esrosedotblog

GITMO FOREVER

I must admit that when it comes to daily outrages, the facility and the inmates of Guantanamo Bay is pretty low on my list.

This is a pretty good article of how things stand. And stand. And stand.

And probably will stand until the inmates, presently incarcerated, have all died. Or close to.

Obama's Guantanamo Is Never Going To Close, So Everyone Might As Well Get Comfortable

Well, it is not Obama's. It is mine and yours. Ours.

Yes, he promised to close it but "they" wouldn't let him. Who they? Congress of both parties, the courts, any place they thought of putting them (NOMBY) and so on.

There are 166 people currently imprisoned, down from a high of 684 in 2003. But those who remain are likely to do so indefinitely. Effectively banned from the continental U.S. by Congress, disowned by their home countries and unwelcome pretty much everywhere else, they have no place to go.

This is the hard core. They are either totally terrorists or, in the case of a third of them, the kind of folks that on one wants even though we have no case against them. There are no other countries on earth that want them. None.

I know. There are still some civil liberty nuts who think that they should be released or tried or whatever.

This was always the soft spot of the now defunct "war on terrorism". In a war kind of war with the Geneva Convention rules, prisoners are to be re-patriated at the conclusion of hostilities.

Old, antiquated rules. This is not that kind of war. They are not POW's per se. They are people who got caught or swept up and put where they couldn't harm anyone.

By this time, the part that the Obamas have accomplished is the whittling down, the end of torture, the restoration of humane conditions and the reduction of population down to an irreducible number.

OK with me. How about you?

It has been awhile since I have read anything about some sad case that is still under detention. No one is speaking for them.

Look, these people have had their tickets punched. They are out of the running.

It could be worse for them. They could, in fact, be accepted back into some of the countries who would like to kick their asses, torture them and otherwise punish them without end. For the weepers. Would that be better? No dice.

Actually, I don't think there are any of those either. No one to send back anywhere.

What is amazing is that, at the present time, there are about 5000 Americans at the base. Enough to support a small economy of retail, food and other enterprises.

Those people are stuck there too. I don't know if it is hard duty or not.

Soon, someday, our relations with Cuba will be normalized and the situation will change some. At least the 5000 Americans will be able to smoke a good cigar.

Labels: terrorism