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;void(0)) GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO . . . GLOBAL WARMING see "NATURE" for related links - Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. [...] Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it. [...] Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news. --Michael Asher, Daily Tech, February 26, 2008 - "Something happened on the sun" during the Maunder Minimum, also known as the Little Ice Age, Toon said. "Four to five hundred years ago, glaciers were more extended and they moved southward, there was more sea ice, rivers froze more frequently." Europeans starved en masse when 17th century harvests were devastated by premature winters. "Extreme events occurred during the Maunder Minimum," wrote Neidzwiedz, including "droughts, floods, locust plagues." Yet, "about a thousand years ago, Europeans basked in warmth that nurtured vinyards in Britain and allowed the Norse to colonize Greenland. At roughly the same time, what is now California was baking in centuries- long droughts, dwarfing the mere seven-year droughts of today. Early South American civilizations literally dried up and blew away," writes William K. Stevens on the Global Warming Information Page. [...] Astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics briefed Congressional staffers in 1998 on the sun-climate link, citing recent studies that cast doubt on computer models that base their climate change scenarios on changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. During previous warm periods of the Holocene which occurred 1,000 or more years ago, carbon dioxide levels remained flat and could not have been the cause of warming, Baliunas explained. During the last warm period, the one that gave Greenland its name and allowed grapes to grow in Britain, El Nino events were absent, casting doubt on ocean currents as the cause of climatic warming, she said. --Ron Bain, "If You Can't Stand the Heat...Don't Blame Global Warming" - The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind. --Nigel Calder (1931— ) British science writer and environmentalist. Speech, Earth Day [1969]. - "Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?" By Jim Carlton _The Wall Street Journal_ December 14, 2005 It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning. Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes. In a quarter-century of aerial surveys of the Alaskan coastline before 2004, researchers from the U.S. Minerals Management Service said they typically spotted a lone polar bear swimming in the ocean far from ice about once every two years. Polar- bear drownings were so rare that they have never been documented in the surveys. But in September 2004, when the polar ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of the northern coast of Alaska, researchers counted 10 polar bears swimming as far as 60 miles offshore. Polar bears can swim long distances but have evolved to mainly swim between sheets of ice, scientists say. The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. "Extrapolation of survey data suggests that on the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds," the researchers say in a report set to be released today. While the government researchers won't speculate on why a climate change is taking place in the Arctic, environmentalists unconnected to the survey say U.S. policies emphasizing oil and gas development are exacerbating global warming, which is accelerating the melting of the ice. "For anyone who has wondered how global warming and reduced sea ice will affect polar bears, the answer is simple -- they die," said Richard Steiner, a marine-biology professor at the University of Alaska. [ . . .. ] Some experts say that climate change may indeed be shrinking the ice pack, but they dispute that emissions are the main culprit or that significantly cutting greenhouse gases would really make a difference. "Whether humans are responsible for some, most, or all of the current warming trend in the Arctic, there is no proposal on the table that would actually prevent continued warming or reverse present trends," said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nongovernment organization based in Dallas. "The question is how to adapt to future changes in climate, regardless of the direction or the cause." [. . . ] Previous studies by the U.S. and Canadian governments support a link between the decline in sea ice in the Arctic and the ways polar bears try to adapt to their surroundings. For example, researchers say polar bears in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska and Canada used to spend most of their lives jumping from ice floe to ice floe in pursuit of seals. Only pregnant bears would occasionally wander onto the mainland, in search of a den. But weekly aerial surveys by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show that, over the past five years, an unusually large number of bears have congregated along the beaches. Between the coastal town of Barrow, Alaska and the Canadian border, about 300 miles east, researchers counted as many as 200 bears on land, said Scott Schliebe, director of the Fish and Wildlife's polar-bear project. Many bears could be seen gathered around whale carcasses near villages like Kaktovik, which lies in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where the Bush administration is pushing for drilling. Scientists measured the distances from where the bears were gathered to the nearest ice sheets at sea and found this correlation: The farther the ice was from shore, the larger the number of bears were found on land. Scientists estimate there are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears world-wide, including about 2,000 that frequent the Beaufort Sea off Alaska. The latest population study by federal officials, in 1997, suggested the Alaskan bear population wasn't endangered. An update is expected by the end of next year. [ . . . ] - There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas — parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia — where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. [...] A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972. To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 — years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City. [...] Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality. --"The Cooling World" - by Peter Gwynne [28 April 1975] _Newsweek_ & see: This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. --Lowell Ponte Libertarian radio talk show host. _The Cooling_ [1976] & see: If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. --Kenneth E.F. Watt (1929- ) On air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day [1970]. - Environmentalists who claim global warming has caused an increase in U.S. hurricane activity obviously haven't checked with the National Hurricane Center, which has kept statistics on major storms over the last 150 years. That's probably because those statistics yield one inescapable conclusion: If global warming has had any impact at all on hurricane activity, it's lessened — not increased — the frequency of major hurricanes. From 1901 till 1950 — when the U.S. economy was a fraction of its current size and fossil fuel consumption was next to nil — there were 34 hurricanes rated at Category 3, 4 or 5 in size on the Saffir Simpson scale. In the latter half of the twentieth century — when U.S. manufacturing exploded, automobile use skyrocketed and rampant consumerism was the order of the day, hurricane activity actually decreased by nearly 20 percent, declining to 28 Category 3-5 hurricanes from 1951 to 2000. That's almost as low as the last five decades of the 19th century — when the overwhelming majority of Americans lived on farms, manual power was generated by watermills and cars had yet to be invented. From 1851 to 1900 there were 27 major hurricanes in the U.S. --Carl Limbacher, "Hurricane Center: Global Warming Equals Fewer Storms" [25 September 2005] - - ...Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather — in stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists. The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures prevailing at sites around the world. The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today. They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again — but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages. The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age is especially significant, as it implies that the records used by climate scientists date from a time when the Earth was relatively cold, thereby exaggerating the significance of today's temperature rise. According to the researchers, the evidence confirms suspicions that today's "unprecedented" temperatures are simply the result of examining temperature change over too short a period of time. --Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent, "Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists" - - "The Theology of Global Warming" By James Schlesinger in _The Wall Street Journal_ August 8, 2005 Almost unnoticed, the theology of global warming has in recent weeks suffered a number of setbacks. In referring to the theology of global warming, one is not focusing on evidence of the earth's warming in recent decades, particularly in the Arctic, but rather on the widespread insistence that such warming is primarily a consequence of man's activities — and that, if only we collectively had the will, we could alter our behavior and stop the warming of the planet. It was Michael Crichton who pointed out in his Commonwealth Club lecture some years ago that environmentalism had become the religion of Western elites. Indeed it has. Most notably, the burning of fossil fuels (a concomitant of economic growth and rising living standards) is the secular counterpart of man's Original Sin. If only we would repent and sin no more, mankind's actions could end the threat of further global warming. By implication, the cost, which is never fully examined, is bearable. So far the evidence is not convincing. It is notable that 13 of the 15 older members of the European Union have failed to achieve their quotas under the Kyoto accord -- despite the relatively slow growth of the European economies. [ . . . ] Over the ages, climate has varied. Generally speaking, the Northern Hemisphere has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 17th century. Most of the global warming observed in the 20th century occurred between 1900 and 1940, when the release of greenhouse gasses was far less than later in the century. Between 1940 and 1975, temperatures fell — and scientists feared a lengthy period of global cooling. The reported rise in temperatures in recent decades has come rather suddenly — probably too suddenly given the relatively slow rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We must always bear in mind that the earth's atmosphere remains a highly complex thermodynamic machine. Given its complexities, we need to be modest in asserting what we know. Knowledge is more than speculation. * * * Much has been made of the assertion, repeated regularly in the media, that "the science is settled," based upon a supposed "scientific consensus." Yet, some years ago in the "Oregon Petition" between 17,000 and 18,000 signatories, almost all scientists, made manifest that the science was not settled, declaring: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." Several additional observations are in order. First, the "consensus" is ostensibly based upon the several Assessment Reports of the IPCC. One must bear in mind that the summary reports are political documents put together by government policy makers, who, to put it mildly, treat rather cavalierly the expressed uncertainties and caveats in the underlying scientific reports. Moreover, the IPCC was created to support a specific political goal. It is directed to support the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. In turn, the Convention calls for an effective international response to deal with "the common concern of all mankind" — in short, to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Statements by the leaders of the IPCC have been uninhibitedly political. Second, science is not a matter of consensus, as the histories of Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, Einstein and others will attest. Science depends not on speculation but on conclusions verified through experiment. Verification is more than computer simulations — whose conclusions mirror the assumptions built in the model. Irrespective of the repeated assertions regarding a "scientific consensus," there is neither a consensus nor is consensus science. Mr. Schlesinger, the first secretary of energy, launched the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Effects and Assessment Program shortly after the creation of that department in 1977. - - ...But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris. The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020. This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science. --Bret Stephens "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis" _Wall Street Journal_ [1 July 2008] - There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Life on the Mississippi_ [1883], ch. XVII "Cut-Offs and Stephen"  . . see "WAR & PEACE" for related links see: "TERRORISM" Guantanamo Is a Model Prison (Really) By Mark H. Buzby _The Wall Street Journal_ [4 June 2008] There is much talk in the media, in our capital and elsewhere about the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I have paid close attention to this dialogue, and after a year in command, it is clear that there are two Guantanamos: the one that exists in popular culture, and the one most discover when they actually see conditions there. We house enemy combatants in one of several facilities according to their compliance with camp rules. Highly compliant detainees, approximately 20% of the population, live in Camp 4. Here they enjoy a communal, barracks-style environment, with movie nights, classes in Pashtu, Arabic and English, shared meals and prayers, and up to 12 hours of recreation per day. Many of the enemy combatants, however, fail to comply with established rules. Offenses often include head-butting, kicking, biting and splashing young soldiers and sailors with feces and urine "cocktails." These detainees are housed in Camps 5 and 6 – modern, climate-controlled facilities modeled after existing U.S. prison facilities in the Midwest. They get a minimum of two, soon to be three, hours of outdoor recreation per day adjacent to three to five other detainees. And they are held in a block of single-occupancy cells where they communicate with other detainees, guards, medical staff, library assistants and mail delivery personnel. Prayers are led five times a day by a detainee-appointed Imam. Each cell contains an arrow that points to Mecca. All detainees receive three-meals per day, a 4,000-calorie diet selected from six different menus that meet the halal cultural dietary requirements, and which provide for special needs such as low sodium, vegetarian or diabetic. We provide comfort items including sheets and bedding, uniforms, shoes, prayer beads, prayer rugs, toiletries and bottled water. Each detainee is issued a Quran in Arabic and one in his native language. An ever-expanding, 5,000 volume library is available for a weekly choice of reading material. Detainees sent and received more than 27,000 pieces of mail last year. In addition to humanitarian phone calls, which have long been permitted, we allow annual phone calls to family members. Last year, more than 1,200 attorney visits were conducted. Suggestions that detainees are being held "incommunicado" are simply not true. Medical-care standards afforded to detainees are the same that my troopers receive. Access to treatment is 24/7, with a detainee-to-medical-staff ratio of three-to-one that far exceeds Federal Bureau of Prison standards, and is frankly better than what most Americans enjoy. Joint Task Force doctors have performed more than 370 surgeries, including restorative eye procedures, and a recent back surgery that restored movement and avoided possible paralysis for a detainee. Shortly after, that detainee sent me a note saying "Thank you, I have been wrong about Americans." Our mental health facility, staffed by a variety of mental health-care professionals, includes a psychiatrist and a psychologist. Approximately 15% of our detainees are seen for such issues on a regular basis, about half the average experienced in the U.S. prison population. We enjoy a very positive relationship with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Its professionals have access to all detainees and facilities, and they provide us with useful and supportive confidential comments and suggestions – which have helped