US Plans Permanent Incarceration Facility at Guantánamo–How Long Until US Suspects Are Sent There?

Permanent jail set for Guantánamo:

… the Pentagon is quietly planning for permanency at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, The Herald has learned.

Pentagon planners are now seeking $25 million to build a state-of-the-art 200-cell concrete building meant to eventually replace the rows of rugged cells fashioned from shipping containers at Camp Delta.

At the same time, the Army is creating a full-time, professional guard force — a 324-member Military Police Internment and Resettlement Battalion that will replace a temporary, mostly reserve force at Guantánamo.

A Department of Army memorandum to Congress obtained by The Herald envisions the new military police force being included in the 2005 and 2006 budgets. ''This action is part of a systematic process to enhance Army's capabilities required to defend the Nation's interests at home and abroad,'' says the undated memo from the Army's legislative liaison office.

This is serious. Not only is the temporary Guantánamo facility an embarrassment that should be razed to the ground rather than upgraded, but a permanent facility is an actively dangerous temptation for rogue policy makers. A permanent facility can have any of three purposes and they are all bad:

  • Hold some of the current prisoners in durance vile forever.
  • Establish a permanent rotating population of unpersons to be radicalized and sent home to hate us.
  • Ship US suspects out instead of giving them due process at home — like the next Padilla.

Be worried, be afraid, be angry, be active.

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7 Responses to US Plans Permanent Incarceration Facility at Guantánamo–How Long Until US Suspects Are Sent There?

  1. Marc says:

    I can be worried, afraid and angry, but not also active. I think if you are afraid of being shipped to a Cuban prison then you won’t take much action against those powers that can ship you there. Unless you mean active by voting; but that would assume we live in a democracy. With regard to your Dec.6th posts, I think the commenter was correct that what we learn in law school is of very little practical use. I know every job I’ve had since being in law school made me do things (i.e. draft complaints, memos, demand letters,etc.) contrary to what I learned in class. But since I’m registered for your admin class next semester, hopefully then, I will be provided a counterexample.

  2. Michael says:

    You drafted complaints contrary to the rules of civil procedure you learned in Civ Pro I? That doesn’t sound good….

  3. Marc says:

    Funny. No, what I meant is as follows: Civ Pro teacher says you need this answer or affirmative defense complete in X amount of days. With 2 days left in the tolling period, law partner boss says draft this demand letter to corp x for our client y. I say, what about the deadline for this answer I’m working on. Boss responds, “those rules are crap, like the J.A. won’t give us an extension with one phone call.” Boss turns out to be correct. Or since you brought up civ pro, take my summer judicial internship example where I used Westlaw and Lexis to back up my memos on 12b6 motions without ever using one case in civ pro. I received an A in that class, but apparently the work in that field (corp law or judicial clerking) is not based on that class directly. Or how about crim pro: if I used Chambers v. Miss or Hodari v. Cali in a memo for a crim case, I’d have to cut that case out immediately because “nobody uses those around here.” All I’m saying is that maybe legal reasoning as taught in school has some benefits but our actual casebook and lectures (as opposed to Socratic method which is way underuse here) have no relevance to the legal world. Lastly, civ pro never taught us HOW to draft a complaint…taught us certain things we needed to include but not how to draft one.

  4. Jeff says:

    Americans lined up in record numbers and voted for more of the same. That means more detentions in Cuba, more dubious wars, more nation building and more deficit. I could become more active, but I’m starting to feel like Sisyphus.

  5. Michael says:

    take my summer judicial internship example where I used Westlaw and Lexis to back up my memos on 12b6 motions without ever using one case in civ pro. I received an A in that class, but apparently the work in that field (corp law or judicial clerking) is not based on that class directly.

    You knew how to do that before law school? And how to figure out which parts of the cases were relevant? And how to use them? I sure didn’t.

    Anyone who thinks the purpose of law school is to teach “rules” or “cases” as opposed to ‘a method by which to figure out legal answers and arguments’ is laboring under a serious misapprehension. Your legal education has to last you 40+ years. It’s not about learning canned answers, but about how to learn ever-changing answers.

    It sounds to me from the quote above as if you were putting a good legal education to good use, even while suffering from a misunderstanding about what (good) law schools are for. It’s not a three year BarBri session!

  6. Marc says:

    If L.S. isn’t just about the rules (which I agree it shouldn’t be), then why are there closed book exams at our school? When is a lawyer ever in a situation where they must have a law memorized for that one moment in time (except for oral arguments; but even then they have a legal pad in front of them with cases)? We are taught how to read a case and do research in LRW. More advanced research was taught to me in editing and bluebooking PPL law review assignments. My torts teacher kept things very theoretical in class and on the exam…basically if you had common sense and a very basic knowledge of torts you did well, so long as your writing ability was above the class curve. I am enjoying L.S. for the most part; but I’m not lying to myself and saying success here equals success in the real world. School and jobs (maybe being a law professor is out of this realm) teach incommensurable subjects.

  7. Michael says:

    This deserves its own thread.

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