Originally published Thursday, January 6, 2005 at 12:00 AM
E-mail article
Print view
Share
Editorial
An American gulag
The U. S. plan to lock up suspected terrorists for life in secret locations without evidence is a horrifying development. Torturing prisoners, denying them legal safeguards and...
The U.S. plan to lock up suspected terrorists for life in secret locations without evidence is a horrifying development.
Torturing prisoners, denying them legal safeguards and essentially refuting their existence is what rogue regimes and lawless nations do. Reading about it in China's Xinhua News Agency is especially disconcerting. The Bush administration is not only doing all this now, but making systematic plans to create an American gulag of prisons and prisoners without names and cells without numbers. From the old Soviet Union to Communist China to the banana republics of Latin America and Castro's Cuba, that's what others do.
According to reports in The Washington Post, the military and CIA have hundreds of detainees for whom they have no evidence to hold longer or who have exhausted their usefulness as intelligence sources, or never provided any information.
U.S. authorities refuse to let them go or put them in proximity to U.S. civilian or military judicial systems.
The options under study include construction of a special prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Another proposal would transfer Afghan, Saudi and Yemeni detainees from Cuba back to their home countries, where they'd reside in U.S.-built prisons.
Another option is sending detainees to U.S.-friendly third countries where they can be held indefinitely, and tortured if need be, completely out of sight and mind of U.S. laws and nosy human-rights organizations.
Detainees have been held at secret locations ranging from Afghanistan to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and on ships at sea.
Americans were shocked to learn of the torture and abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and subsequent revelations of other, earlier abuses. These new proposals are another departure from the values most Americans believe symbolize their nation at home and abroad.
So what might be the next step: the holding of political prisoners whose views are considered an unspecified and unproven threat to the commonweal? Certainly, that is preposterous. Except that extreme policies predictably debase other standards.
The Post's Dana Priest reported that moving captives to friendly third countries which hold them without question was a technique used in the drug wars. Kingpins would be stashed away for later delivery to U.S. courts. Since 2001, the practice has been used to make sure detainees do not go to court or back to the streets, Priest reported.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress must challenge the administration and hold the Pentagon and CIA responsible for behavior that undermines the values and liberties they profess to protect.
These agencies do not have to operate in the public glare, but they have to be accountable to civilian law and authority. It's an abomination to take prisoners, hold them, and indefinitely deny them access to civilian and military proceedings.
That is not what America stands for, and not what it does.

Entertainment | Top Video | World | Offbeat Video | Sci-Tech
general classifieds
Garage & estate salesFurniture & home furnishings
Sporting goods
just listed
60" Toshiba Television - $400
An elegant and stately Brickwede orignal corner ca - $499
Antique chair original horsehair stuffed Excellent - $225
More listings
POST A FREE LISTING
- Steve Kelley | My treatment of Bedard has been unfair
- Is Washington's tax exemption on bullion a gold mine?
- 747-8 soars smoothly on first outing
- Super Bowl ads: Betty White, Bud Light, big laughs
- Man found shot dead in pickup truck in Seattle
- Sex, drug rumors swirl about N.Y. Gov. Paterson
- Alaska Air dropping Jones Soda beverages, going back to Coca-Cola
- Lewis-McChord soldier charged with abusing 4-year-old over alphabet lesson
- Seattle is first U.S. stop for Picasso exhibit
- Husky Football Blog | Pac-10 expansion to get consideration over next year
- Republicans may be no-shows at health-plan summit
274 - Pac-10 expansion to get consideration over next year
223 - Obama: GOP and Dems together can spur job growth
208 - State Senate votes to clear way for tax increases
201 - Fort Lewis soldier charged with abusing 4-year-old, holding her head in water
193 - Lee undergoes foot surgery
144 - Rivals names Martin one of Pac-10's best recruiters
143 - Belltown boulevard could be completed by early next year
125 - Tobacco ban in Seattle parks affirms citizen right to breathe smoke-free air
77 - White House mocks Sarah Palin from podium
72
- Seattle is first U.S. stop for Picasso exhibit
- 747-8 soars smoothly on first outing
- City, Vulcan push higher South Lake Union height limits
- Commentary: Microsoft's creative destruction
- Snap out of your photo funk: How to make sense of all those piles of images
- Belltown boulevard could be completed by early next year
- Wine Adviser | Oregon's quality pinots join the bargain ranks
- All You Can Eat | Portage chef Vuong Loc takes Cremant space in Madrona
- Jerry Large | Learning not to copy China
- Rigorous college-prep classes skyrocketing in Washington state


