The legal chaos surrounding the Guantanamo detainees - just about all of whom are "smallfry" foot soldiers or simply bystanders who got swept up in the military operations in Afghanistan - has become a severe source of embarrassment. The problem the Bush government has is, quiet simply, how does it make this problem go away? It can't release the detainees because that would be admitting that they never had any case for holding them in the first place, unless the prisoner agrees to plead guilty in return for their freedom (that is precisely what happened in April with the Australian detainee, David Hicks). It can't try them in anything other than the most blatant of kangaroo courts which they are having trouble creating in the U.S. So what to do?
Well obviously here is the answer. Make detainees so miserable that they take their own lives. Its not as if it hasn't happened many times before. Ah, but there is an insidious side to this! Obviously these terrorists are engaged in terrorism when they commit suicide. As the IHT soberly reports:
The former commander of the detention facilities, Rear Admiral Harry Harris of the U.S. Navy, described earlier suicides as acts of "asymmetric warfare" - an effort to increase condemnation of the prison.
Devious, these terrorists, aren't they?
IZ
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