Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians
27.5.09
In the summer of 2002, as Jane Mayer described it in her book The Dark Side, “The CIA, concerned by the paucity of valuable information emanating from [Guantánamo], dispatched a senior intelligence analyst, who was fluent in Arabic and expert on Islamic extremism, to find out what the problem was.” After interviewing a random sample of two dozen or so Arabic-speaking prisoners, the analyst “concluded that an estimated one-third of the prison camp’s population of more than 600 captives at the time, meaning more than 200 individuals, had no connection to terrorism whatsoever.”
The analyst expressed his concerns to Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, Guantánamo’s senior military commander, and “was further disconcerted to learn that the general agreed with him that easily a third of the Guantánamo detainees were mistakes.” “Later,” Mayer added, “Dunlavey raised his estimate to fully half the population.”
Dunlavey didn’t explain what he believed about the other half of the prison’s population, but in 2006 a team at the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey analyzed the publicly available information about 517 prisoners, which had been released by the Pentagon, and discovered that, according to their own records, which explained the circumstances of the prisoners’ capture and described their purported connections to al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban, only 8 percent were alleged to have had any kind of affiliation with al-Qaeda, 55 percent were not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the US or its allies, and the rest, as Mayer put it, “were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee US bombs.” She added, “The overwhelming majority — all but 5 percent — had been captured by non-US players, many of whom were bounty hunters.”
Analyzing this information, and bearing in mind that, at the time the Seton Hall team compiled its report, records did not exist for 200 other prisoners because they had already been released, the stark conclusion is that, according to the Pentagon’s own findings, only around 40 of the prisoners were alleged to have had any connection with al-Qaeda, and the rest were either innocent men, Afghan Taliban recruits, or foreigners recruited to help the Taliban fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the 9/11 attacks, and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism.
In 2002, after the CIA analyst completed his survey of the Guantánamo prisoners, he wrote a report about what he had discovered. As Mayer described it, “He mentioned specific detainees by name, so there was no confusion about whom the United States was wrongly holding. He made clear that he believed that the United States was committing war crimes by holding and questioning innocent people in such inhumane ways.”
His report soon reached John Bellinger, legal counsel to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. “Immediately distressed,” as Mayer put it, Bellinger convened a meeting with the analyst, attended by Gen. John Gordon, the National Security Council’s senior terrorism expert (and a former Deputy Director of the CIA), and the two men then approached White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to discuss the report’s significance.
When they went to meet Gonzales, however, they found him flanked by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Legal Counsel, and Timothy Flanigan, a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office. “Neither had any official national security role,” Mayer wrote, “and no one had warned Bellinger that they would be there. But they did all the talking.”
According to two sources who told Mayer about the meeting, Addington dismissed Bellinger’s concerns by declaring, imperiously, “No, there will be no review. The President has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it!” After Bellinger fired back, pointing out that this was “a violation of basic notions of American fairness,” Addington replied, “We are not second-guessing the President’s decision. These are ‘enemy combatants.’ Please us that phrase. They’ve all been through a screening process. There’s nothing to talk about.” Mayer added, “The President had made a group-status identification, as far as he was concerned. To Addington, it was a matter of presidential power, not a question of individual guilt or innocence.”
How Cheney and Addington destroyed all notions of justice
I hope Jane Mayer — and her publishers — will forgive me for quoting at length from her book, but these passages — plus the research undertaken by the Seton Hall Law School, and, I believe, my own research for my book The Guantánamo Files, and the many hundreds of articles I have written in the last two years — should demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the administration’s claim that its “War on Terror” prisoners were so exceptionally dangerous that they should be treated neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects, entitled to the protections of the US legal system, was hyperbole of the most reckless and damaging kind.
Far from being a prison for “the worst of the worst,” Guantánamo was, in fact, nothing more than a chaotic assemblage of largely random prisoners, mostly bought from the US military’s opportunistic allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or from villagers and townspeople desperate for the bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects,” averaging $5,000 a head, which were advertised on leaflets dropped from planes. These stated, “You can receive millions of dollars for helping the anti-Taliban force catch al-Qaeda and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life — pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people.”
In addition, and contrary to Addington’s claims, none of the prisoners had been through a screening process at all. In all previous wars since Vietnam, the US military had held “competent tribunals” under Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions. These involved screening prisoners close to the time and place of capture, to ascertain whether they were combatants or civilians caught up in the fog of war, and during the first Gulf War, for example, the military held around 1,200 of these tribunals, and in three-quarters of the cases the prisoners were sent home. In the “War on Terror,” however, the competent tribunals were ruled out, and, in fact, the orders that came down from on high stipulated that every single Arab who came into US custody was to be transferred to Guantánamo.
