That said, Guantanamo and the tribunals/commissions there have been an unqualified disaster, ranking with the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. It’s regrettably part of the human condition to forget so quickly how badly the Administration mislead the American people (and attempted to mislead the world: Colin Powell’s statement at the UN should not be forgotten, either) into such a disastrous war. WMD? Ties to al Qaeda? Stratergery? No one, not a single person involved in the decision to go to war, has received any appreciable ill consequence, much less punishment, for a war which has all but vanquished the US as a world power and caused so much death and human suffering.

Against this forgotten history, it seems not at all cynical to forecast that the same will be true of Gitmo and the Gitmo Military Commissions. I cannot bring myself to repeat Santayana’s hackneyed phrase, but even that platitudinous observation is appropriate at times. So let us not forget.

Andy:

Wow. I suppose this is all consistent with what earlier transpired in “plea negotiations” involving Hicks, who more or less accepted a negotiated sentence that effectively imposed a “temporary” gag order on him at least until after the Howard government could safely get reelected Down Under (bad plan there, Mr. Howard) and Hamdi before him, who agreed to give up his claims against the United States in exchange for being shipped from the Charleston brig to Saudi Arabia. Or, of course, Hicks’ fellow Australian Mamdouh Habib who was abruptly released to Australia without charges of any kind just as revelations about his own extraordinary rendition to and torture in Egypt were becoming public, rather than have Habib’s mistreatment be the subject of litigation.

Plea negotiations are, of course, part and parcel of every criminal prosecution in pretty much all jurisdictions everywhere; indeed, risk associated with police or prosecutorial misconduct is often part of both sides’ calculus, as is the likelihood of establishing guilt, the quality of evidence and so forth. Guantánamo was, we were told, supposed to be about the magnitude of the defendants’ supposed crimes, so terrible that regular criminal or even court-martial trials were right out. It seems, however, to have ended up becoming as much or more about covering up the magnitude of crimes done to the defendants (and uncharged detainees) than anything else. This did, of course, put prosecutors in a per se untenable position. Regardless of all of this, of course, the commissions in the end only secured three convictions (one of which was Hicks’ plea, and another involved al-Bahlul standing mute)… the commissions did not provide anyone with anything resembling “justice” let alone due process of law.

On this point, I can think of no one better to quote on this than Lt. Col. Vandeveld (my interview with him is here: http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/001262.html):

My fundamental conclusion, after eighteen months with the Commissions, was that no lawyer could certify to the Commissions and to opposing counsel that the discovery requirements mandated by the Military Commissions Act and its implementing regulations had been met, so dismal was the condition and organization of the evidence. Hence, I concluded, none of the detainees, or at least those whose cases I examined and evaluated, could be guaranteed a fair trial — not a perfect trial, which is impossible to achieve in any case, but a trial that afforded the detainees with evident and ascertainable fairness and transparency. The ineluctable consequence of this assessment required me, I believe, as a lawyer, military officer, and a human being, to refuse to participate in the Commissions any longer.

The more details about the commissions process, and anything else associated with the Rube Goldberg contraption built at Guantánamo Bay “to keep us safe” by Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld, Yoo, et al., the more of these troubling little details are going to emerge. Which only goes to show us all the urgency of bringing those responsible for flushing American values down the toilet in the name of security, once and for all:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/03/23/prosecuting-the-bush-administrations-torturers/

Thanks, Andy, for another fine story. The work is tough, but you do a fine job of getting the word out.

Peace.