Fall 2009 Critical Thinking Student Sample Work

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Practice Recon #1

Student #1

Reconstruction - Closing Guantanamo will be a mistake

The author of this article argues that Obama’s executive order to close Guantanamo Bay will be a mistake. Her main rationale to support this claim was that the assumptions of the prison being unsecured, poorly maintained, and will resolve the torture prisoners endured are not accurate. She supports this by illustrating her visit to the prison. When she went to Guantanamo proved to be a “state-of-the-art, climate-controlled, clean facility.” Moving detainees to another prison location, for example, Camp X-Ray may be much worse as the facility has not been in function in the past years based on her research. Therefore, keeping the detainees at Guantanamo would better since it is the best they have. She disproved the assumption that Guantanamo was a threat to national security by witnessing that there was tight security over the detainees as she saw security guards checking on them every three minutes. She explains that it would be more dangerous to move the location of the prison and moving the prisoners, first because another location would make it more for a target for terrorists. Guantanamo’s location at the tip of Cuba makes the prison geographically isolated. The movement of detainees does not change the horrors that may or may have not happened in the prison. The torture of prisoners that occurred in Abu Ghraib is similar to that of Guantanamo, therefore the location of the prison does not change what did and can happen in other prisons. The trials for suspects may never happen because the transferring to a different prison will only delay it, already since the most highly secured, most technologically advanced courtroom in the world has already been built at Guantánamo.

Student #2

P: The torturous perception of Gitmo is based on old facts and photos. P: Moving Gitmo into the U.S. could cause the new site to be a target for terrorist attacks. P: The most technologically advanced courtroom is already at Guantanamo. P: Moving everyone to a different location would delay justice for some inmates.

GC: Closing Guantanamo Bay would be wrong for everyone and would not make the U.S. safer.

The general conclusion that the author was trying to convey was that there would be no winners if Guantanamo Bay was closed, and moving it would not make the U.S. safer. Her main argument is that moving inmates into the United States would endanger U.S. citizens as well as inmates. She also argues that there is no torturing going on at Gitmo and that the public perception of the camp is based off of old facts and photos of a different camp before renovations. The author claims that by moving the inmates to a different location, some of them would not receive justice like fair and speedy trials. She states that the Obama administration has considered creating a camp with a state of the art facility to hold courtroom sessions. The author argues that we already have a state of the art courtroom that is already at Guantanamo.