More than 50% of all captives turned out to be innocent image:37416:0::0

Last Thursday the ever secretive Bush administration asked the Supreme Court to help them cover up details of their shameful treatment of prisoners claiming that the lower court's order that they provide evidence to support their claim that the prisoners are so called "enemy combatants."

This is a great embarrassment to the Bush crowd since the majority of prisoners who have been held in this hell hole, often for years, and subjected to abuse and even torture, have turned out to be innocent.

Of the 775 captives held without rights or trial since the opening of this gulag 420 have already been released, it having been discovered that they were, just as they had said, innocent of any crime. Of the 355 remaining captives more than one fifth have also been found innocent but are still being held because U.S. officials are having a hard time finding anywhere to send them.

Among the captives whose detention has proven to be the most shameful for the US were the more than 60 children, some as young as 12, who were held in solitary confinement, repeatedly subjected to brutal interrogation and in some cases tortured. After the news media got wind of the underage captives they were transferred to a separate dormitory -style prison.

Many of the children were later found to be innocent and were released, often having served a year or more in confinement. In many cases the children's families had not even been told of their whereabouts and feared that they were dead.

A former US Army Guantanamo chaplain, James Yee, who told the world of the existence of the child prisoners, and of the torture of suspects he had witnessed, was arrested and held for 76 days by the US on trumped-up charges of "espionage" and denied the rights guaranteed to US citizens under the Constitution. According to Mr Yee:

"I was arrested in secret, held incommunicado. I never showed up at the airport in Seattle like I was supposed to have, where my wife and daughter were waiting. They didn't know what happened to me. My parents in New Jersey had no idea what had happened. I essentially disappeared from society, from the face of the earth."

Mr Yee was held in solitary confinement and subjected to many of the same abuses that the captives at Guantanamo have suffered. Reflecting on his confinement Yee said:

"One of the most ironic parts of this situation is that down in Guantanamo, as the Muslim chaplain, I was able to protect certain religious rights for the alleged, suspected, Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners down in Guantanamo. The point is, I was denied my religious rights as a U.S. citizen in military custody, the very same rights that I was able to uphold for prisoners down in Guantanamo."

Another prisoner who has caused the US extreme embarrassment is Sami Al Haj, better known to the world as Prisoner 345.

Prisoner 345.
The case of Sami al-Hajj has become the center of an world-wide anti-American firestorm whipped up by his illegal detention and brutal treatment. Al-Hajj, a journalist for Al-Jazeera, was arrested in Pakistan in December 2001 while he was traveling with a valid visa and press credentials to report on the war in Afghanistan.

Although listed as an "enemy combatant" it has long been known that Al-Hajj was innocent, but the US continued to hold him anyway because he refused to spy for them against Al-Jazeera or to show what the military considered proper remorse.

Since his arrest Al-Hajj has been subjected to brutal abuse, but the thing that has most inflamed world opinion against the US has been the sheer pettiness of some of the torments that his captors have subjected him to. Severely beaten when he was arrested, he has trouble bending his knees, but for no apparent reason the jailers have decided to remove his doctor-prescribed toilet chair, making it extremely painful for him to use the squat toilet that remains. Al-Hajj, a devout Muslim, has been allowed a Qu'ran, but his glasses were confiscated so he cannot read it.

Sami al-Hajj began a hunger strike over a year ago and since then he has been strapped down twice daily and had a plastic tube shoved up his nose and down his throat to his stomach so that he can be force-fed. The guards often "forget" to use lubricant on the tube so that al-Hajj's nose and throat have been rubbed raw. Sometimes a tube, sill bloody from use on another hunger striker, is used instead of a clean one.

After 2073 days in captivity Sami al-Hajji, who has long been known to be innocent of any crime and is now suffering from kidney, heart and rheumatism problems as a result of his imprisonment, is due to be released from bondage at the end of March.

Now that it is known that hundreds of innocent prisoners, including children, have been held in brutal conditions for years at a time and subjected to torture and humiliation, the Bush administration wants to clamp a news blackout on the gulag to prevent any more embarrassing details from slipping out. This at the same time that they are preparing show trials, which they hope will culminate in executions, carefully timed to coincide with the Presidential elections.

While it is easy to condemn Bush and the other members of his regime for this tremendously shameful and damaging atrocity, the truth of the matter is that we all share in the blame. As Thomas Jefferson put it:
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

The American electorate has remained silent on this travesty for far too long. For a while, following 9/11, we hid behind the threadbare excuse that we needed to give up liberty and justice
and the rule of law in order to protect our security choosing, to our shame, to ignore Benjamin Franklin's warning that:
"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."

Following 9/11 the world rallied to our side. From all around the world came messages of sympathy and support, even from countries not normally friendly to the US. Leaders in most Middle Eastern countries, including Afghanistan, condemned the attacks and in Italy crowds of demonstrators marched to the port in Gaeta where the US 6th fleet is based proudly waving signs which read “Siamo tutti Americani adesso”...”We are all Americans now."

Now, following seven shameful years of the Bush administration, we have lost the moral high ground and the US is more reviled in the world than at any time our history. Bush and his cronies have dragged America's honor in the mud, and yet and there is no evidence that we are one jot more secure today than we were before 9/11.

If anything we are less secure since many of the countries who use to look up to us will no longer share intelligence with our government nor will they extradite prisoners, even those suspected of terrorism, to the US for fear of what we may do with them.

It is enough to make the Statue of Liberty weep for shame.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Thomas Jefferson