Deep Six Camp Six

3 January 2005



Senator Lugar Calls Detaining Suspected Terrorists for Life “Bad Idea”

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) represents the respectably thoughtful wing of the Republican Party from the chairman’s seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also has a talent for understatement. There are reports that the CIA and the Pentagon have asked the White House to decide on a “more permanent approach” for dealing with those suspected of terrorist ties other than returning them to their home countries or freeing them. One of the proposed options is locking them up for life without legal appeal. Senator Lugar called this “a bad idea.” The word “un-American” is a better fit.

Reuters reports that the Defense Department has requested $25 million to build a prison, dubbed Camp 6, that would house 200 prisoners who are likely never to face a military tribunal for lack of evidence. That is not a typo – people will be jailed in Camp 6 who won’t face even military justice because there isn’t enough proof. For 200 years, America has stood for the idea that, without evidence, the accused must be freed.

Another Republican Senator, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, summed up the entire problem with the current approach when he said of the Abu Ghraib scandal “If you’re going to be the good guys, you have to act like the good guys.” The Bush Administration, in fighting terrorism (and doing it badly in the wrong place under false pretenses), has decided that America may torture detainees, may ignore the Geneva Conventions (described as “quaint” by the Attorney-General designate), and now seeks to jail people indefinitely without trial. It appears that some at the Pentagon and the CIA have forgotten whose side they are on.

The idea seems to be a trial balloon from some in the administration to see just how much resistance there would be to such a scheme. Senator Lugar, and senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee Carl Levin of Michigan, should see to it that this balloon is punctured promptly. However, the unfortunate set of values it reflects shall remain. Should the police-state mind-set behind Camp 6 persist, America will have lost the war on terror by losing its freedom. A free society demands that the government prove charges against prisoners or let them go.

Of course, this whole mess would not be necessary if the Bush administration had simply declared that those captured in the war on terror would be treated as prisoners of war. Under such circumstances, they needn’t be released until the hostilities end. That would in effect, achieve the same thing, while giving the prisoners the protection of international law and civilized behavior. But the White House knew better – or so it thought.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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