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June 2, 2009

Monsters Of Gitmo

By Michael Shaw


In the past weeks and days, new photos have been released of Gitmo prisoners.

Given declarations by Congressional Republicans and Democrats that these detainees are too lethal for even America’s supermax prisons to handle, are these guys superhuman or are the pictures of dark, brawny, faceless foreigners — as exploited by politicians — just supposed to terrorize us further?

How do you read these?

(Revised 8:15 am PST)

For additional photos, see: Images from the prison at Guantanamo Bay at the Sacramento Bee photoblog,”The Frame.” Also see Miami Herald slideshow: After Guantanamo, and: Uighurs stage poster-board protest at Guantánamo (Miami Herald)

(Images: Brennan Linsley/A.P. 1 & 2: May 31, 2009. 3 & 4: May 12, 2009. 5: May 13, 2009. Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. For captions, click link under slide window.)

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  • http://www.victorfitzsimons.net Victor F

    I don’t buy the argument that these prisoners are too volatile to be contained in American prisons on the mainland. As Jon Stewart has said on “The Daily Show,” if there’s one thing America does better than even China, it’s putting people in jail. Now, we put them in jails even the laws of the country don’t apply to. We’re really getting good at this!
    As for these pictures, to me they stand as a testament to the lawlessness of the GITMO prison. The facility is a nowhere place and the prisoners are nowhere men. The last picture drives this impression home for me. Men caught in a legal void. It is an affront to our Constitutional ideals.
    Are these politicians afraid that somebody will try to break them out of jail? I have a hard time believing whatever cell they are accused of belonging to has the resources to stage a jail break even on American soil. In reality, how many Hollywood-style jail breaks actually happen in supermax prisons?

  • Tena

    They look like they are in utter despair – they don’t look dangerous. It’s a bogus argument, anyway – number 1: we have terrorists in our prisons,now – they’re full of them: The Aryan Nation, The white Knights of Thule, The Creationist Movement, the American Socialist Party (skinheads); the Hammer of Thor – I could go on, I’ve just scratched the surface of the ‘White Supremacists in our prisons – haven’t even touched on the rest of them.
    Not 2 blocks from where I’m sitting right now in Dallas, the United States housed Nazi officers as POWs during WWII. They were considered so dangerous that they were in high demand, socially. There were dances held for them. They didn’t want to go home. They ended up liking us. A whole lot.
    and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what is wrong with that.

  • ids

    The dude standing with the especially thick skull looks like he’s about to ram his head thru my screen. I’m scared, our Congresspeople are genius.

  • gc

    Maybe it is because they have their shirts on, but they give no suggestion of Stallone/Rambo’s ripped physique; and maybe it is because they are not blond, but I see nothing that makes me imagine Richard Dean Anderson/McGyver. They look for the life of me like the many orangesuits that our local (overweight and often lame)county jailers troop between the county jail and the county courtrooms. County jails are so overbuilt, I would feel comfortable with any of these guys held in one of them, much less a supermax.

  • yg

    chris matthews said something interesting (for a change) the other week. he said people are narcissistic about this issue. they think they singularly have a terrorist assigned to them. doesn’t matter if they live in the middle of nowhere, idaho. they just know a terrorist is out to get them. this seems to be born out in the recent gallup poll which suggest the majority oppose the closing of gitmo. “fear is a mind killer.”
    the al libi suicide:
    http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7141

  • yg

    what really hammered the point was when stewart pointed out we have cannibals sitting in prison. pathological killers who have eaten the brains of their victims.

  • http://www.lindahansonphoto.com Linda Hanson

    Men destroyed. Just that simple. Having them in prison here is a constant reminder that we are afraid of what we have created. Our own worst nightmare.

  • http://thenewsguysletters.blogspot.com/ Russ Nichols

    Whatever happened to the “…the land of the free and the home of the brave”?
    We aint exactly free anymore because the government apparently can wiretap us whenever it wants. And we have a couple million people locked up here in the land of the free, more per capita than any other country. According to
    http://http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita “>NationMaster.com we are way way ahead of any other country, 715 locked up per 100,000 people. Cuba, that dangerous Commie dictatorship, is way down at the bottom, at ZERO (believe it or not!) per 100,000 people. Land of the free? I think not.
    And certainly not the home of the brave. Republican politicians for years have been orchestrating our fears and using fear to get themselves elected to Congress and the White House. And we have been buying it by the bushel load. Apparently we have been such scardy cats–manipulated by cynical or paranoid politicians–that we have allowed them to shred the Constitution and take us into two disastrous military adventures plus all the other illegal crap, including secret prisons and torture.
    Home of the brave? I think the Founding Fathers would be ashamed of this country.

  • Vulture Breath

    Mostly they just look like ordinary, bored, depressed inmates. The last guy is on the verge of crazy – but the Sudoku is an interesting, normalizing touch.

  • yg

    i don’t mean to swoon, but gosh, that was gorgeous.

  • Johanna

    What’s bogus is judging how dangerous someone is by how he looks when captured, held, or defeated. Saddam, a bloodthirsty tyrant if ever there was one, looked just pathetic when he emerged from the ditch in which he was hiding. Very few defeated individuals still convey strength. Only in the movies can someone still look strong, determined and glamorous, as Spartacus did at the end. This is one way in which pictures do lie. A different side of someone emerges during capture. Look at the pictures of Eichmann at his trial. My god, you would think the man had just spent his days in a normal office. How dangerous could he have been, you would ask. Well…..

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