Editorial | The Guantanamo Suicides

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, June, 2006

After 41/2 years, the Bush administration's preventive detention of terror suspects in Cuba has become an embarrassment and an affront to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Consider how today's reality at the Guantanamo military prison clashes with the nation's bedrock ideals:

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

After the suicides of three Gitmo detainees over the weekend, the bed in every cage-like cell will be stripped of linens at daybreak.

That all men are created equal...

Detainees will be checked visually every 30 seconds; in effect, they will never be left alone. Hunger strikers will be bound and force-fed through tubes inserted through the nose.

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain...