LET THE INSPECTIONS WORK!

(cross-posted to the Pro-Lifers for Peace and Justice blog)

Last year, when the United Nations wanted to inspect the U. S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, they were told by the Pentagon that they would not be allowed to speak directly with the prisoners. This is contrary to the principle of "unfettered inspections" that President Bush held up as a standard in his speech on Iraq on October 7, 2002:

inspectors must have access to any site, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions.

Rather than settle for the limited inspection, the UN declined the offer and made their investigation instead based on information from "former Guantanamo detainees, their lawyers and families, and U. S. officials." (link)

And now the United States is claiming that they can refute the UN report, which calls for closure of Guantanamo.   Their justification?

    State Department spokesman Sean McCormack complained the authors wrote the report without seeing the prison.

'When people hear these press reports about these outcomes and when they actually view the final report, I would urge them to look at it in the context of the fact that nobody who wrote this report actually went to Guantanamo,' McCormack said.

If the United States wants to truly refute the claims of the UN report, we should do so by allowing unfettered inspections. Access to anyone, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions. As we liberals have said in the past: Let the inspectors do their job.

Comments

[Drina]

Joan, you do realize that by demanding that the US do what the president promised, we liberals are actually giving aid and comfort to terrorists, right?

In all seriousness, I think that unfettered inspections are the only hope for the US to gain even the slightest shred of credibility when it comes to Guantanamo. Without them, the world will continue to beleive (and rightfully so) that our government should never be trusted.