of the horror of all this is that they IGNORED INTELLIGENCE (that did NOT come from torture) on the 9/11 attacks. And obtaining "evidence" by torture is totally unreliable anyway, even if you don't have a soul that is wounded by it. If the neocon torture-booster-roosters were challenged to give a list of truly vital information obtained by torture that could not be obtained otherwise, I'm betting that list would be damned short if it contained anything at all. It's all a horrible, unspeakable, heartbreaking waste that has corrupted America's soul, not to mention the reputation for generations to come.

I did a Google News search on "Guantanamo" and you're so right - talk about mixed signals! Cheney is braying loudest about keeping Guantanamo - he really likes it and has the biggest GOD-complex about his invulnerability and the inevitability of his plans for permanent global domination and US dictatorship being successful. I believe he is a megalomaniac, truly insane as well as evil. There is NOTHING he wouldn't do if it advanced his aims, and he can't imagine being defeated. Very, very dangerous.

[radfringe]

5. This is not unlike bush*s other policies

all he does is shift the problem to another area, passes the buck, and blames everyone else

NO ACCOUNTABILITY - TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY.

meanwhile - specific to the Gitmo open/close confusion -- makes you wonder who's really in charge...

on edit: As we've seen with the energy policy, the drug bill, and environmental issues et al -- policy/legislation is dictated to the bushies from special corporations. GITMO is no different.

Question - who would benefit the most in terms of $$$$ if GITMO stayed open or closed?

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. It's not like plundering Social Security or those tax breaks for the rich

or the war profiteering elsewhere. I really think there's so much slush and so little oversight in Iraq and the other foreign theaters that GITMO isn't that huge a cash cow compared to other places. I've never really understood why they have it - to manufacture "terra-ist evidence"? Do they believe their own propaganda?

But who knows, maybe there's more money in Torture R US© than I realize. Their greed indeed knows no bounds and there is no lower limit to the depths of their depravity.

[radfringe]

7. like Nixon - Watergate .... follow the money

Who Keeps Tabs on Contractors in Iraq?
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer
Sun Jun 12, 1:15 PM ET

There is no centralized procedure for monitoring scores of contracting firms rebuilding Iraq with U.S. funds, according to the military. The controls that do exist have been criticized for failing to keep track of millions.

Instead, most contracts are monitored by the individual agencies that award them. The Army Corps of Engineers, for example, which issues the bulk of reconstruction work, has its own inspectors and quality assurance monitors. The U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency provides oversight on behalf of the Army for troop support contracts — private firms that do everything from serving meals to washing combat fatigues.

---snip---

Last month, investigators said incompetence and "indications of fraud" was responsible for nearly $100 million in cash not being accounted for by the CPA. That amount included more than $7 million that simply vanished, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, appointed in January 2004 to serve as a U.S. government watchdog for Iraqi reconstruction.

=============

Banned Contractor Soliciting Iraq Deals
"They are extremely clever. They are extremely brazen. They've never let truth get in the way of their economic ambitions."
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer
Sun Jun 12, 1:15 PM ET

Former executives of Custer Battles — an American firm accused of stealing millions from Iraq reconstruction projects and banned from further government contracts — have continued doing contracting work and have formed new companies to bid on such projects, The Associated Press has learned.

This may or may not be illegal, military officials say; Custer Battles officials deny any wrongdoing.

The new companies (there are at least three) are all headed by Rob Roy Trumble, who previously was operations chief for Custer Battles, according to state records.

[Nothing Without Hope]

12. These are great links! Thank you for posting them. They are

definitely going on my keeper list! (I have a collecting file called "GOP horrors and scandals." I also have another called "Iraq Lies." Decisions, decisions...)

[radfringe]

8. cross linking posts

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1851445

[understandinglife]

9. The simple answer - NO!

Nominated.

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[derby378]

10. Did the Nazis close Treblinka because of bad PR?

Hell, no. Matter of fact, they wanted Treblinka kept relatively secret.

It was Jewish prisoners and partisans who shut down Treblinka the way all the concentration camps should have been - they blew up the crematoriums and took as many Nazis as they could with them.

[Nothing Without Hope]

11. kick n/t

[gratuitous]

13. It's not the crimes against humanity

It's the bad PR!

Besides, who pays attention to musty old documents like the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions anymore?

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. kick! n/t

[realFedUp]

15. Read Erik Saar and Viveca Novak's book Inside the Wire

Good firsthand accounts of what's really
going on inside Gitmo.

[Nothing Without Hope]

16. Another fine related post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x131621
Thread title: “Close GITMO prison and the flowers will come back.”

[Nothing Without Hope]

17. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

18. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

19. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

20. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

21. kick - too bad the Bushies who advocate torture and mock the

Geneva Conventions can't spend some time as a Guantanamo guest under an imposed false name like "Ali" or "Mohammed."