The US should immediately close Guantanamo Bay.

GB is essentially a detention center for suspected terrorists and those who are considered enemies of the US. What is key to underline is the word ‘suspected’. Of these so called terrorists, very few or none of them have actually been proven guilty and only one out of 172 current detainees has been given a trial. [[http://www.reprieve.org.uk/publiceducation/guantanamostats/]] Furthermore these so called prisoners of wars are not being treated according to the international laws for prisoners of war, because the US has not officially declared war, they only give the name of war on terror.UNDHR, Articles 6 and 10

“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law” and
“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him”.
Thus, the American government is violating two of the most fundamental human rights.

Unfortunately, these are not the only two rights being violated at GB. It has become clear in the past few years, that US has been using ‘interrogation techniques’ on prisoners that resemble torture. In fact, a UN report recently stated that the prisoners were forced to endure cruel and degrading treatment, even to the point of death. Several autopsies performed on the bodies of GB prisoners have confirmed homicide. The Int Red Cross report on GB revealed that prisoners exhibited signs of sleep deprivation and that there were several signs of physical abuse, a witness even reported the slamming of prisoner’s heads against the wall. [[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html?_r=2]] The detainees are not allowed outside visits and are held for extended periods of time in solitary confinement, which can be very difficult to bear mentally. Prop sees that undeniable human rights violations are occuring, which we find completely unacceptable.

GB undemocratically burdens US citizens in terms of both liberties and finances. What is worse than inhumane actions conducted at GB is that the Pentagon has been reluctant to allow the Red Cross or other aid agencies to visit the detainees and inspect their living conditions. If there were no scrutiny to investigate any situations that are made within that place, there is no boundary to limit the actions of soldiers in a sense that interrogation wouldn’t build up to harming the individual’s rights. “In 2002, Executive Order that the detainees at GB should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, ‘to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity.’ [[http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20061122.html?ref=jauin.da.ru]] Since investigations can’t be made in camps, the documents do not detail the controversial techniques used to obtain information from detainees. This is why there is a concern over the admissibility of evidence collected during torture. Human Rights Watch has obtained an unredacted copy of al-Qahtani’s interrogation log, and believes that the techniques used during al-Qahtani’s interrogation were so abusive that they amounted to torture. Since US has been a leader of human rights internationally, it will be contradictory for the govt to allow these kind of human right violation, especially secretly. Ultimately, secrecy and isolation of GB would eventually encourage further acts of violence. Moreover, citizens have no right in what their tax money is being spent on—which is often times through undemocratic methods. The fact that they don’t know where the money goes makes it undemocratic because informed decisions are a principle of the democratic process. US citizens must have the right to know how their tax money is spent, especially if it is spent on human rights violation. When this is not made, what is the use of holding a detainee camp that goes against the country that is in charge of the institution?

Anti American sentiments have been growing drastically in the Arab world, resulting in protests, complaints and terrorist attacks. The supporters of anti Americanism stated that they believe that the US is very condescending towards their culture and lifestyles, constantly trying to ignore their belief systems to impose its own ways of living upon them.[[ http://goo.gl/GKNxG%5D%5D The clash of cultures led to thousands of deaths in numerous terrorist attacks and thousands more in the WOT.

“The Guantanamo facility holds detainees from 30 countries. 94% of Yemenies comprise the plurality-more than one third- of the population. More than 70% of the detainees are citizens of Middle Eastern and North African nations.”[[http://goo.gl/knHBg]] As we prove in our 1st contention, great human rights violations go on in GB. The conditions of GB are said to resemble those of Abu Ghraib (AG), a precedent of GB that was forced to shut down after grotesque harassment was proven to have taken place. A detention centre that also held a population of mainly Middle Eastern citizens, AG specifically designed its tortures and punishments to target the inmates’ religious beliefs, such as forcing them to violate the strict rule against homosexuality.

With so many similarities to AG, GB is considered to be a symbol of Muslim discrimination in the Arab world. Thus, the mere existence of GB offends the great Middle Eastern population. No matter how effective or transparent GB were to be, it is still seen as a way to legitimize and justify the Muslim discrimination that is already so prevalent throughout the US.

Ultimately, keeping GB will increase anti Americanism and increase terrorism. This will be increasingly dangerous to the hegemony and security of the US, and endanger the lives of thousands more. It is very ironic that the US is spending so much money, time and effort, and killing innocent civilians in the War of Terror while it is fuelling the very cause of terror.

