No sale, dude. Bush made Gitmo what it is, Obama tried unsuccessfully to dismantle it, is now making noises about trying again. It BELONGS to Bush, now and forever, just like the massacre at Little Big Horn belongs to Custer.
I totally agree. But in 2009 we were releasing detainees cleared for release. I try not to roll my eyes about how Obama phrases it, but lets just release them already.
He still didn’t address the detainees not cleared for release.
From a non-political point of view, the answer is simple.
Put on trial those that there is reasonable evidence against (Apparently only a handful.)
Release all the others to where they want to go under no limitations (There are far more dangerous terrorists than any of them living all over the world already.
Apologise for the lapse in morals.
Close Guantanamo.
But it is US politics that is getting in the way.
The country they would be released to must be willing to accept them. There are a lot of European countries who publicly speak out against Guantanamo, but ask them to take the detainees - well, privately they’d say they’re doing just fine in Guantanamo.
There is a British (resident) detainee still at Guantanomo. Bush (2007) and Obama (2009) cleared him for release. Publicaly, Britian wants him back, and yet for six years he hasn’t left. If they are dragging their feet on him, there’s no way they are taking anyone else.
The situation with that detainee is very complex- it is not certain where the hold up is.
His name is Shaker Aamer and conflicting evidence suggest that both the US and UK have and have not agreed his release. I suspect collusion to keep their own political difficulties in check.
The British Position:
"Officials from the Foreign Office said the UK will continue to press for the return of the last British citizen held in Guantanamo.
Alistair Burt, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said continued detention of Shaker Aamer by the US was unacceptable.
“The United Kingdom will argue that [Aamer’s] detention is wrong,” he said.
In a telling moment, Burt appeared to let slip that he knows why US authorities are holding Aamer.
“I have a supposition, but it’s not a detail I can go in to,” the minister admitted.
Burt also revealed the detainee had been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia, although his lawyer – Clive Stafford Smith of the prisoners’ rights group Reprieve – said Aamer was unaware that he was only cleared for the Middle Eastern country.
Aamer is a Saudi national, UK permanent resident and married to a British citizen. He has been detained in Guantanamo for more than 11 years.
Battersea MP Jane Ellison, who led the debate, admitted she did not know why Aamer was in Afghanistan at time of his detainment, but said his return had become more urgent due to the hunger strike he started in failing health in February."
Serious questions have been raised over the British government’s commitment to securing the release of the Guantánamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer, after a senior US lawmaker was told by the Pentagon that the UK was in “no rush” to get him out.
Aamer, a British resident, has been held at the controversial detention camp for 11 years, despite never having been tried or charged with any crime. He has been cleared for release on two separate occasions, but remains behind bars as the last Briton at the camp.
The issue of his continued incarceration has seemingly become a sore point between the UK and US governments. The British government maintains it is committed to getting Aamer out of Guantánamo. Over the last two weeks, foreign secretary William Hague and defence secretary Philip Hammond have lobbied their US counterparts – secretary of state John Kerry and defense secretary Chuck Hagel – over Aamer, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
But the official UK line has seemingly been undermined by the Pentagon, with officials reportedly briefing that Britain’s commitment to the detainee’s release is half-hearted.
The senior senator from New Mexico, Tom Udall, enquired into the status of Aamer after being lobbied by his supporters. What he was told by an official at the Department of Defense’s legislative affairs division differs substantially from the long-held British line that UK officials are focused on Aamer’s release.
An email seen by the Guardian from Udall’s chief of staff, Michael Collins, to advocacy group Code Pink’s founder Medea Benjamin suggests that UK commitment is less than full-throttled. Collins states: “We were told that the UK is not exactly in a rush to get him and Saudi Arabia [the place of Aamer’s birth] … isn’t interested either.”.
Speaking to the Guardian over the weekend, Hammond vehemently denied that interpretation of British efforts. In regards to the “no rush” claim, the minister said: “That is not the position of the UK government. Every time I meet with my US counterpart I always raise the case of Shaker Aamer and I will do so again when I meet him in Singapore [for the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference] and at the upcoming Nato meeting.”
“Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.”
So opens Franz Kafka’s masterpiece The Trial. From this first sentence onwards, Josef K. is prosecuted by a remote and inaccessible government who will not reveal the nature of his crime. What ensues is a nightmare tale of frustration, anxiety and loneliness.
Shaker Aamer, a 46-year-old Saudi national and permanent resident of the UK has been held by the US government in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for more than 11 years without being charged.