Once in Guantánamo, there was no improvement. It was not until June 2004 that the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights, and even when this happened the government responded not by allowing the prisoners to challenge the basis of their unexplained detention in a US court, as the Supreme Court intended, but by introducing the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. A mockery of the Article 5 competent tribunals — given that the military knew almost nothing about the majority of the men in its custody — the tribunals drew largely on confessions made through the use of torture, coercion or bribery, or “generic” information that had nothing to do with the prisoners. In addition, as was explained by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of US intelligence who worked on the tribunals, they were, essentially, designed not to ascertain whether the prisoners had been seized by mistake, but to rubberstamp their designation, on capture, as “enemy combatants” who could be held without charge or trial.
As a result, Mayer’s description of David Addington’s response to the complaints aired by John Bellinger should also confirm that this sinister experiment in arbitrary detention and interrogation — which involved the US not only tearing up the Geneva Conventions and the Army Field Manual, but also attempting to circumvent the anti-torture statute — was based on an arrogant presumption that the President was above the law, that “innocence” and “guilt” were irrelevant constructs, and that it was justifiable to hold any number of prisoners forever, and to interrogate them as often and as coercively as the government wished.
This was done in order to build up a “mosaic” of intelligence not just about the small group of men responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (and the previous attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000), but also about Afghan resistance to the US presence in Afghanistan, about every single Muslim resistance group around the world (whether “terrorists” or not), and — from exotic captives like the handful of Russians who were seized, or the 17 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province, who had fled persecution in their homeland, and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban) — about the activities of their own governments.
Fearmongering, cowardice and terrible policy decisions
I mention all these facts at this particular time because the last few weeks have seen a torrent of scaremongering, misinformation and woefully misguided policy proposals pour forth from the nation’s politicians — and the President — with regard to Guantánamo, and I believe it is important to set the record straight.
First, up were Republicans, inspired, no doubt, by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who appears to be on an endless “Torture Tour,” touting lies about the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in keeping the nation safe, and failing to mention how he used torture to produce lies to justify the invasion of Iraq. In a movement that rapidly snowballed, Senators and Representatives from across the country repeated unsubstantiated lies about the dangers posed by the prisoners in Guantánamo, and sounded fearful warnings about the implications of moving any of them to prisons on the US mainland.
By Wednesday this revival of cowardice and fear had swept up an alarming number of Democrat politicians, and when it came to funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, politicians of both parties happily approved a budget of $91 billion, but refused to give the President the $80 million he had requested for the closure of Guantánamo.
On Thursday, Obama regained some of this lost ground. In a speech in which he made it clear that he was doing his best to clear up the “mess” left by his predecessors, he chastised the fearmongers for muddying a genuine debate about how to proceed. However, Obama too demonstrated that he has been infected by what he described as the Bush administration’s “season of fear,” by proposing that the prisoners at Guantánamo who will not be freed will either be tried in federal courts, put forward for trial in an amended version of the failed Military Commissions introduced by Dick Cheney and David Addington, or subjected to “preventive detention.”
I have no problem with the first of these proposals, and was encouraged that, on the same day, the Justice Department announced that a former “high-value detainee” at Guantánamo, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, would be tried in a New York court for his alleged participation in the 1998 African embassy bombings. However, I was disturbed that the President thought it worth proposing Military Commissions as a possible parallel path (given that no sticking plaster can disguise how corrupt the whole process was under the Bush administration), and completely dismayed that he could contemplate introducing a form of “preventive detention,” and was advocating legitimizing the Guantánamo regime (which is, of course, a form of “preventive detention”) for use on prisoners against whom no case can be brought because the supposed evidence will not stand up to independent scrutiny — meaning, of course, that it is tainted by torture or other forms of coercion, and is therefore not evidence at all.
A global witch hunt
At the start of this article, I presented some dark truths about Guantánamo in the hope that the account would demonstrate why the prison must be closed, and why few of the 240 men still held — perhaps 10 percent, perhaps a little more — represent a threat to the United States. In conclusion, if you’d like a few final, shocking facts about the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” consider what David Addington, acting as the mouthpiece of the de facto President, Dick Cheney, was really doing when he dismissed John Bellinger’s complaints in the fall of 2002.
Far from just defending a detention policy that, with the blessing of Congress, had filled the cell blocks at Guantánamo (on the basis that the Authorization For Use Of Military Force, passed in the first week after the 9/11 attacks, authorized the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001”), Addington was also defending the expansion and extension of this policy around the world. Taking into account the prisoners held in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those subjected to “extraordinary rendition,” the total number of prisoners held at Guantánamo actually makes up less than 1 percent of the total number of prisoners (at least 80,000 between 2001 and 2005, according to figures released by the Pentagon), who have been held at some point in the “War on Terror,” without either the effective protection of the Geneva Conventions or the protections of the US criminal justice system.
