Living Large

"I am a bear of very little brains,
and long words bother me"
--Winnie the Pooh
________________

The Wall Street Journal often amuses me, in a horrifying sort of a way. Yes, the prisoners at Gitmo are packing on the pounds, but that is not what this piece refers to.

In "Gitmo High Life," writer Robert Pollock contends that since fewer than 1% of detainees suffer mood disorders, this would seem to give lie to the thought "That indefinite detention is itself a form of mental torture." However, it is simply not a tenet of American jurisprudence to incarcerate an individual for an indefinite period sans sentencing, evident mental tics or no.

Next, Pollock quotes Gitmo base commander Adm. Harry Harris as rejecting the term "prison," and saying, "We are not about punishment; we are about keeping enemy combatants off the battlefield." There are so many mistaken ideas here.

First, if it were a prison, Adm. Harris could not mete out punishment to the inmates. Punishment is the sentence handed down by a court of law. A prison is a detention facility where an inmate serves out a term of incarceration. He is not to sustain punishment therein.

Next, if these inmates are "enemy combatants," then they are prisoners of war. They are not so many delinquents to be "kept off the battlefield." Detained enemy combatant= POW.

Therefore, they shouldn't be in a penitentiary, and they should be afforded the rights of the Geneva Convention, which means "indefinite detention" is quite illegal.

--by Lisa