Can someone explain to me why we hold our "POWs" in Cuba?

[toey]

I just don't get why we have a jail in Cuba when we can't even set foot there or smoke a cigar? Can someone please explain?

[enigami]

1. We have a military base there

[CottonBear]

2. We've had a military base there since before Castro.

Weird, isn't it.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

3. why does cuba allow for the military base?

who gives the "ok" for it to be there?
is it a cuban decision or a U.S. one?

[enigami]

4. What do you think Cuba could do about it?

[SheepyMcSheepster]

5. not much

i am just asking.........
under what pretense does this work?

[enigami]

7. He with the biggest army wins

oldest pretense in history

[SheepyMcSheepster]

9. but there must be some legal phrasing for this

what is it?

[leveymg]

10. Our continued presence there comes down to this:

[Scurrilous]

15. Perpetual lease:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay

U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, which covers 116 km² (approx. 45 mi²), is sometimes abbreviated as GTMO or "Gitmo". It was established in 1898, when the U.S. obtained control of Cuba from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, following the 1898 invasion of Guantanamo Bay. The US government obtained a perpetual lease that began on February 23, 1903, from Tomás Estrada Palma, an American citizen, who became the first President of Cuba. The newly formed American protectorate incorporated the Platt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban-American Treaty held, among other things, that the US, for the purposes of operating coaling and naval stations, has "complete jurisdiction and control" of the Guantanamo Bay, while the Republic of Cuba is recognized to retain ultimate sovereignty.

[julialnyc]

6. I have to look into this

because although we have had a base there for a while, we didn't used to hold our prisoners there.

I listened to Randi Rhodes last month and she was saying how they built over 800 beds

Right before 9/11

I have to look into that, but she was also saying that the law is more flexible when not on US soil (plus it would be harder for a journalist or anyone else to see what is going on in the hardest place for an American to get)

[julialnyc]

19. the link was dead but this was the intro to article

Contract that spawned Guantanamo prisons awarded to Halliburton during Cheney's tenure as CEO

John Byrne


Experts say firm may have built secret camps

A contract awarded to a Halliburton subsidiary in June 2000 while Vice President Dick Cheney was still at the helm of the firm spawned the detention centers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, RAW STORY has discovered.

The contract, which allocated funds for “emergency construction capabilities� at “worldwide locations,� authorized the Defense Department to award Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root any number of specific naval construction deals abroad. ....

In 2004, Human Rights First, a renowned human rights legal group, suggested the likelihood of facilities at Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean. Other suspected facilities include prisons in northwest Pakistan; a Central Intelligence Agency prison in Jordan; additional unacknowledged holding centers in Afghanistan and Iraq; and brigs on two U.S. naval ships, the U.S.S. Bataan and the U.S.S. Peleliu

[noamnety]

8. So we don't have to abide by our laws? (nt)

[Warren Stupidity]

21. that is the theory

put forth by Gonzales after 9-11. They invented a new status (illegal combatant) so that the victims would fall in between POW protections and civilian protections and they can make stupid legal arguments that this is legitimate and by keeping everything out of US territory, finding a court to take responsibility is difficult.

[uppityperson]

11. Futhermore, they are not POWs and have no rights in Cuba

The prisoners do not have the same rights as if it were a military base in USA or Iraq/Afghanistan rather than in Cuba. They are not POWs, they are not prisoners, they are a made up name with no rights. We can do anything to them we want. ha ha ha. (:sarcasm: for the ha ha ha)

[longship]

12. There is a reason.

Gitmo is unique. It is in actual hostile territory, almost completely isolated from any kind of oversight. That is the *sole* purpose of locating the concentration camp there, so that the lunatics can mistreat, torture, and otherwise violate any other international treaties governing treatment of prisoners without being held accountable for their crimes. Anywhere else and they would be subject to some kind of oversight, either by international organization, or by the local government.

Gitmo is a Gulag, a concentration camp.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

13. here's bit of an answer

check this link:

http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/21374

[paula777]

23. Wow, that's more than just 'a bit of an answer'

Pretty much sums up the history of it. Thanks!

[Shoeempress]

14. Because the Constitutional protections do not apply there as they are

not on US soil, or so goes the current Regime's argument. Of course that means military bases are not US soil. So that argument should be Bu%%#$it, but with the judicial nominees and all, they can do anything they want.

[Warren Stupidity]

20. in addition it gives any judge an easy out

'not my jurisdiction'. However so far the regime has not had much success keeping everything from their gulag out of the courts.

By the way gitmo is not the only one. We run a huge concentration camp in Afghanistan and another huge one in Iraq. But we musn't refer to them as concentration camps or the system as a gulag because that is mean and unfair and casts aspersions on our troops and besides we haven't killed 10,000,000 yet so we aren't as bad as the Real Bad People.

[ragin_acadian]

22. it goes back to

eisentrager v. johnson - post WWII supreme cort case - the argument is that we can't apply our constitutional freedoms to enemy combatants on foreign soil.

i think this was decided in hamdi v rumsfeld last year?

[saskatoon]

16. why in Cuba?

Simple. if they were here we could interview them and see the inhumane treatment they are subject to, you know how wily Bush and his cohorts are.

[datadiva]

17. Out of sight

Out of mind?

[El Supremo]

18. It is more modern than the Dry Tortugas

That's where we used to keep other terrorists like the Apaches.

[Vinca]

24. If they brought them onto U.S. soil they might actually have to have

a bonafide court hearing.