It is evident that GB does not meet international standards of handling their detainees and therefore frowned upon by numerous nations such as Britain, France, and Germany.[[http://goo.gl/8uqMl]] Especially Muslim communities dislike GB for their disrespect for Muslim prisoners and for their religion within the center. [[http://goo.gl/wrkKz]] As mentioned in C3, this can negatively fuel terrorism, opposite of the US’s initial incentive. US is one of the western liberal democratic countries who support democracy, freedom and human rights globally. However, GB violates fundamental human rights and this distorts US’s reputation and its image of a role model for other countries to follow. This results in many negative outcomes for the US. First of all, they lose their international authority to request other countries to stop violation of human rights. Prop would like to remind there were/are wars where US fought simply for protection of human rights in other countries. Continuing to keep GB is going against their constitutional values that the US were found upon, and makes what US fought for meaningless. Also this hurts the US’s trade relationships with western countries who do not support GB, which is obviously not in the interests of the country. Most importantly, keeping GB is one of the US’s effort to win WOT. In order to win this war, the US needs international support. It is problematic because US is carrying out human rights violation they exactly oppose by declaring war on terror, and therefore is going to lose the support they need to win this war if GB continues to exist. UN, along with many other organizations such as Amnesty Int and HumanRightsWatch have already called on US to close down the center. John McCain
“Ultimately, [whether to close down GB or not] is about morality. We are America, and we hold ourselves to a higher standard. That is what is really at stake.” [[http://goo.gl/EeWYi]]

Three main clash areas in this debate seems to be:
1. Safety of US
2. Impact on US regarding international communities
3. Human rights – justification of torture.

Opp’s main argument about US’s national security was release of detainees will be dangerous. Prop isn’t planning on releasing detainees to normal streets of US right away; they will be trialed and held in other prisons or other countries that are willing to accept them. If proven guilty, the detainees may be transferred to other detention centers as it was done after Abu Ghraib shut down. On the other side, GB serves as a fuel for anti-american sentiments and encourages terrorism. Especially explained in our C3, discrimination against Muslims, whether “GB is a Muslim concentration camp” or not, thru disrespect of their religion provides more incentives for terrorists.

Secondly, existence of GB isn’t in the best interests of the US. It runs contrary to US’s constitutional beliefs and democracy that US is trying to pursue globally. Violations of human rights are common in GB –opp conceded that some measures were ‘unjustifiable’- and thus many countries are calling upon US to close down the facility. Britain, France and Germany for instance are offering to take in detainees if that were to encourage abolishment of GB. Opp failed to engage our argument about US losing support in WOT and in trade with other countries that do not support GB.

Opp believes that torture can be justified but prop sees that the issue is not just about retracting information, but shaking the fundamental framework that western liberal democratic countries wish to spread. Especially HC is one right granted to every individual on earth, yet not to the detainees. Prop wants to make it clear once again that torture is not only unjustified but ineffective. It was the oppositions’ burden to prove the full effectiveness of a facility as cruel as GB, but we haven’t seen a solid example except for two minor terrorist attacks being prevented. The fact is, terrorism doesn’t stop or halt if you prevent a couple of incidents and torture detainees. The situation simply gets worse. Opp stated that GB isn’t the cause of terrorism, but it doesn’t stop terrorism either unfortunately. Prop proved that terrorism further worsens through our third contention, but opp’s burden of GB’s advancement towards stopping terrorism was never met.

Prop’s burden throughout this debate was to prove that GB’s harms outweighed benefits. The harms we introduced were: Human rights violation, GB’s lack of Transparency is undemocratic, GB fuels terrorist sentiments and GB harms US’s global reputation/authority. Opp’s burden was to prove that their benefits of GB still supported its existence. Their main benefits were torture, and isolation of GB and we believe that they failed in explaining why these benefits are unique to GB and why these benefits outweigh the harm.

