Camp Concentration

Hunger strikers in the concentration camp at Guantánamo are being force-fed, and forcibly restrained, in an effort to break the strike. There are two interesting aspects to this story. One is

Citing unnamed officials, the New York Times said staff at the camp had become increasingly concerned that the hunger strike protest, which began in August, was getting out of control.

They were worried that if one of the inmates were to commit suicide it would increase international condemnation of the camp.

So, in spite of stating that they're being humane, the only real concern is that the image of the United States will be further tarnished. The other aspect of interest is:

According to a report by two lawyers more than half of the detainees, who are being held without charge, have never committed any "hostile acts" against the US.

Mark Denbeaux and Joshua Denbeaux estimated that 55% "are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies", after analysing government documents regarding the prisoners.

They said that according to the documents only 8% were classed as al-Qaeda fighters and 60 prisoners "are detained merely because they are 'associated with' a group or groups the [US] government asserts are terrorist organizations".

The report also suggests that some of the detainees were caught by people seeking US bounties and their identities were never properly verified.

So, some of the detainees are people who committed no offence against the US. Why are they still there? The only reason can be that the United States government does not want the embarassment of having it revealed that not only was it mistaken, its mistakes were based on fundamentally racist assumptions.