Political Post: Guantanamo Bay

I just heard that three prisoners committed suicide at the Guantanamo Bay prison. I am frightened by this for two reasons:

When I heard the report, my first response was: "Did they reallycommit suicide? Or did we torture them to death, and now we are trying to cover it up by saying they committed suicide?" Just the fact that I thought this is frightening. A few years ago, I never would have thought the US capable of doing such a thing. But now I know that our Attorney General supports torturing terrorist suspects because he does not think they are protected by the Geneva Convention treaty (you know, the thing we signed after the holocaust to stop that from ever happening again.) And I know that we are torturing inmates in Guantanamo Bay. So when I hear that two inmates committed suicide, it's easy for me to think, maybe the US killed them and we aren't owning up to it. This is made even easier for me to believe when I hear that one of the inmates was scheduled to be released in three days. Maybe the US soldiers were just trying a little harder than usual to get him to release information before he was released, and went too far.

The second reason I'm worried is because if the three suicides were in fact suicides, that means that conditions are so bad in the prison, that people would rather die than continue on in them. Either way, the fact is, Guantanamo Bay is an awful place, and something should be done.

Whether or not the US killed these men will probably never be known. (They are not releasing the bodies as of yet.) But we cannot debate that the deaths of these men signal the world to look more closely at our practices in Guantanamo Bay. The US should start being a little more ashamed of this base... maybe it's time we did something about it. Maybe it's time we let someone take a look down there.