First off, let’s look which side is the real idealistic one. The opposition claims the effectiveness of Guantanamo Bay through the information the United States can get from questioning the detainees. However, they have completely missed out the realistic part of the story. Military reports admit that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been thrown or dropped on the ground or thrown against walls as a mean of physical abuse, which have been further clarified in our first contention. Sadly enough, the conditions in Guantanamo Bay are not as smooth as the opposition assumes, and therefore the true reality of Guantanamo Bay would go towards the proposition side. Now the real issue kicks in whether those ‘tortures’ that are unbearable for the detainees at the camp are even effective at all. “Torture during interrogations rarely yields better information than traditional human intelligence, partly because no one has figured out a precise, reliable way to break human beings or any adequate method to evaluate whether what prisoners say when they do talk is true,” Rejali wrote in a 2004 article on Salon.com. [[http://goo.gl/E4DZO]] Therefore, although the opposition tries to put Guantanamo Bay as a great place to extract information from detainees and secure the world from terrorism, it is no better than another prison of deadly tortures that don’t even work as effective. Yet another issue exists whereas innocent people are held. “Documents from CIA revealed that 150 Guantanamo Bay prisoners were innocent but the US government kept them locked up for years anyway, The Daily Record informs.” [[http://goo.gl/vgWi0]] Realistically, when tortures don’t even work on guilty detainees, what can the US government get from innocent prisoners? Opposition has put forward some stories of prevented terrorist attacks from Guantanamo Bay but the results compared to the efforts through deadly tortures are not even comparable.

GB’s main benefit opp brought up was isolation. However, isolation does not have significant impact to why we shouldn’t close down GB because: 1. Isolation is not a unique benefit that only GB has 2. A contradiction as opp mentions isolation of GB as a benefit and remarks on how GB is one of the most transparent facilities in the world. Isolation and transparency can’t coexist because they undermine each other. Even if transparency was increasing, GB would still have to be shut down because prop sees much greater harms if not shut down immediately. Furthermore, prop would like to remind opp that human right abuses constantly occur as reported by Red Cross [[http://goo.gl/MTZwE]], and Amnesty[[http://goo.gl/KtWKn]], and isolation is encouraging more abuse through ‘secrecy’. They also stated that 1000 journalists in will increase transparency but prop recognizes that this directly undermines the single benefit, isolation, mentioned by the opp. They said that closure would mean waste of resources with huge investments made in the past, but prop sees it is problematic if we continue to invest heavily in GB that has harms that prop brought up. We believe that detainees have their rights to have access to lawyers and habeas corpus but we do not believe that these rights are being protected as mentioned in our C1.Their assumption that the detainees are the world’s greatest terrorists ignores our previous point about only one detainee having been trialed and the rest held under ‘suspicion’. Opp briefly mentions that policies can be changed without affecting the materialistic existence of GB and stated:“evenif something is not efficient enough or is not working properly, it is not a reason to be closed”which implies that opp is also not satisfied with efficiency of GB in status quo and vaguely states that we should improve the standards but does not specify how and whether it will work or whether it will continue to bring forth the harms provided by prop.

First, putting detainees in harsh conditions is better than anything else. “Muhammed al-Qahtani, alleged to have been implicated in the September 11 plot, was physically and mentally mistreated. For six weeks, he was intentionally deprived of sleep, and subject to sexual and other physical humiliation.” [[http://goo.gl/2T67J]] Thus opp has completely overlooked all possibilities when they stated we have no guarantee that violations would end through closing the GB. With all these possible threats to lives of detainees, how can we assert that the situation is changing and already is better? Second, they stated that closure of GB causes opening of new facilities. But we want to state that CIA institution have the same effect as the GB, which is under the US gov’t control. Both of these prisons use the same tactic but just try to hide it in different ways, which also proves that US gov’t is willing to have private prisons. This shows that it lacks transparency thus more encouraged to violate more human rights in GB, which we already stated in our first contention. The representative of democracy is formed when population is acquired in decision making. However since these actions are unwanted by the majority, the gov’t is undermining the meaningful transparency since there are no liberties, inspections nor have protection of human rights in their country. Since US promotes a global image as a democracy country, it hurts its international relation which will be expanded on in our 4th contention. Lastly, opp has already acknowledged that unpleasant events are occurring at that time, but we should appreciate even the fact that it is ‘transparent’. However this point surrenders the rest of their other points because they have admitted that human violation is occurring in GB which links to our first contention. Although in their earlier contentions, they stated that the conditions are getting bettter and how rights are protected.

