Shut Down Gitmo! First ever protest march on USSOUTHCOM Hdq : Miami IMC

The US government maintains that the detanees at Guantanamo are dangerous terrorists, but the real truth is being told by activists such as Col Ann Wright, Professor Mark Falkoff.

Here is an example:

- Of the 770 men that have been sent to Guantanamo, 440 have been sent home or to third countries. Of that 10 have been charged with a crime. Only 1 has been convicted. And that was Australian David Hicks, who will serve only 9 months. His legal team attributed his acceptance of his guilty plea bargain to his desperation for release from Guantanamo.

- Only 5% were captured on the battlefield. The rest were bought for thousands of dollars. People were mis-identified as being Al Quaeda or Taliban only so informants could collect the US military rewards.

- Only 8% have been accused of having any Al Quaeda affiliation. One was picked up in Cairo, another in a university dorm.

- And of the men in Guantanamo, the vast majority have been charged with NO CRIME!!!

- 770 men have been sent to Guantanamo, 440 have been sent home or to third countries. The US govn't refuses to admit it has made any mistakes. If these men are really the worst of the worst -- as Cheney said, these men had to be blindfolded and gagged for the 20+hour plane ride to Gitmo so they wouldn't gnaw through the wires, how is it that they are no longer a danger?

* Read Professor Marc Falkoff of Northern Illinois University blog article (Behind the Scenes at Guantanamo Bay) at
http://allierambles.blogspot.com/2007/12/behind-scenes-at-guantanamo-bay-its-not.html

* Read what Col Ann Wright has to say about Guantanamo detainees in her Truthout article “Five years of Infamy: Close Guantanamo!” at
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/67/24674

* Want to know more about Col Ann Wright go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Wright

* Read Carol Rosenberg's article "Doral protesters target Guantánamo"
http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2008/01/10166_comment.php#10186

Doral protesters target Guantánamo
by Carol Rosenberg

As hundreds around the world mark the anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, protesters dressed in orange jump suits bearing the logo of Amnesty International outside the U.S. Embassy in London on Friday.

* View slide show "Guantánamo protests" at http://www.miamiherald.com/924/gallery/375490.html

* View previous coverage at http://www.miamiherald.com/guantanamo/

* View article, "Guantanamo photo reverberates six years later" at
http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/375017.html

As many as 60 protesters -- some wearing trademark orange jumpsuits -- staged a street demonstration in Doral Friday morning to mark the sixth anniversary of the opening of the prison camps at Guantànamo Bay, Cuba.

Rush-hour motorists mostly whizzed by the demonstrators, who were chanting, "Hey-hey, ho-ho, U.S. out of Guantànamo" and "Stop torture now," at a busy intersection at Northwest 87th Avenue and Doral Boulevard.

A few drivers honked their car and truck horns as protester Rae Newman of Miami waved a sign declaring, "Honk 4 Peace."
"People are somewhat complacent," she said, adding that the horn-honking "goes in waves, actually. When one person honks, it gives others the courage to honk."

The local demonstrators, joined by the national anti-war Code Pink movement, are protesting near the Pentagon's Southern Command headquarters as part of a coordinated series of demonstrations called by Amnesty International.

Six years ago Friday, the first 20 detainees arrived at the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba to open the offshore detention and interrogation center.

The Defense Department, which had no official comment on the anniversary, calls the prison camps a war-on-terror necessity and says captives are treated humanely.

Southcom is the Pentagon's outpost for operations in Latin America and the Caribbean and supervises the prison camps, where the United States currently holds 275 men as "enemy combatants."

The Doral demonstrators fanned out on a sidewalk with banners that also declared, "Torture is terror" and "Close Guantànamo." About a third wore the jumpsuits and held photos of war-on-terror detainees, both men since freed and some still in the prison camps.

The group of protesters then marched up a sidewalk toward Southcom, the jumpsuits and banners serving as quirky street theater in generally businesslike Doral.

One protester brought a pet rooster, saying it symbolized "a wake-up call for America."