Digging deeper hole.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Holding suspected terrorists in legal limbo under inhumane conditions for 4 1/2 years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been one of the Bush administration's worst decisions in its war on terrorism.

The suicides of three Gitmo detainees triggered a tsunami of global criticism last week, with even some of America's closest allies calling on the Bush administration to close the camp.

Instead of resolving a problem that has destroyed the United States' reputation as a beacon of human rights, the administration reacted by expelling the journalists who were reporting on the suicides from Guantanamo.

Journalists from the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald and the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer had received permission from the prison's commander to report from Guantanamo this week. On Tuesday, word came down from the secretary of defense's office in Washington, D.C., that the reporters had to go.

The official explanation was that the reporters had to leave because other news outlets wanted to cover the suicides but didn't get permission from Gitmo's commander. To preserve the fairness and impartiality that everyone knows is precious to the Defense Department, the decision was made that they all had to go. Besides, the military was busy investigating the suicides, which a brain-dead prison administrator had earlier described as "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us."

It's hard to imagine how the military could possibly be handling this situation in a worse manner. If military officials are sincere when they claim prisoners are not being physically and emotionally abused and that conditions at the camp are not oppressive, then they should increase public awareness about the prison by inviting every reporter who wants to come.

As Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Doug Frantz observed Wednesday, expelling the reporters "represents a Stone Age attitude that only feeds suspicions about what is going on at Guantanamo."