...oh, right.
And in more "the Bush administration are hypocritical jackasses" news, there's this information:
- A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).
- Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.
- Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.
- The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.
"These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms ... but they were there to kill."
-- President Bush, June 20, 2005
"These detainees are dangerous enemy combatants....They were picked
up on the battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill
American forces."
-- White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 21, 2005
"The people that are there are people we picked up on the
battlefield, primarily in Afghanistan. They're terrorists. They're bomb
makers. They're facilitators of terror. They're members of Al Qaeda and
the Taliban....We've let go those that we've deemed not to be a
continuing threat. But the 520-some that are there now are serious,
deadly threats to the United States."
-- Vice President Cheney, June 23, 2005
"These are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield.
They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, June 27, 2005
These quotes are representative of countless assertions by
administration officials over the past four years that all -- or the
vast majority -- of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are Qaeda
terrorists or Taliban fighters captured on "the battlefield."
The
administration's unspoken logic appears to be: Better to ruin the lives
of 10 innocent men than to let one who might be a terrorist go free.
The assertions have been false. And
those quoted above came long after the evidence of their falsity should
have been manifest to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their subordinates.This is not to deny that many of the 500-odd men now held at
Guantanamo and some of the 256 others already released (including 76 to
the custody of their home countries) were captured on Afghan
battlefields or were terrorists, or both. Nor is it to deny the
difficulty of knowing with confidence which detainees could safely be
released. Indeed, several released detainees have ended up rejoining
Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
But reporter Corine Hegland's exhaustively researched cover story
in this issue -- studded with probative details and human stories that
every serious student of the war against terror should read -- provides
powerful evidence confirming what many of us have suspected for years:
A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men
now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone
on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).
Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.
Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were
not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were
innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the
Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.
The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather
handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by
villagers of highly doubtful reliability.These locals had strong incentives to tar as terrorists any and all
Arabs they could get their hands on as the Arabs fled war-torn
Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002 -- including noncombatant teachers
and humanitarian workers. And the Bush administration has apparently
made very little effort to corroborate the plausible claims of
innocence detailed by many of the men who were handed over.The administration has also disclosed very little about who the
Guantanamo detainees are, excepting 1) redacted transcripts of 314
detainees' hearings before Guantanamo's nonjudicial "Combatant Status
Review Tribunals" or CSRTs; and 2) somewhat more-detailed responses to
the federal court petitions filed by lawyers for 132 of these 314 men.My estimates above are based largely on extrapolation from
Hegland's analysis of these 132 federal court files. They appear to be
reasonably representative of the men still at Guantanamo; certainly,
the government has given no indication that its evidence is any weaker
in these 132 cases than in the other 370 or so.It is, therefore, quite remarkable to learn (from Hegland) that
well over half (75) of the 132 are not even accused of fighting the
United States or its allies on any battlefield in post-9/11 Afghanistan
or anywhere else.Indeed, only 35 percent of them (more precisely, of the 115
whose court files specify the locus of capture) were seized in
Afghanistan; 55 percent were picked up by Pakistanis in Pakistan.The government's case for continuing to detain most of these 75
nonbattlefield captives is that other people of doubtful reliability
have said they were associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, often in
very indirect ways.The tribunal hearings, based largely on such
guilt-by-association logic, have been travesties of unfairness. The
detainees are presumed guilty unless they can prove their innocence --
without help from lawyers and without being permitted to know the
details and sources of the evidence against them. This evidence is
almost entirely hearsay from people without firsthand knowledge and
statements from other detainees desperate to satisfy their brutally
coercive interrogators. One file says, "Admitted to knowing Osama bin Laden,"
based on an interrogation in which the detainee -- while being pressed
to "admit" this, despite his denials -- finally said in disgust, "OK, I
knew him; whatever you want."Hegland focuses on a self-described teacher of the Koran from
Yemen who was arrested by Pakistanis at the age of 17 while fleeing the
Afghan war and was later flown to Guantanamo. The only real evidence
against him, wrote his nonlawyer "personal representative" (an Army
lieutenant colonel), was a proven liar's claim to have seen the Yemeni
-- long before 9/11 -- with an AK-47 at bin Laden's private airport in
Kandahar.
This, plus something said by one Mohamed al-Kahtani
while being driven mad by his tormenters (see below), was evidence
enough for the tribunal to brand the Yemeni an enemy combatant.It's difficult to know how many of the 750 men taken to
Guantanamo were dangerous to Americans when they arrived, let alone how
many of the innocent detainees among them may have acquired a lust for
American blood from years of being jailed, humiliated, and brutalized
by Americans. The administration's unspoken logic appears to be: Better
to ruin the lives of 10 innocent men than to let one who might be a
terrorist go free.This logic would be understandable if the end of protecting
American lives justified any and all means, including the wrecking of
many more innocent non-American lives. So, too, would be the torture
(or near-torture) in late 2002 of the above-mentioned al-Kahtani, after
fingerprints had shown him to be the would-be "20th hijacker" turned
away by a suspicious immigration agent a few weeks before 9/11.Al-Kahtani was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of
54 days; he had water dripped on his head and was blasted with cold
air-conditioning and loud music to keep him awake; his beard and head
were shaved; he was forced to wear a bra and panties and to dance with
a male jailer; he was hooded; he was menaced with a dog, told to bark
like one and led around on a leash; he was pumped full of intravenous
fluids and forced to urinate on himself; he was straddled by a female
interrogator and stripped naked; and more -- all under a list of
interrogation methods personally approved by Rumsfeld.Al-Kahtani may well have had valuable information. But it
appears that many other detainees who had no information -- because
they had no involvement in or knowledge of terrorism -- have been put
through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes,
use of forced positions" in a systematic effort to break their wills
that is "tantamount to torture," the International Committee of the Red
Cross complained in a confidential report to the government, excerpts
of which The New York Times obtained in November 2004.
The Pentagon responded then that Guantanamo was an oasis of "humane" treatment.
Last July, the Pentagon elaborated in a report of an investigation into
complaints by FBI agents of abusive interrogation methods. Many of
these methods -- such as shackling detainees to the floor for hours in
painful positions, keeping them shivering cold during interrogations,
grilling them for 16 hours nonstop, waking them up by moving them every
few hours, using loud music and strobe lights -- had been officially
approved as "humane," the Pentagon report explained.Bush has also pledged that the Guantanamo detainees are treated
"humanely." At the same time, he has stressed, "I know for certain ...
that these are bad people" -- all of them, he has implied.
If the president believes either of these assertions, he is a fool. If he does not, choose your own word for him.
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