A former high-ranking Bush Administration official said this week that many of the detainees at Guantanamo were not guilty of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The penalty for that unfortunate crime is an open-ended sentence that is running to seven years and counting for some of them.
The source of the news was Lawrence B. Wilkerson, hardly the kind of person one would expect to be soft on terrorism.
Wilkerson is a Republican, a combat veteran and was chief of staff for Colin Powell in the latter’s years as secretary of state. He is all for putting real terrorists in our most secure prisons and throwing away the key. He said maybe two dozen of the remaining 240 Gitmo prisoners fit that description. The others, he said, should be released.
We agree.
If Wilkerson has a bias, it might be that he worked for Powell, who lost to the Cheney-Rumsfeld tandem in the internecine power struggle inside the Bush Administration.
Even conceding that possibility, Wilkerson’s allegation has the ring of truth to it.
A big principle is at stake here. It is a question of due process, rule of law and the protection of individual rights.
The thing that most distinguishes the United States from other governments past and present is our belief in the sanctity of individual liberty.
The Bush Administration, with the tacit approval of a willing public, was all too eager to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of security.
It was wrong then and it is wrong now.
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