One resignation can't remove detention stain

[struggle4progress]

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

(MCT)

The following editorial appeared in the Sacramento Bee on Tuesday, Feb. 6:

Cully Stimson, the official in charge of the Office of Detainee Affairs in the Department of Defense, had the decency to resign last Friday ...

Stimson's resignation saved his bosses the trouble of firing him. But his departure does nothing to resolve the larger problem, which is the Bush administration's policy on detentions.

The president treats detainees, most of them swept up in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, neither as prisoners of war nor as criminals. They have fallen into legal limbo, in detention indefinitely. Most have now been in custody longer than World War II lasted. Only 10 have been charged with a crime; none has been convicted. Some detainees have been transferred to the custody of their home countries, but about 395 remain ...

The harm these detentions do to our international credibility and to our traditional sense of fairness is immeasurable ...

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/16642372.htm

[Solly Mack]

1. Nothing will remove the stain - it's ours forever... and ever and ever

but sending the guilty to prison would, at least, show the world - and Americans - that America isn't one big lie.

If the Bush administration walks, then America is a country that not only commits crimes against humanity and breaks the law on a whim, it will be a country that protects its own war criminals.

Sure, it would just be one more outrage in a not exactly short list of outrages throughout America's history...but isn't it time to break that cycle? Isn't it time to do something in the here and now instead of one day shrugging our shoulders and saying, "well, that was the past - too late to change it now"...when it never really is the past as long as justice is denied.