"Perpetuating Guantanamo's Travesty": New York Times Entire Editorial Board Again Opines On Failure Of The United States Government Yet To Close The Prison Site Of CIA Torture Of "Detainees" Never Charged Many Still Held Which At Least 38 Retired U.S. Generals And Flag Officers Say Is A "Betrayal Of American Values" And A "Recruiting Poster For Terrorists"

       Saturday, 24 January 2015, NEW YORK, NEW YORK - The New York Times entire editorial board in the below linked-to editorial from the 18 January 2015 New York Times Sunday Review opines that it is a "travesty" now the responsibility of the Obama Administration that the United States continues to operate at Guantanamo Bay the United States site of years of the documented imprisonment of a strangely uncertain number of so-called "War On Terror" foreign "detainees". Imagine the absurdity not to mention the consequences for a prison warden in the United States were she or he to report that they were unable to provide the exact number of prisoners they had incarcerated because he or she was unable accurately to count them.
       Moreover the conditions at Guantanamo Bay horrified as "inhumane" even U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials who said they had never seen humans anywhere so "sensory deprived"  when these officials toured the CIA torture "dungeons" of never charged, tried, convicted, nor sentenced "detainees". A great deal of information previously undisclosed just recently was made partially public by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ("SSCI") in its Bush Administration CIA "Torture Report" in the form of its 524-page redacted executive summary public release on 9 December 2014 with the remainder of the over six thousand (6.000) page $40 million Torture Report to date remaining "Classified" .
       The following brief excerpt from the New York Times editorial of last Sunday linked to in full directly below as quoted here documents prior attempts at action on Guantanamo Bay by Senator John McCain (himself revered throughout this Country for his service which included years himself spent as a prisoner of war in enemy captivity during the Vietnam War - or "Conflict" in official DOD documents - infuriating his North Vietnamese captors upon refusing even to be released when it was not yet his "turn") here speaking on the United States Senate floor:

In November 2013, Mr. McCain, backing a failed initiative that would have authorized transferring some Guantánamo detainees to the United States,read out loud on the Senate floor a letter from 38 retired generals and flag officers who supported shutting the facility.

“Guantánamo is a betrayal of American values,” the former military officers wrote. “The prison is a symbol of torture and justice delayed. More than a decade after it opened, Guantánamo remains a recruiting poster for terrorists, which makes us all less safe.” 

       In the letter Senator John McCain as can be seen read that 38 retired United States generals and flag officers called the continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay imprisonment and CIA "detainee" torture site "a betrayal of American values" and "a recruiting poster for terrorists, which makes us all less safe". This result is antithetical to what anyone except a terrorist would want. That is because to the extent there is a "War On Terror" Guantanamo's continued existence and operation contrary to American values stands as a living monument to the wrong side winning by appearing to all the world to have forced the United States to sacrifice its must fundamental values in order to save them. Not only that but as the former military officers state rather than making all Americans more secure the continuing operation of Guantanamo instead creates a more dangerous situation by spurring recruitment of terrorists "which makes us all less safe".
       It is a most scathing indictment of Guantanamo Bay that its historical and continued operation as a United States "detention facility" fully documented already as contrary to all accepted United States principles of jurisprudence and totally at odds with the human rights of all persons as well as the fundamental values informing the United States Constitution but moreover has been and still is wrongly "justified" as necessary to preserve and protect the United States and all American values. It however in fact while allegedly doing so in reality has all along been doing exactly the opposite. Guantanamo has come to represent before all the world community living proof of the abandonment of those very same American values that it would purport to preserve and protect.
       This broadcasts completely the wrong message to all lovers and defenders of ordered and defined liberty and those who love this Country for all that for which it stands surely none more so than the American people themselves that the enduring values of the Unites States which have seen this great Nation all the way from the American Revolution of the 18th Century up through the darkest times of the 20th Century no longer are sufficient but instead must be tossed aside without debate mush less Constitutional amendment in times of perceived crisis. Meanwhile the 21st Century seems in just its first fifteen years to the present to have consisted ceaselessly of one never constitutionally declared so-called "War" to the next.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/perpetuating-guantanamos-travesty.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

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