DoD spins war crimes at GITMO

A rush to judgement. A rush to tyranny.

What went wrong at Guantanamo, and why the victory celebration was short sighted. The word on the street is DoD thinks its out of the woodshed, convincing sixteen foreign delegations and Congressional staffers that things were going well at GITMO.

Not so fast.

Guantanamo Bay, or GITMO as the military calls it, is only 90 miles from Florida. It is not in a distant place.

GITMO is fairly well managed under US laws. It's not some out of control place where the management is loose, or the conditions are out of control.

Everything at GITMO is carefully regulated. Most importantly, the US maintains an aggressive law enforcement program on the base.

Vehicles are required to be registered. Abandoned cars are impounded. Their VIN numbers are logged into the databases.

Also, GITMO has military families. School children attend classes. There are regular graduation ceremonies. Union members can bring grievances to the personnel department.

Indeed, US laws apply on GITMO. That means that US Treaty obligations also apply.

This is contrary to what White House counsel Gonzalez argued. GITMO has always been under exclusive US control with US laws.

That fiction is the President didn't know. In fact, he was briefed in 2002 what was going on and failed to act.

That failure is what brought down the Japanese Cabinet at the Tokyo War Crimes trial--their failure to stop something they were in a position to stop.

DoD hopes to paint the "allegations the White House failed to act despite reports of war crimes in Guantanamo" as some sort of minor aberration.

Their plan was to paint Guantanamo as some "far removed" place which commanders has no knowledge of the details.

Next time DoD tries to pain the picture that GITMO is one of those places where US laws don't apply, think twice. DoD is asking you to believe in fiction.

DoD is doing this to protect the President from a criminal trial, not preserve national security.