in furthering the development of our detention programs. An important part of the Guantanamo story routinely underreported by many in the media – but readily apparent to most who visit – is the dedication and professionalism exhibited every single day by the more than 2,200 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and civilians who provide for the safe and humane care and custody of very dangerous men. Regardless of what international opinion says, my troopers perform their mission honorably, professionally and to a level that would make any American proud. I had the very great privilege of leading these sons and daughters of America; that is the Guantanamo I know. Rear Adm. Buzby was commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo from May 2007 until last week. - [Guantanamo is] a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons. --Alain Grignard, visiting Guantanamo in 2006 with a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. - Might I offer a couple of small suggestions to those British citizens who would prefer not to stand trial in military tribunals where the punishment for some crimes can be execution? Don’t join terrorist organisations that fly planes at skyscrapers, and don’t dedicate your life to mass murder. In all the grotesque campaign of disinformation, special pleading and mischief-making that seems to have gripped the entire chattering classes in recent days, one central fact about the nine British subjects being held in Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, appears to have been overlooked. They were captured by US forces seeking out al-Qaeda terrorists whose central purpose is to inflict as much death and carnage as is physically possible. They were not arrested for shoplifting, for fraud, or even for an isolated act of murder. They were held because they were thought to be part of an organisation that, as 9/11 proved, has no concept of morality. Astonishingly, there are otherwise sane people who have not yet cottoned on that we are at war: a war to defend our very existence. That means that the rules of the game have been changed. Not by President Bush, nor by others who are defending us, but by the terrorists themselves. We did not ask for this fight. Unless we meet it head on, however, we will lose. --Stephen Pollard, "Opponents of military trials are friends of al-Qaeda" - It is amazing how many liberals who complain about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo have no interest in the treatment of prisoners on the rest of the island, controlled by Castro. --Thomas Sowell (1930— ) American economist and author. - Nonetheless, I regret his decision to toss his snarling party a bone by intervening on behalf of the British subjects indefinitely detained at Don Rumsfeld’s pleasure at Guantanamo. I defended the arrangements at Gitmo last year, when most of Fleet Street was up in arms over malarial mosquitoes and other fictions. It was, in fact, the US Army which eliminated malaria from Cuba after the Spanish-American War. The detainees’ “cages” are cool, balmy, disease-free - and single-occupancy, so how good a night’s sleep you get doesn’t depend on whether Butch is in a romantic mood. A year and a half later, the brutal torture of the Rumsfeldian death camps is so severe that most of the inmates have put on weight. True, the guards have had to prevent a few suicide attempts from prisoners depressed at being unable to become suicide bombers, and one could make the case that stopping them is disrespectful of their cultural tradition. But London’s complaint seems to be no more or less than that, simply because they travel on passports issued in the name of Her Britannic Majesty, certain jihadi should be treated differently than others. London is right. The British jihadi should certainly be treated differently: they should be subjected to much lengthier and more detailed interrogation. The mighty Pashtun warrior from Kandahar is an impressive figure, but in the grand scheme of things he’s unimportant. I doubt he knows much and I’m happy for him to be returned to his herd in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. But, with the British and French and Australian and Canadian al-Qa'eda volunteers, even the small fry are comparatively big fish. For a start, they’re a much larger threat to US interests: they know far more than the Afghan warlord’s idiot cousin about the weak points of the system - they know what papers you need to slip across the border from Montreal to Plattsburgh, who you need to hook up with in Virginia to get fake ID, etc. It’s the jihad networks in the west that give the movement its global reach. Shut them down and what’s left is just a bunch of losers frolicking in their own decrepit backyard. [...] Tony Blair’s right. Too many people are being held at Guantanamo. Free the Afghans. But keep the Brits. --Mark Steyn (1959— ) Canadian journalist. "PLAYING BOTH SIDES: THE WESTERN JIHADI" - There's evidently a powerful psychological need among the non- American Western elites to believe that, if America is big, it must also be blundering; if it's powerful, it must also be clumsy; if it's technologically superior, it must also be morally inferior. Hence the frenzied rush to accuse America of 'torture'; in Guantanamo, a camp where the medical staff outnumber the prisoners. Atrocious, eh? --Mark Steyn (1959— ) Canadian journalist. "On the right side of history" - While human rights organizations condemn the conditions at the U.S. prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one detainee said he wants to stay and is fighting a proposed extradition to Russia. "I don't think there is even a sanitarium in Russia that would compare to this," Ayrat Vakhitov said in a letter to his mother published by Russia's Gazeta newspaper. "Nobody is being beaten or humiliated." [...] U.S. ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow has said Washington was prepared to hand over Russian detainees on condition they be put on trial. But Vakhitov told his mother he doesn't want to be returned to his mother land because the conditions in prisons there are worse than at Gitmo. He knows firsthand. He served a year in Russian prison. Vakhitov's mother is fighting the extradition on behalf of her son, reports Itar-Tass news agency. "I am terribly scared of a Russian prison or Russian court for my son," she was quoted as saying by the popular Russian daily. "At Guantanamo they treat him humanely, the conditions are fine." --"Detainee seeks to stay at 'humane' Gitmo" - In the years leading up to September 11th, the United States dealt with terrorism primarily as a law enforcement issue. Terrorists who had already killed Americans were investigated, they were arrested, and then they were put on trial, and then they were punished. When terrorists committed an act of war against our country on September 11th, killing 3,000 people, the United States and our allies responded by using military force against al Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan. In this new era, it became clear that prosecuting terrorists after they strike was an inadequate approach, particularly given the lethal threats posed by violent extremists. During the operations since September 11th, the military has apprehended thousands of enemy combatants, and several hundred were determined to be particularly dangerous and valuable from an intelligence perspective. There was no existing set of procedures or facilities to detain these enemies in Afghanistan or elsewhere. After extensive discussions with his senior advisers, the president decided that they were not entitled for formal prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions and that they were certainly not criminal defendants in the traditional law enforcement sense. Indeed, faced with this new situation, the president ordered that detained combatants be treated humanely under the laws of war. The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was established for the simple reason that the United States needed a safe and secure location to detain and interrogate enemy combatants. It was the best option available. The Department of Defense, working through the National Security Council interagency process, established procedures that would provide appropriate legal process to these detainees, procedures that go beyond what is required even under the Geneva Conventions. These included combatant status review tribunals to confirm that, in fact, each individual is, in fact, an unlawful enemy combatant. Every detainee currently at Guantanamo has received such a hearing. As a result, some 38 individuals were released. [. . . ] Our goal as a country is to detain as few people as is possible and is safe. We prefer to return them to their countries of origin if the country is capable and willing to manage them in an appropriate way. In some countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, we have begun a process of trying to help them develop the proper facilities and the proper trained forces to manage these detainees. Other countries have not satisfied the U.S. government, as yet, that they will treat their nationals humanely, were they to be transferred to their countries. Still others don't have laws that permit them to detain individuals of this sort, and they're in the process of passing such laws. One of these detained terrorists at Guantanamo is a man, called Mohamed al-Kahtani, believed to be the 20th hijacker on September 11th. He has direct ties to al Qaeda's top leadership including Osama bin Laden. While at Guantanamo, Kahtani and other detainees have provided valuable information, including insights into al Qaeda planning for September 11th, including recruiting and logistics; the identities and detailed information of 20 of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards; information leading to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the September 11th attacks; and information allowing foreign police to detain 22 suspected terrorists plotting attacks earlier this year. Detainees are sent to Guantanamo only after a proper screening process that identifies these prisoners who pose a threat to the United States or who have intelligence value. The kind of people held at Guantanamo include: terrorist trainers, bomb-makers, extremist recruiters and financiers, bodyguards of Osama bin Laden, and would-be suicide bombers. They are not common car thieves. They are believed to be determined killers. Arguably, no detention facility in the history of warfare has been more transparent or received more scrutiny than Guantanamo. Last year the department declassified highly sensitive memorandum on interrogation techniques. Unfortunately, they were documents that are useful to terrorist operatives, and we posted them on the Internet specifically to set the record straight about U.S. policies and practices. There have been nearly 400 separate media visits to Guantanamo Bay by more than 1,000 journalists. Additionally, some 180 congressional representatives have visited the facility. We provide continuous access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose representatives meet privately with the detainees. Allegations of abuse at Guantanamo, as at any other U.S. military facility, have been thoroughly