5 years later, cameraman still held at Guantanamo

This is damn ridiculous. This man, only a camerman from al Jazeera, has been detained without charge at Gitmo for 5 years. There is absolutely no reason he should be there. Along with most of the people there. This article mentioned that Hajj has been interrogated about 130 times. Don’t you think that is MORE than enough to get information out of ANYONE

Family members describe him as a soft-spoken romantic who’d dreamed since boyhood of becoming a cameraman.

That’s the best part. FAMILY MEMBERS DESCRIBE HIM AS A SOFT-SPOKEN ROMANTIC. Yet, we have him in a detainee camp. HE’S ALWAYS DREAMED OF BECOMING A CAMERAMAN. Yet, we’re ruining his dreams by letting him have NO access to a camera or be able to record anything.

“With all due respect,” he said, reading a statement, “a mistake has been made because I have never been a member of any terrorist group, and I never took part in any terrorist or violent act.”

These kinds of mistakes are made FAR to often. Here are the sad statistics.
Only 20% of Americans think that prisoners at Gitmo are treated unfairly.
36% think that they are treated better than they deserve
and 34% think they are treated about right.

Let me put it this way.
There were a few instances in which Muslim men were put on leashes, naked, and walked around by the female guards. Which, is HIGHLY disrespectful of their religion. Others, where made to stand naked on a bucket in the middle of a room. Though they have methods of physical torture, their methods of emotional torture are so much worse. These people are being HUMILIATED because we think that they have something to do with terrorism.

Sure, some of them will have something to do with terrorism. But when they have been through 130 interrogations…
We need to CLOSE GITMO.

Donald Rumsfeld said in 2005:

“Our goal as a country is to detain as few people as is possible and is safe,” he said. “We prefer to return them to their country or origin if the country is capable and willing to manage them in the appropriate way.”

Yet, for some reason, we have people that have been detained here for 5 years without a charge. How is that fair to ANYONE?
The prisoner, their family?

He said U.S. taxpayers have already spent $100 million to build the facility, which he said is costing $90 million to $95 million a year to operate. “I don’t know of any place [else] where we have infrastructure that’s appropriate for this group of people,” he added.

“this group of people”? Oh, that’s right. He means newscasters. Okay, so then I suppose Matt Lauer is next, right?

$90-95 MILLION dollars a year. Just think…how many US lives could we save with that much money? Those that are starving…elderly people who eat cat food so that they can afford their medicine. But nope, we’d rather hold newscasters for 5 years and put them through 130 interrogations and still not charge them with anything.

There’s something wrong with that.
Something very wrong.

Filed under: Activism, Brendon Schweers, Featured Stories, Guantanamo, Politics, Terrorism, U.S. Military, War on Terror, torture