There has
already been a Senate Panel that investigated Gitmo. In addition members of both the
Senate and
the House have personally toured the site. In fact approximately
ninety members of congress have personally toured the camp.
And other than the aforementioned isolated and/or discredited incidents, do you know what they found?
Not much:
On Saturday 16 Representatives who sit on the House Armed Services Committee toured the prison, at a naval base on Cuba, during a one-day fact-finding trip.
California Democrat Ellen Tauscher, who has pushed for greater transparency about the facility, told AP news agency there had been progress since reports about alleged human rights abuses.
"The Guantanamo we saw today is not the Guantanamo we heard about a few years ago," she said.
"What we've seen here is evidence that we've made progress," said Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who believes the facility should close.
But legislators agreed that more needed to be done to ensure a legal framework to deal with detainees, some of whom have been held for three years without charge.
The group toured cell blocks and ate lunch with troops, a meal of chicken with orange sauce, rice and okra that was also served to inmates.
They watched the interrogation of three suspects, including one in which a detainee was read a Harry Potter book aloud for hours until he turned his back and put his hands over his ears.
None of the detainees was physically touched.
Given the above, it isn't surprising that the White House has said, in regards to Gitmo, "enough is enough." At some point, it becomes a fishing expedition, not a fact-finding mission.
Furthermore, this all illustrates that those who are trying to lump both camps together are doing the truth a disservice.
