Guantanamo

The US Naval base located at Guantanamo Bay is something that has always bothered me for a few reasons. First of all, we are LEASING land from a communist country from a dictator that we were once at "war" with. US citizens are even banned from traveling to Cuba not to mention the trade embargo we have on them and yet we continue to occupy their land and pay them for it! In my opinion, we use the base simply because it is not us territory and thus not subject to US laws and/or regulations. This brings us to my next point about "Gitmo", the horrible acts that have been carried out on people each and everyday. I do not care whether or not the people being tortured are guilty or innocent or whether or not they are citizens of the US, because we all know that because they are "terrorists" (or suspected to be) and/or not citizens of the US they don't have any rights correct? The answer to this is WRONG, a big and bold wrong at that. They are human beings and should be treated as such. How can we claim to be against terror and fight for freedom when we willing take freedom from others, who in many cases seem to be innocent or have no useful information? I feel that we are just as guilty and should consider ourselves terrorist and thus hypocritical in the worst way.

Now, when I say we I do not mean myself or the rest of the US, I mean that the actions of few (the "interrogators" at Gitmo as well as anyone else who has taken place in these acts of torture) reflecting on our country as a whole. When people look at the US what will they see? The millions of people we have "liberated"? The fact that we fight for freedom and fight against terror? The answer is simple. When others look at the US they may see the good however the bad ALWAYS out weighs the good. People will see the thousands upon thousands of innocents that we have killed during our bombing runs and "liberation". They will see the pictures of our soldiers that have been in the news holding dead bodies or videos of soldiers cheering when a bomb destroys a building. They will also see the acts of terror that have been committed at Gitmo, innocent people being held for longer than they should have been not to mention the torture they have endured throughout their imprisonment.

In the end, I feel that Gitmo has worked very hard to "protect" our country and help us in our fight against terror although the work was done as far from correct as humanly possible. The "work" done at Gitmo as done, in my opinion, nothing but work to undo every good thing the United States has done to fight against terrorism.