Guantanamo Bay

At its peak Guantanamo Bay held over 770 prisoners. Today Guantanamo Bay houses over 200 suspected terrorists. Recently, six prisoners were released after “many years of captivity” without actually ever being formally charged with a crime.

As most of us probably know, there have recently been allegations of “waterboarding” brought up against the United States government in particular reference to Guantanamo Bay. For those of you who do not know, waterboarding is a severe form of torture where the prisoner is held under water for extended periods of time, depriving them of oxygen. This is a tactic that is used by our government in an attempt to gather information from suspected terrorists.

It does not, however, end here. This “torture” that is executed on the detainees is done so without any semblance of due process of law. These men are given no opportunity to represent themselves in a court of law, the phrase “innocent till proven guilty” simply does not apply to people.

My question to you is, that is the supposed greatest country in the world, a country that is supposed to be a shining beacon of hope to other citizens of the world, how is it possible that we allow such atrocities to occur? Are these action not blatant denials of the rights that we, as Americans and citizens of the world, outlined? To what extent to we infringe upon the rights of these individuals at the expense of our “safety”?

The people that have recently been released from Guantanamo Bay were never formally charged of a crime, yet they were held there for years. These are years that these men will never get back, years that could have been spent with wives or children or just living, years that have been brutally and deliberately stripped away. How can we condone this?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/17/gitmo.detainees/index.html