US President George W. Bush's 'war on terrorism' has lost direction and nowhere is that more evident than at the military detention camp for suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The facility has become a symbol for all that is wrong with American efforts to prevent more attacks like those on September 11, 2001.
Despite three years of objections from international lawyers, human rights groups and now even members of Mr Bush's Republican Party, about 500 people are still being held at the camp without having been charged. They have been denied independent legal help and have not been allowed to see relatives. A further 12 are being investigated by military commissions, and four have been charged. A further 167 were freed after they were determined to be no longer a threat and 67 more have been released to the custody of their governments.
All were detained in the name of the 'war on terrorism', either because they were suspected members of the terrorist network behind the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda, or its Afghan supporters, the Taleban.
The Bush administration argues that those being held are 'enemy combatants' and would be a threat to the United States if released. As proof, it claims 12 who were set free were later captured or killed 'on the battlefield'. Countering arguments that due legal process is being denied, it claims a special judicial system has been set up to deal with the cases and that detainees are given more legal protection than if they were being tried by US courts.
That protection was not evident in a report last month by Amnesty International, which compared Guantanamo Bay to Soviet Union gulags. A US Senate judicial hearing was told on Tuesday that the US detention policy bore similarities to that of Nazi Germany or Cambodia under Pol Pot.
The criticism follows admissions by the US military that religious sensibilities of some of the detainees had been ignored. That came amid continuing revelations about the ill-treatment of prisoners being held by the US and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