The opposition seems to understand that when the shutdown of GB is in order, prisoners will be sent back to their home countries. However, they seem to have failed to understand the impacts of the detainees being sent back. Right now, they provide us with 2 scenarios. One, the detainees will be labeled as POWs and two, the government will treat these people with cruelty and as well, the detainees will return to the terrorist groups. The problem with their first scenario is, they are being treated like POWs when they are not. The opposition seems to believe this is fine because people in GB are criminals. They believe punishment is crucial for these people. Well, the proposition believes evidence is important. We believe people shouldn’t imply that all people in GB are dangerous criminals without proof; there are many reports/articles of many innocent people trapped in GB [http://goo.gl/GSfN] [http://goo.gl/HbRhq]. We believe it is ridiculous and outraging for the innocent to be in GB “because U.S. officials hoped they would know something important.” [http://goo.gl/VEMEJ]. The problem with their second scenario is that the opposition is practically undermining the legal system in countries; capability to deal with these detainees. We really should not undermine the countries’ sovereignty. However, this scenario implies that the government will treat these people like animals without any sort of trials held or proof to decide the sentences. Thus, con is simply saying that US should look down on these countries. This will hurt US reputation regarding both allies and countries being helped; the US soft power will be damaged. This creates conflicts between countries; countries involved in the Arab spring. US, as a part of G8, is helping out the Arab spring; the revolution against the governments and the struggle towards democracy. Creating conflicts/angering the MENA are definitely not what we need right now to win over the trust of people of MENA.

Opp knows the importance of habeas corpus and that the detainees have the right to trial but are these rights actually being enforced? HC was denied to 21 detainees in the past.[[http://goo.gl/a0b8T]]HC only applies when the detainees are trialed in federal courts. Currently, detainees are “tried in military commissions rather than federal court.”[[http://goo.gl/D4G6D]]This is problematic as HC doesn’t apply to military commissions. “The Military Commissions Act [..] eliminate access to habeas corpus for GB detainees. “ [[http://goo.gl/22bcl]] Thus it prevents detainees from claiming HC in military commissions court, and prevents MCA restricts judicial review in terrorism cases by making Geneva Convention inapplicable in US courts

Using torture sometimes provides false info from guilty detainees. Victims are smart enough to avoid giving the real answer thus torture is ineffective. “The fact is there has never ever been reported that any information garnered from torture in fact produced accurate “actionable intelligence.” However, there are many reported instances of false info extracted through torture that led to disastrously bad actions by the United States,”. Even the FBI agents repeatedly warned interrogators at GB that their aggressive methods were legally risky and ineffective. [[http://goo.gl/AKjjx]]

Also, it’s evident that the innocent doesn’t have any info for the govt. What the opp tried to prove is that torture is justified even to these detainees who are innocent. They said a govt should be allowed to torture the innocent to retrieve more info. “The Pentagon has acknowledged 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment at [GM], including a female interrogator climbing onto a detainee’s lap and a detainee whose knees were bruised from being forced to kneel repeatedly.” [[http://goo.gl/ae6jY]] As the proposition side, we believe that unnecessary and unjustified torture should be prevented especially in cases from GB.

It is unjustified to torture people, innocent or guilty and closing GM will assure this torture ceases. GB wrongfully and tortured detainees. It is in the best interest of the US to “stop torturing, stop arbitrary detention, by closing down the GB detention facilities” [[http://goo.gl/KYjOq]] . There is great discrimination against Muslims in GB. “The international community has sharply criticized the US for detaining the prisoners without formally charging them.. a Pentagon report confirmed that abuses of the QUR’AN had taken place. Guards and interrogates at GM had deliberately thrown, kicked and soiled the volumes of the QUR’AN read by prisoners.”[[http://goo.gl/GWntW]] Detainees are not POWs but suspects of terrorism. Thus, the US has declared the war on terror in a illegitimate way. This is why it is illegitimate to assume detainees as criminals.

The extent of torture subjected on the detainees is unfair, for officials at GB don’t have any right to torture suspects as if they were actual criminals. Only one detainee has ever had his day in court.
Further, undermining a nation’s sovereignty does not necessarily mean that one invades a different country. What the US gov is doing; looking down upon a nation’s judicial system by taking matters into its own hands, is also considered undermining it. In both WLDs and the Arab world, this is taken as extremely condescending and has increased anti-Americanism. [[http://goo.gl/GKNxG]]Even if GB were to reform and become more transparent, anti-Americanism will increase as long as detainees are not returned to their countries of origin. [[http://goo.gl/gTkZD]]
This harms American credibility in the international community, and this will impact trade with other nations; if trade with the US subsides, the economy of the entire world suffers. Also, if GB were to be kept,the US will lose its authority as a leader in human rights and human rights violation will be more prevalent in the world.