http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...rd_miniter.htm


ON the military plane back from America's most fa mous terrorist holding pen, the in-flight film was "V for Vendetta," a screed that tries to justify terrorism. It was a fitting end to a surreal, military-sponsored trip.

The Pentagon seemed to be hoping to disarm its critics by showing them how well it cares for captured terrorists. The trip was more alarming than disarming. I spent several hours with Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., who heads the joint task force that houses and interrogates the detainees. (The military isn't allowed to call them "prisoners.")

Harris, a distinguished Navy veteran who was born in Japan and educated at Annapolis and Harvard, is a serious man trying to do a politically impossible job. I spoke with him at length, and with a dozen other officers and guards, and visited three different detention blocks.

The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.

The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.

Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)

Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee privacy.

Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has developed in the camp. Military intelligence can't yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for making weapons and so on.

And they can make weapons from almost anything. Guards have been attacked with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs and fan blades. Some are more elaborate. "These folks are MacGyvers," Harris said.

Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others. How? Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages. (Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono basis, with more than 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.) Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of "attorney-client privilege" - even if they know the document inside is an Arabic-language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.

That's right: Accidentally or not, American lawyers are helping al Qaeda prisoners continue to plot.

There is little doubt what this note-passing and weapons-making is used for. The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005 to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.

One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life; the doctors wear body armor to treat their patients.

The kinder we are to terrorists, the harsher we are to their potential victims.

Striking the balance between these two goods (humane treatment, foreknowledge of deadly attacks) is difficult, but the Bush administration seems to lean too far in the direction of the detainees. No expense spared for al Qaeda health care: Some 5,000 dental operations (including teeth cleanings) and 5,000 vaccinations on a total of 550 detainees have been performed since 2002 - all at taxpayer expense. Eyeglasses? 174 pairs handed out. Twenty two detainees have taxpayer-paid prosthetic limbs. And so on.

What if a detainee confesses a weakness (like fear of the dark) to a doctor that might be useful to interrogators, I asked the doctor in charge, would he share that information with them? "My job is not to make interrogations more efficient," he said firmly. He cited doctor-patient privacy. (He also asked that his name not be printed, citing the potential for al Qaeda retaliation.)

Food is strictly halal and averages 4,200 calories per day. (The guards eat the same chow as the detainees, unless they venture to one of the on-base fast-food joints.) Most prisoners have gained weight.

Much has been written about the elaborate and unprecedented appeal process. Detainees have their cases reviewed once a year and get rights roughly equivalent to criminals held in domestic prisons. I asked a military legal adviser: In what previous war were captured enemy combatants eligible for review before the war ended? None, he said.

America has never faced an enemy who has so ruthlessly broken all of the rules of war - yet never has an enemy been treated so well.

Of Gitmo's several camps, military records show that the one with the most lenient rules is the one with the most incidents and vice versa. There is a lesson in this: We should worry less about detainee safety and more about our own.

Some 20 current detainees have direct personal knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and nearly everyone of the current 440 say they would honored to attack America again. Let's take them at their word.

This is torture? This is what everyone is against? This is why Europe hates us? Then let them hate us. No war is won by using teddy bears when the enemy is using suicide bombers.

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"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams

Where have all the Conservatives Gone?

Um, no. They don't torture at Gitmo any more. They save that for the secret CIA prisons.

I love the disdain this guy shows for attorney-client privilege. I love the disdain he shows for basic humane treatment of hundreds of prisoners who have yet to be accused of anything concrete, charged with anything, convicted of anything.

Most of the prisoners at Gitmo are not al-Qaeda terrorists. They are simply low-level combatants. Many of them were arrested under dubious circumstances, turned in by Afghan warlords eager to demonstrate their cooperation with the U.S. after the fall of the Taliban.

I wish Congress would pass a legal definition of the word "terrorist." Its overuse, misuse and abuse has done much to obscure the reality of the situation we are facing.

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Man up.

I don't know where you are getting your claim that........"Most of the prisoners at Gitmo are not al-Qaeda terrorists?" These prisoners are the worst of the worst. They were captured fighting and killing OUR soldiers and the coalition on the battlefield. Those few who might have got swept up inadvertently are released already.

I am truly appalled at what I see going on. I thought I could count on Republicans to be strong on national security, but now I wonder if they are any better than Democrats--whom I did not expect would help. We've now got John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Warner, and Susan Collins.....not to mention ex-S.O.S. Colin Powell---claiming these people should be treated with kid gloves. They fear retribution; perhaps they didn't notice all the beheadings, the slitting of Danny Pearl's throat, the burning and hanging of our military personnel in public from a bridge, or any of the other ungodly and unspeakable things done to our people. No.....these leaders are too worried now about "world opinion." Perhaps they failed to notice that the "world opinion" wasn't all that outraged with the torture of the people inside Iraq and around the world by the terrorists. While the Islamic extremists behead people and torture, we are worried about "inhumane" treatment like maybe not having a personal potty in a prison cell. Do I care that Khalid Sheik Mohammed thought he might die while being waterboarded? Absolutely NOT! Point is.....he didn't die. He wasn't even permanently harmed. But he DID talk---he DID provide valuable information that stopped plots and led to the arrests of other high-value terrorists. Want to know what REAL torture is???? REAL torture is being trapped in a 110-story building with smoke and fire so unbearable you jump out the window in an effort to "escape." Now.....that is TRUE torture. THAT is why we fight and what we should NOT forget---because these people want to do it again, this time trapping and killing tens of thousands.

Why don't we just tie one hand behind our banks while we fight? No, no.....let's tie BOTH our hands behind our backs while we pretend to fight. That's what we did in Viet Nam--thanks to political correctness---and look what that got us. I sometimes feel like Pres. Bush is fighting this war on terrorism all by himself. Thank God, at least, MOST Republicans are helping him in every way they can. But the ones mentioned above, really, really, really have disappointed me.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

How do you know that?

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Man up.