In the latest act of injustice, the Obama administration has decided to dodge the real issue around the unjust imprisonment of people in Guantánamo Bay by outsourcing the prisoners to the small Pacific nation of Palau. I am disgusted by the lack of justice and the willingness of our politicians and more importantly, our citizens, to so willingly abdicate their rights and the very values we hold as core to our way of life on the altar of fear.

The main ludicrous argument made by the frenetic right wing pundits on the airwaves is that they do not want to see these men let loose on American soil. But there's one fatal flaw in their logic. If these men are tried (EVEN IN MILITARY TRIBUNALS WHICH ARE BULLSHIT MOCK TRIALS) and deemed innocent then what do we as citizens have to fear? Do we have no faith in the justice system in our country? Better yet, are you seriously thinking they would let foreign nationals loose on our soil? No, they would send them back to their countries of origin as we do with all illegal immigrants. But more importantly - is it REALLY a fear that these men might be terrorists even though the law migh find them innocent, or is it an inherent racism against the unknown brown muslim man walking down the street that really motivates the public to rally behind the trumpets of fear?

I have to say that I am deeply disgusted with the Obama administration's handling of this situation. Many of these detainees were sent to Guantánamo in direct violation of the Writ of Habeas Corpus - whereby a prisoner has a right to know what the charges are against him and to be able to defend himself before the courts in a speedy trial with due process. For the multitudes of you who have forgotten your history, "Habeas Corpus" was one of the fundamental rights drafted into our laws in our early history to counter the common injustice of imprisoning someone without telling them why and holding them indefinitely with no hope for a trial - something the Brits were famous for. It's the reason we can't let people rot in jail on charges of hearsay without giving them the right to defend themselves before a jury. It tempers the power of the government with the power of the people. Note: George W. Bush's administration suspended Habeas Corpus... hmmm, wonder why?

Additionally, the U.S. military actually offered rewards to people presenting information about SUSPECTED terrorists. Those individuals who were suspected of terrorism were rounded up and shipped off to these undisclosed locations, many of them were tortured (Waterboarding is torture folks - that's what we decided when we tried the Japanese in WWII for doing it to our troops and the international courts agreed. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.) and some even died. Most of these people weren't even terrorists but were people turned in by others who envied them or hated them or revenge and a reward of $500. Call me crazy, but if I was in a hopeless war zone with no food, no clean water, and half of my family had died from bombs and incidental gun fire and I could make $500 - a whole lot of money to live off of - by turning someone in, i could draft up a list of about 10 folks right now that I would turn over without a second thought. Wouldn't you?

And what is the fear of trying these people before a public court of law? Why the military tribunals? Some folks argue that they were foreign combatants and as such they are not subject to our laws but to the military. For one, most of these people did not satisfy the legal definition of a combatant according to the Geneva Convention to which we have signed and agreed as a country. Secondly, because most of these men were either convicted through hearsay or were subjected to torture and their testimony under torture is not admissible in legal courts. Why? Because anyone will confess to ANYTHING under torture. Torture me, and I'll confess to shooting Abraham Lincoln!

But the greater issue at hand is the ongoing meme in our country where the general public is so very willing to sacrifice the core principles of democracy in the face of fear. They are willing to give up the right to a speedy trial, the right to know the charges against you, the right to legal representation, the right to NOT BE TORTURED, the right to stand before a jury of your peers, the right to be treated with dignity, the right to innocence before the law until you are PROVEN guilty, the right to privacy, the right to religion, the list goes on and on.

It seems to me that these values, this freedom, is what is core to the American way. They are hard-wired into our founding legal documents. They are the structure upon which we have built 233 years of a successful democracy. But the American public, with its 30 min attention span, fat on the orgy of consumer-based consumption and drunk on the constant stream of propaganda flooded at them from corporate-based media conglomerates has lost its sense of reason, of solidarity, of integrity and most importantly, its moral compass.

If you truly think about it, isn't that exactly what the terrorists want us to do: to succumb to our fears and give up everything we have that makes life in America so wonderful? If indeed this is the case, then it seems to me that we have lost the war on terror - and it was the terrorists' viral dissemination of fear that ultimately won out. It is only when we stand firm in our freedoms and live them with integrity and uphold them in the face of every threat, that we truly win the war against terrorism.