Bob O’Leary

Truthfully, orange is not my color. But I am going to wear my orange shirt on Friday.

It’s not because I’m a Gator fan. The ACLU is holding a nationwide protest to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and asking concerned citizens to wear orange in support of the effort.

While most people think of the ACLU as a liberal organization, this cause is actually the most conservative and patriotic that I can support. It’s not out of sympathy for those imprisoned there – there are truly some evil people there. But there are also some innocents held without cause.

Rather, it’s to help preserve the U.S. Constitution and civil rights. Our government is torturing prisoners and holding them without due process. It is ignoring the Geneva Conventions, putting our troops at risk in later combat.

Some say that water-boarding and other interrogation techniques get prisoners to tell the truth.  Water-boarding gets prisoners to say exactly what the interrogators want to hear. Pour water over somebody long enough, and that person will confess to witchcraft.

Others say it is to fight terrorism. We have enough troops in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting. But our best weapon in the war on terrorism is our respect for liberty and the law. We have win the hearts and minds of Muslims, who value the Qur’an even more than most Christians love the Bible. How can we show them we respect their ways if we don’t value our own laws?

Holding people without trial or without the guarantees of the Geneva Convention makes us a weaker country, not stronger.  Wear orange for your country. Wear it for liberty.