investigated. Any wrongdoing is -- wrongdoers are being held accountable. The U.S. military has instituted numerous reforms of the conduct of detainee operations, with a renewed emphasis on standards and training. The U.S. military has also gone to unprecedented lengths to respect the religious sensibilities of these enemies of civil society, including the issuance of detailed regulations governing the handling of the Koran and arranging schedules for detainees around the five daily calls for prayer required by the Muslim faith. In fact, at Guantanamo, the military spends more per meal for detainees to meet their religious dietary requirements than it spends per rations for U.S. troops. Since September 11th, the military has released tens of thousands of detainees, including some 200 from Guantanamo. Regrettably, we now know that some of those detainees that were released from Guantanamo have again taken up arms against the United States and our allies, and are again -- were again attempting to kill innocent men, women and children. The U.S. government will continue to transfer others to their countries of origin after negotiating appropriate agreements to ensure their humane and -- humane treatment. The United States government, let alone the U.S. military, does not want to be in the position of holding suspected terrorists any longer than is absolutely necessary. But as long as there remains a need to keep terrorists from striking again, a facility will continue to be needed. The U.S. taxpayers have invested over $100 million in military construction in the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and it is spending something like an average of $90 (million) to $95 million a year to operate that facility to its highest standards. The real problem is not Guantanamo Bay. The problem is that, to a large extent, we are in unexplored territory with this unconventional and complex struggle against extremism. Traditional doctrines covering criminals and military prisoners do not apply well enough. --Donald Rumsfeld (1932- ) American Secretary of Defense [1975—1977] & [2001—2006]. Department of Defense Briefing, June 14, 2005. - {regarding comments made by Illinois senator Dick Durbin} The comparison is deranged, and deeply insulting not just to the U.S. military but to the millions of relatives of those dead Russians, Jews and Cambodians, who, unlike Durbin, know what real atrocities are. Had Durbin said, "Why, these atrocities are so terrible you would almost believe it was an account of the activities of my distinguished colleague Robert C. Byrd's fellow Klansmen," that would have been a little closer to the ballpark but still way out. One measure of a civilized society is that words mean something: "Soviet" and "Nazi" and "Pol Pot" cannot equate to Guantanamo unless you've become utterly unmoored from reality. Spot the odd one out: 1) mass starvation; 2) gas chambers; 3) mountains of skulls; 4) lousy infidel pop music turned up to full volume. One of these is not the same as the others, and Durbin doesn't have the excuse that he's some airhead celeb or an Ivy League professor. He's the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Don't they have an insanity clause? [...] The senator from Illinois' comparisons are as tired as they're grotesque. They add nothing useful to the debate. But around the planet, folks naturally figure that, if only 100 people out of nearly 300 million get to be senators, the position must be a big deal. Hence, headlines in the Arab world like "U.S. Senator Stands By Nazi Remark." That's al-Jazeera, where the senator from al-Inois is now a big hero -- for slandering his own country, for confirming the lurid propaganda of his country's enemies. Yes, folks, American soldiers are Nazis and American prison camps are gulags: don't take our word for it, Senator Bigshot says so. This isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing; it's about senior Democrats who are so over-invested in their hatred of a passing administration that they've signed on to the nuttiest slurs of the lunatic fringe. It would be heartening to think that Durbin will himself now be subjected to some serious torture. Not real torture, of course; I don't mean using Pol Pot techniques and playing the Celine Dion Christmas album really loud to him. But he should at least be made a little uncomfortable over what he's done -- in a time of war, make an inflammatory libel against his country's military that has no value whatsoever except to America's enemies. Shame on him, and shame on those fellow senators and Democrats who by their refusal to condemn him endorse his slander. [. . . ] But give Durbin credit. Every third-rate hack on every European newspaper can do the Americans-are-Nazis schtick. Amnesty International has already declared Guantanamo the "gulag of our times." But I do believe the senator is the first to compare the U.S. armed forces with the blood-drenched thugs of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Way to go, senator! If you had a dime for every crackpot Web site that takes up your thoughtful historical comparison, you'd be able to retire to the Caribbean and spend the rest of your days torturing yourself with hot weather and loud music, as well as inappropriately provocative women and insufficient choice of hors d'oeuvres and all the other shameful atrocities committed at Guantanamo. --Mark Steyn (1959— ) Canadian journalist. end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | HEALTH CARE (CANADIAN) - HOMOSEXUALS | HURRICANE KATRINA | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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