He is now one of the last detainees still held at the facility, out of a total of 779 brought there from around the world since 2002.
He has been cleared for transfer on two separate occasions by the US government - in 2007 when the Bush administration conceded they had no evidence against him and again in 2009. Nearly four years later he remains in Guantanamo Bay and is currently on a hunger strike with 62 other inmates.
In regard to the treatment he has been subjected to since the strike, Aamer has been reported saying to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, “They are killing us, so it is hard to keep calm…in reality I am dying inside.”
In a House of Commons debate this week, Jane Ellison - MP for Battersea in South London where Aamer’s British wife and four children live - called his incarceration, “The ultimate stain on democracy.” She argued: “A man should know why he is being deprived of his liberty and what he must do to win it back.” She was supported by other MPs who compared Mr Aamer’s treatment to that of Soviet gulag prisoners in the Cold War.
America’s use of Guantanamo Bay has been the focus of widespread, international condemnation since it was established in 2002 by the Bush administration. In 2009, at the start of his term of office, President Obama pledged to close the interrogation facility down within one year. At the end of that year, with the detention centre still open and running, Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with the words: “I believe the USA must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight.”
During his 11 years of detention, Shaker Aamer has been tortured, kept for more than 1,000 nights in a windowless isolation cell, starved, forced to remain awake for nine consecutive days and chained into positions that made moving unbearably painful.
Caroline Lucas MP (Green) spoke in the Commons debate of the USA’s decision to limit the release of Aamer to Saudi Arabia as “irrational”. She highlighted the fact that Britain has an exemplary record for taking in prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, all of whom are successfully integrated back into society, suggesting this leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that, “The only possible reason for sending Shaker to Saudi Arabia is to stop him from speaking out about his abuse - abuse in which the UK authorities have been complicit.” She went on to say, “It is not enough to sit back and blame the US authorities when so many questions about the UK’s role remain unanswered.”
Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, made only a limited response to points made by MPs in the debate, his reason being some of the questions posed referred to confidential discussions and intelligence matters.
He did make clear, “The UK Government believes that the continued detention of Shaker Aamer without charge or trial is wrong, and we will continue to do all in our power to return him to the United Kingdom.”
He pointed out, however that, “Any decision regarding Mr Aamer’s release ultimately remains in the hands of the USA Government.”
As campaigners and human rights groups have argued, despite complications surrounding US funds for transfers, Obama does have the power to resolve certain cases, such as Shaker Aamer’s. Amnesty International maintained, earlier this year, that resolving Aamer’s case would be a symbolic step for Obama, demonstrating that he has not reneged on his commitment to closing Guantanamo Bay.
Not to interfere with the flow of conversation but I’m curious as to how any ruler of any nation can end a war that the other side does not also wish to end. Exactly how does that work? We give up so you can just stop blowing stuff up and killing folks and if it’s convenient please stop doing it in all the other countries you are doing it in?
Do you really believe that will work? It’s not like it was working before war was declared. Why then will it work when we say “you win”?
No interference at all. pjen’s last post just compliments mine.
You’re making the reverse, but just as credible argument, that it takes two. First, we only care about the US. If we can prevent attacks on the US without being in a constant state of war against the enemy, then we can disengage from actively fighting them.
So to answer your question, we end the war against al Qaeda by stopping proactively killings them and just trying to prevent future attacks. Obama could still use drone strikes against credible imminent threats. On a scale of 1-10 it be like going from 7 to 4 (5 being the war threshold).
When you become president, all the problems are yours; especially those that you specifically new about.
We can say that morally Bush carries that larget blame, but when constitutional scholar Barack Obama ran for president he knew exactly what the problem was. Heck, I knew what the problem was and that closing that facility was not feasable and that good ol’ Barry O. was lying when he promised closing it or solving the issue.
“I didn’t create this problem and therefore am blameless for any of its consequences” would be acceptable if Obama had been drafted as president and not run and elected.
Nope. One is a battle that happened once, ever, on one specific point in time. The other is a perpetual system of behavior. Bush deserves credit for what he did–start it and maintain it throughout his Presidency. He is not at all responsible for how Obama has chosen to handle it.
How likely is this scenario (as an explanation for why we can’t just release all those detainees that we are unable to charge):
We’ve posed certain questions to certain detainees that, were it discovered that those questions had been asked, might reveal still viable sources of information? The detainee himself isn’t a criminal, per-se, but is informed enough to answer the questions that we took him to ask?
It’s a red herring. It’s completely unacceptable to indefinitely imprison innocent people because “they know too much”.