G’Bay

So McClatchy’s DC Bureau is doing a top-notch job of investigative pieces about America’s treatment of prisoners of war captured during the War on Terror. To make a long story short, they’re doing the job that the rest of the press has totally abdicated. And at Hey Obama Change This, we greatly appreciate, you know, journalists being journalists.

Anyway, the week long series started on Sunday with a great look at how, oops,

“An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.”

Yeah, that’s pretty bad. But hey! It gets better:

“The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.”

Hey, here’s the bright side. We’re not torturing ‘enemy combatants’, we’re just torturing any brown-skinned male that happens to find his way into American custody! Smashing.

More on the abuse perpetrated by Americans who have, of course, not been charged with any war crimes, even though they are indeed war criminals. Money quote:

“It’s extremely hard to wage war with so many undefined rules and roles,” Beiring said in a phone interview with McClatchy. “It was very crazy.”

Except, uh, there are rules, and they also happen to be US Law. You know, until September 11.

Anyway, today’s piece brings us this wonderful news: not only did the United States hold a great deal of not-in-any-way-enemy combatants at Guantanamo, but the prison camp itself became – surprise! – a great recruitment center for Al-Qaeda supporters.

“A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system.”

Please Obama, close down Guantanamo Bay as soon as you’re inaugurated, and publicly apologize for the United States’ actions over the last eight years. It’d go a long way to restoring America’s image in the world, and to notify the American public that, oh yeah, we’re a country based on the rule of law and if we’re no longer a country based on the rule of law we’re becoming a police state.