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U.S. in `Legal Schizophrenia' Over Guantanamo, McCaffrey Says
CAROL ROSENBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers
June 20, 2006
MIAMI - Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, fresh from a tour of GuantanamoBay, said Tuesday that U.S. political leaders need to fix the "legal schizophrenia" created by keeping captives at the remote base in southeast Cuba.
McCaffrey, who headed the Southern Command from 1994 to 1996, said there is "zero abuse" at the sprawling prison camp complex where the Pentagon houses 460 or so captives airlifted from Afghanistan.
But, he predicted the Pentagon would thin the population to a third in the next two years and said U.S. policymakers need to better define the status of the captives.
"We are in a political and legal mess that is beyond belief, trying to sort out what do we do with these people," he said on the National Public Radio program, ``The Diane Rehm Show,'' broadcast live from Washington, D.C.
"We've been of two minds. Are they criminals who lack charges and due process? Are they enemy combatants who are due to be treated like prisoners of war? Or are they a third, inadequately defined category of people that Congress and the courts need to act on to tell us how we deal with international terrorists, nonstate actors?"
The Bush administration, he said, "took these prisoners there" thinking it was beyond federal jurisdiction. "Now we've got federal courts involved, we mired ourselves in legal schizophrenia. The solution will be political."
McCaffrey went to the base with the current Southcom chief, Army Gen. Bantz Craddock, on Monday. His goal was "to convey his impressions to U.S. military cadets" at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he is an instructor, said Army Col. Bill Costello, Southcom spokesman.
McCaffrey, who was the White House drug czar during the Clinton administration, said he had visited Guantanamo as part of an overall inspection of U.S. detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba.
In the first year or two of the war against terror, he said in a clear reference to Afghanistan and Iraq, prisoners of war were abused as a result of "inadequate troops trained, ill-trained, dealing with thousands of detainees."
"In some cases I think there were unlawful murders and abuse of detainees. There have been prosecutions either ongoing or completed at lower levels," he added.
He blamed "systemic policy errors in judgment that resulted in the abuse and the violation of our own value system."
McCaffrey reported that 1,800 soldiers, sailors and civilians work at Guantanamo's prison camps - and put the price tag at $100 million.
"There is zero abuse going on in that camp," he said. "It's a world-class operation."
McCaffrey brushed aside a caller's remark that the United States had compounded its problems by squatting in Cuba.
"That's nonsense. We're there quite legally. I'm not sure it's politically all that good a thing for us to be there," he said. "I'll bet 10 years from now we're not there. I'll bet Castro dies, there's a new government, things will move rapidly."
Fidel Castro has periodically asked the United States to depart the 45-square-mile base, branding it as an illegal occupation. The White House has argued for years that the United States has a legitimate lease and cuts an annual $4,085 rent check, even if Cuba does not cash it.
Also late Monday, two reporters were allowed to arrive at the base for a basic media tour - a Dutch radio reporter and a French print journalist.
Last week, the Office of the Secretary of Defense ordered all independent media off the Navy base, citing "fairness" in the aftermath of the suicides of three detainees, the first deaths since the detention center opened in 2002.
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