Extra

On Jan. 11, 2002 leaflets were dropped by the U.S. Military offering rewards to Afghani and Pakistanis to identify suspected terrorists. The locals wishing to settle scores or accept generous bounties were only too willing to oblige. Hundreds were scooped up by local militia men and delivered to U.S. forces. Bush and Cheney were thrilled at the remarkable “success” of the program. What followed was a dark period in which the U.S. Military and CIA descended into the most barbaric forms of torture to extract “confessions” using "ticking time bomb" scenarios dramatized on the television show "24." The prisoners were sent to black torture sites to soften them up for “confessions” to satisfy US domestic anger following the 9/11 attacks. Prisoners ended up in Gitmo where many continue to languish. None of the prisoners were ever charged with a crime. They were identified as “enemy combatants” and unprotected from habeas corpus. A few were designated “forever prisoners” lest they share the horrors of their internment to the general public which would further erode U.S. standing in the world and make a complete mockery of our claim to be a moral force for good. Successive military commissions found no evidence of crimes committed and were profoundly disturbed by the total absence of any form of jurisprudence. 

The photograph of 20 prisoners on their knees has been seized by our adversaries to justify barbaric acts of violence. Protesters often don orange jump suits and re-enact and mock America’s war on terror. Islamic State fighters used the photo to don their hostages in bright orange clothing, before executing them. 

A former National Security Agency contractor leaked a government document which revealed that classification is routinely used to “conceal wrong doing”, a strategy that has been used to silence whistleblowers, most notably Julian Assange. 

In a recent Senate testimony, Mr. Lehnert, who retired as a major general, called the Gitmo enterprise he had set up misguided, at odds with U.S. values. He urged that it be closed. Subsequent footage had been broadcast from Afghanistan showing U.S. soldiers leading prisoners in rags, with bags on their heads. 

In her 2006 memoir, “Lipstick on a Pig”, Victoria Clarke, Mr. Rumsfeld’s spokeswoman, wrote “the Geneva Conventions strictly prohibit holding detainees up to public ridicule or humiliation. 

“Shaved and Confused,” screamed a headline accompanying the GITMO photo in Glasgow’s Sunday Herald. “Even Our Enemies Have Human Rights,” declared London’s Sunday Independent. “Guantánamo Scandal,” was the title of a blurb on the front page of Le Monde. The Mirror tabloid questioned the alliance between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Mr. Bush. “What are you doing in our name, Mr. Blair?”  

The cost of these “never charged forever prisoners” “is $13 million per prisoner per year, an appalling waste of taxpayers’ dollars. 

The remaining “forever prisoners” are often called “the worst of the worst” a more apt description for their torturers and the politicians who gave the orders. 

It is time to bring this satanic chapter in our “war ON terror” to an end, release all remaining prisoners, close down Guantánamo Bay prison and return it to its rightful owners, the Cuban government. It has left a terrible, indelible dark stain on America’s stature in the world.