Ex-Bush official confirms innocents at Gitmo

If it wasn't obvious by now, it should be: most of the people rounded up and jailed without charge at Guantanamo Bay were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Retired Army colonel and former chief of staff to the then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, told The Associated Press last Thursday that many of the detainees were innocent men, and that there was no meaningful attempt by US forces to distinguish actual terrorists from civilians.

Not only were they unable to separate civilians from fighters, but they had no desire to. Wilkerson revealed that he learned from military commanders that they had determined early on that the men were innocent, but decided to keep them imprisoned regardless: "It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance." [Emphasis added.]

Wilkerson wrote, "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released." Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney prevented the situation from being addressed, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."

Wilkerson also confirmed that many detainees had no connection to either the Taliban or to al-Qaida, and had been turned in for the $5,000 per head reward money.

Of the 800-odd prisoners at Guantanamo, of which 240 remain, Wilkerson claimed that two dozen are actual terrorists. (That's a ratio of over 32 innocents per terrorist.) He also revealed that the US government couldn't try them even if they wanted to, "because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."

More here.

This is a good time to remember that while President Obama has promised to close Guantanamo Bay, he has so far refused to do the same for the even more secret Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Not only has Obama refused to close Bagram, or open it to oversight, or at least to trials, but there are plans to increase the number of people disappeared into the secret prison.

Goings on in Gitmo

Tom's Dispatch has reprinted an article by Karen Greenberg, where she describes the conditions in America's prison in Cuba, Guantanamo Bay.

8. Guantanamo's deep respect for Islam is unappreciated. All the food served in the prison is halal, prepared in a separate kitchen, constructed solely for the detainees. All cells, outdoor areas, and even the detainee waiting room in the courthouse where the Military Commissions will be held, have arrows pointing to Mecca. All compliant detainees have prayer rugs and prayer beads. All detainees, no matter how they behave, have Korans. The library includes books on Islamic history, Islamic philosophy, and on Mohammed and his followers. Our escorts are armored against our protests about the denial of legal rights to prisoners. The right to challenge their detention in court, actually being charged with a crime, or adhering to the basic rules of procedure and evidence that undergird American law -- none of this is important. They do not see that what's at stake is not building a mosque at Gitmo, any more than it is about serving gourmet food, or about the cushy, leather interrogation chairs we are shown. It is about extending the most basic of legal rights, including the presumption of innocence, to those detained here.

A few(?) isolated(?) cases of guards flushing copies of the Koran down the toilet aside, I think this is quite significant. I've argued for years now that the battle isn't really between the Christian West and the Muslim Middle East. Bush versus bin Laden is just a side-show. That's a minor spat between two leaders' whose world-view is remarkably similar. Hitler and Stalin went to war too, but minus Hitler's insane racial obsessions, the two were natural allies.

(Except, of course, people like Hitler and Stalin can't bear to be anything but top dog.)

Both Bush and bin Laden agree that God rules the world, and his appointed proxy should have ultimate and total power. They only differ on whether God's right-hand-man is called Osama or George. Whether you read the Bible or the Koran, that's not really important right here and right now, not compared to such things as over-turning the post-Enlightenment secular world, and replacing such humanist things as the rule of law and the presumption of innocence with the divine infallibility of presidents.

The real war, I believe, is between fundamentalists like bin Laden and Bush, who believe that they and they alone decide what's right and what's wrong, and those who keep the values of the Enlightenment. It is, I believe, no accident that the first target of Bush and his Fundamentalist neo-con friends, was not an Arab theocracy, nor the country which financed the 9/11 hijackers (Saudi Arabia), but the one seriously secular Arab state, Iraq. Saddam might not have been big on freedom and justice, but nor did he say he tortured people because God told him too.

I had a few other things to say about Gitmo, in particular about the case of Sean Baker, one of the military police on duty there, who was mistakenly beaten by his fellow guards and given permanent brain damage. I was feeling rather, shall we say short tempered and uncharitable when I wrote it, and my language might not be suitable for maiden aunts and pre-school children, so I put it on my Uncensored blog.

Another innocent terrorist released

For four years, the US Government has declared that German-born Murat Kurnaz was a terrorist, and that they had "secret" evidence to prove he was a member of al Qaeda.

A week ago, Kurnaz was released from the Guantanamo Bay military prison and turned over to Germany, a free man again.

Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born and raised in Germany, was kidnapped in Pakistan and handed over to the US. He was held without access to a lawyer for at least two years, and was not charged with any crime. Nevertheless, the US government declared him a terrorist based only on secret evidence. Once the evidence against him was declassified, it became clear there was nothing linking him to al Qaeda, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden or any other threat, and Germany was finally able to negotiate his freedom.