Close Gitmo, free prisoners, return land to Cuba: Analyst

The United States should immediately close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, release the prisoners and return the land to Cuba, a human rights activist and political commentator in New York City says.

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said President Barack Obama would probably not be able to keep his 2008 campaign promise to shut down the notorious prison by the end of his presidency next year.

Commenting to Press TV, Mickey Z., who is also a writer, editor and blogger, said, “I find this to be a fascinating opportunity for us to explore the way we are conditioned in a corporate-dominated culture, because this particular issue gets resurrected every now and then, and the corporate media debates what is essentially lies and distortion.”

“In reality, more than six years ago, President Barack Obama made a promise that he probably never meant to keep: to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within one year,” he added.

“Since then, the prison remained open while Obama waged a relentless war across the globe and was given a Nobel Peace Prize,” he stated.

“A man who maintains his own personal kill-list, and thinks it’s funny to make public jokes about using drones, and yet in the culture we live in he is often decried as being soft on the war on terror and called a socialist as if it were an insult,” Mickey Z. continued.

“We are led to believe that he perhaps feels bad about these prisoners that are being held without trials and in many cases without charges, and, of course, in many cases are being tortured on the regular basis,” he further said.

Mickey Z., the author of Occupy this Book, said that “I would propose that rather than trying to parse out whether or not he is going to fulfill this promise or that promise when in reality the record stands for itself.”

“We should recognize that the so-called land of the free, if it wanted to live up to its name, would release the prisoners as soon as possible, close the prison, apologize to everyone that was held illegally there, and return that land back to Cuba, whom it belongs,” the activist noted.

“Because what does that say about our culture, when the United States’ president merely mentions a theoretical concept -- in theory he may adhere to international law and it makes headlines. What does that say about the world we live in? To me, it says we don’t need to just close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, we need to dismantle the entire system before there is nothing left,” he observed.

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