I do not doubt the rank injustice in Gitmo. But I also do not doubt the Obama administration's genuine political and security dilemma. Fewer than 20 Gitmo inmates could be tried under civil law, because there's sufficient non-tortured evidence to make the case against them, and around 150 are clearly innocent prisoners possibly radicalized by imprisonment and thereby potential dangers to American lives, if released. In the middle, there are – and have been – all sorts of possibilities. The nightmare scenario is this one:
In 2004 Mr. Shah was sent back to Afghanistan [from Gitmo] — where he promptly revealed himself to be Abdullah Mehsud, a Pakistan-born militant, and began plotting mayhem. He recorded jihadist videos, organized a Taliban force to fight American troops, planned an attack on Pakistan’s interior minister that killed 31 people, oversaw the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers, and finally detonated a suicide bomb in 2007 as the Pakistani Army closed in. His martyrdom was hailed in an audio message by none other than Osama bin Laden.
Imagine if that happened under Obama. The GOP would go off its rocker (even as they uttered not a peep when it happened under Bush). At the same time:
At least 150 people are innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs and drivers who were rounded up or even sold to US forces and transferred across the world. In the top-secret documents, senior US commanders conclude that in dozens of cases there is “no reason recorded for transfer”.
How does the US continue holding these innocents and remain somehow committed to Western principles of justice or even fair rules of detention in a just war? Then there's the case of an al-Jazeera journalist, detained for being allegedly an al Qaeda courier, but questioned solely about … al-Jazeera. Greenwald has, as often, a must-read in his case.
This is the bottom line:
The United States has imprisoned hundreds of men for years without trial based on a difficult and strikingly subjective evaluation of who they were, what they had done in the past and what they might do in the future. The 704 assessment documents use the word “possibly” 387 times, “unknown” 188 times and “deceptive” 85 times.
Viewed with judges’ rulings on legal challenges by detainees, the documents reveal that the analysts sometimes ignored serious flaws in the evidence — for example, that the information came from other detainees whose mental illness made them unreliable. Some assessments quote witnesses who say they saw a detainee at a camp run by Al Qaeda but omit the witnesses’ record of falsehood or misidentification. They include detainees’ admissions without acknowledging other government documents that show the statements were later withdrawn, often attributed to abusive treatment or torture.
This we were told by the war criminals in the Bush administration were "the worst of the worst." Some were. Most were nothing of the kind. As with the debt, the war, and the economy, we are still trying to emerge from the Bush-Cheney wreckage. The damage they did to their own country and the world will live on for the rest of our lives.
(Photo: A Uighur Muslim detainee from China hides in a plywood hut in a compound at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 1, 2009. By Carol Rosenberg/Miami Herald/MCT via Getty Images)
The Dish 