The Pros And Cons Of Guantanamo Bay

Years of controversy and debate have surrounded Guantanamo Bay, a United States military base that has been used as a detention facility for accused foreign terrorists since January 2002 (Kaplan 2005) following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The facility holds around 500 to 600 detainees at any given time, and most of these are, or are thought to be, members of known and dangerous terrorist organizations which are direct threats to the United States’ government and its citizens, such as al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Debates have raged regarding what kinds of interrogation techniques the U.S. has been using at Guantanamo Bay, which is shrouded in secrecy; whether these techniques, and the reasons and lengths of time certain prisoners are being held there-- sometimes indefinitely-- are ethically or constitutionally justifiable; and even whether the facility itself is legally under U.S. jurisdiction, since
It turns out that rather than using formal legal processes to identify potential terrorists, the U.S. government had arrested them based on the opinions of “an ad hoc group of lawyers, soldiers, and CIA agents…. Detainees were not provided counsel to contest their classification and had no opportunity to appeal” (Yin 2011). This, some would claim, is in clear and blatant violation of the 6th Amendment to the United States’ Constitution, which states that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial... and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense” (U.S. Const. amend. VI); as well as, more broadly, the due process clause of the 5th Amendment, which states that “No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” (U.S. Const. amend.