Wow, this is pretty big...
From Reuters:
By Caren Bohan
Wed Jun 14, 2006
1:01pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush acknowledged
on Wednesday that the U.S.
military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
where three detainees committed suicide, has damaged the U.S.
image abroad and said it should be shut down.
But he said a plan for relocating the prisoners was needed
first and he was also awaiting a Supreme Court decision about the forum for
handling detainee cases.
"I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize
that we're holding some people there that are darn dangerous and that we better
have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush told a news conference
in the White House Rose Garden.
He said Guantanamo
is seen by some countries as an example of the United
States not upholding the values it espouses
on human rights.
"No question, Guantanamo
sends, you know, a signal to some of our friends -- provides an excuse, for
example, to say, 'The United States is not upholding the values that they're
trying encourage other countries to adhere to,'" Bush said.
Two Saudis and a Yemeni were found dead at the prison on
Saturday after hanging themselves with clothes and bedsheets.
The suicides were the first prisoner deaths at Guantanamo,
although there have been many previous suicide attempts and hunger strikes
since the United States
began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in 2002.
Guantanamo is
one of several issues that have undermined support abroad and among human
rights groups for Washington's
war on terrorism, declared after the September 11 attacks.
The suicides came amid an investigation of U.S. Marines
after an alleged massacre of two dozen civilians at Haditha,
Iraq, in November 2005
and after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.
Bush, who spoke hours after returning from a surprise visit
to Iraq, said
he was asked about such cases by a member of the Iraqi cabinet. He promised to
deal with the incidents.
"And I reminded her that ours is a transparent society
where people will see and follow these investigations. And people will be held
to account, according to our laws," Bush said.
"But I also want the people to understand, here and
around the world, that 99.9 percent of our troops are honorable, decent people
who are serving our country under difficult conditions," he added.
Nearly all the prisoners at Guantanamo
are being held without charge and some have been detained for more than three
years. The 460 foreigners in the prison were captured mainly in Afghanistan
during the U.S.-led war there to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda after the
September 11 attacks.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on the
legitimacy of special military tribunals set up to try some of the prisoners
for war crimes. Ten detainees face hearings before the tribunals.
Bush said the United States
was also in a difficult position in some cases in which it wants to send
prisoners back to their home countries since such moves have been criticized.
"Of course, sometimes we get criticized for sending
some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature
of the home countries -- a little bit of a Catch-22," Bush said.
He added that a lot of detainees have been sent back
already.
Edited by Empathy - June 14 2006 at 14:56
/PAlogo_v2.gif "Progarchives.com Homepage")
On Guantanamo suicides..
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crimson thing wrote:
My ref (the ODQ) has a somewhat longer version, but the sense is the same.
