Stop the bleeding: Shut down Guantanamo Bay

Before you believe White House propaganda about the military prison at Guantanamo Bay serving as an essential front in the war on terror, consider the latest evidence.

According to official prison logs, Mohammed al-Qahtani, a suspected terrorist from Saudi Arabia, was forcibly injected with three and half bags of fluid. He was stripped nude and made to get down on all fours and bark like a dog. He was forced to wear pictures of scantily clad women hung around his neck, then held down on the floor while a female soldier straddled his chest (a religious affront to devout Muslims). And when he told interrogators he had to relieve himself, they made him wet his pants.

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News of Qahtani's treatment follows release of an e-mail from an FBI agent, sent to investigate conditions at Guantanamo Bay:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more.

The U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay has been a problem installation from day one. It was created in 1898, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, when we seized Cuba from Spain. It is the only U.S. base today in a communist country, and the only one in a country that doesn't want us. Castro, in fact, refuses to cash the $4,000 annual rent check he receives from the United States.

Originally, detention centers at Guantanamo Bay were built to house Cuban and Haitian refugees caught trying to sneak into the United States. But in 2002, the Pentagon selected Gitmo as the perfect place to store suspected terrorists rounded up in Afghanistan. Why? Because it was totally controlled by the United States, yet located on foreign soil. Therefore, argued then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, American laws did not apply. There was no need to offer detainees any legal protection or even treat them as prisoners of war. They were called "enemy combatants" instead.

The Supreme Court rejected that argument, but the Bush administration still refuses to budge. So today, Guantanamo Bay is a big black eye on the face of the United States, contradicting everything we supposedly stand for – in terms of human rights, human decency and respect for the law. No wonder Amnesty International has branded it "the gulag of our times." Some 550 prisoners have been held there for over three years with no charges filed, no chance to see a lawyer and no opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law. And many have been subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Vice President Dick Cheney defends the administration's policies, telling Sean Hannity on Fox News: "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are in Guantanamo are bad people." He's dead wrong. Even the Pentagon admits that 40 percent of the original prison population didn't belong there in the first place. They weren't terrorists. They were innocent citizens of Afghanistan or, later, Iraq identified as al-Qaida sympathizers by bounty-hunting countrymen. So far, over 200 have been released. And in three years, not one Guantanamo prisoner has been charged with – let alone convicted of – terrorism.

Worse yet, stories from Guantanamo Bay now serve today as al-Qaida's best recruitment tools. Forget all the rhetoric about freedom. Show young Muslims the way we treat prisoners at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib and they're ready to sign up immediately – for the war against Americans.

Houston, we've got a problem – a serious image problem around the world. If we deny it, like Dick Cheney, or ignore it, like George W. Bush, it's only going to get worse. Instead, we must fix the problem – fast. As recommended by Democrats Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter and Republican Mel Martinez, it's time to close the military prison at Guantanamo, move all remaining prisoners to a military base on American soil, and begin to follow international law governing prisoners of war.

To me, that's the most important consideration of all. Reread the evidence of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Then ask yourself: Is this the way we would want American prisoners of war to be treated? If your answer is no, there's only one answer: Shut Gitmo down!