This was, if I may be blunt, a witch hunt on the most colossal scale, but I hope these statistics also help to explain why every facet of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” needs dismantling, so that only two categories of prisoner are allowed in future: prisoners of war, seized in wartime and protected by the Geneva Conventions, and terrorists, to be treated as criminal suspects and put forward for trial in federal courts.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
See the following for a sequence of articles dealing with the stumbling progress of the Military Commissions: The reviled Military Commissions collapse (June 2007), A bad week at Guantánamo (Commissions revived, September 2007), The curse of the Military Commissions strikes the prosecutors (September 2007), A good week at Guantánamo (chief prosecutor resigns, October 2007), The story of Mohamed Jawad (October 2007), The story of Omar Khadr (November 2007), Guantánamo trials: where are the terrorists? (February 2008), Six in Guantánamo charged with 9/11 attacks: why now, and what about the torture? (February 2008), Guantánamo’s shambolic trials (ex-prosecutor turns, February 2008), Torture allegations dog Guantánamo trials (March 2008), African embassy bombing suspect charged (March 2008), The US military’s shameless propaganda over 9/11 trials (April 2008), Betrayals, backsliding and boycotts (May 2008), Fact Sheet: The 16 prisoners charged (May 2008), Four more charged, including Binyam Mohamed (June 2008), Afghan fantasist to face trial (June 2008), 9/11 trial defendants cry torture (June 2008), USS Cole bombing suspect charged (July 2008), Folly and injustice (Salim Hamdan’s trial approved, July 2008), A critical overview of Salim Hamdan’s Guantánamo trial and the dubious verdict (August 2008), Salim Hamdan’s sentence signals the end of Guantánamo (August 2008), High Court rules against UK and US in case of Binyam Mohamed (August 2008), Controversy still plagues Guantánamo’s Military Commissions (September 2008), Another Insignificant Afghan Charged (September 2008), Seized at 15, Omar Khadr Turns 22 in Guantánamo (September 2008), Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials? (September 2008), two articles exploring the Commissions’ corrupt command structure (The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials, and New Evidence of Systemic Bias in Guantánamo Trials, October 2008), Meltdown at the Guantánamo Trials (five trials dropped, October 2008), The collapse of Omar Khadr’s Guantánamo trial (October 2008), Corruption at Guantánamo (legal adviser faces military investigations, October 2008), An empty trial at Guantánamo (Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, October 2008), Life sentence for al-Qaeda propagandist fails to justify Guantánamo trials (al-Bahlul, November 2008), Guilt by Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), 20 Reasons To Shut Down The Guantánamo Trials (profiles of all the prisoners charged, November 2008), How Guantánamo Can Be Closed: Advice for Barack Obama (November 2008), More Dubious Charges in the Guantánamo Trials (two Kuwaitis, November 2008), The End of Guantánamo (Salim Hamdan repatriated, November 2008), Torture, Preventive Detention and the Terror Trials at Guantánamo (December 2008), Is the 9/11 trial confession an al-Qaeda coup? (December 2008), The Dying Days of the Guantánamo Trials (January 2009), Former Guantánamo Prosecutor Condemns Chaotic Trials (Lt. Col. Vandeveld on Mohamed Jawad, January 2009), Torture taints the case of Mohamed Jawad (January 2009), Bush Era Ends with Guantánamo Trial Chief’s Torture Confession (Susan Crawford on Mohammed al-Qahtani, January 2009), Chaos and Lies: Why Obama Was Right to Halt The Guantánamo Trials (January 2009), Binyam Mohamed’s Plea Bargain: Trading Torture For Freedom (March 2009).
And for a sequence of articles dealing with the Obama administration’s response to the Military Commissions, see: Don’t Forget Guantánamo (February 2009), Who’s Running Guantánamo? (February 2009), The Talking Dog interviews Darrel Vandeveld, former Guantánamo prosecutor (February 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Obama Returns To Bush Era On Guantánamo (May 2009), New Chief Prosecutor Appointed For Military Commissions At Guantánamo (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), My Message To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No “Preventive Detention” (May 2009), A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad (June 2009), A Broken Circus: Guantánamo Trials Convene For One Day Of Chaos (June 2009), Obama Proposes Swift Execution of Alleged 9/11 Conspirators (June 2009), Obama’s Confusion Over Guantánamo Terror Trials (June 2009).
Who's still at Guantánamo?
66 Responses
Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Andy Worthington Featured Writer Dandelion Salad http://www.andyworthington.co.uk 27 May […]
...on May 27th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
the talking dog says...
John Bellinger and others in the Bush Administration, while they can take solace, perhaps, in being “less evil than Cheney and Addington”… bear their own culpability.
More to the point, Cheney and Addington, despite their “summa cum evil,” did not operate in a vacuum. They stepped into a government with a key leadership vacuum at the top (ostensibly empty suit where the President should be), and similar vacancies existed where Congress, the courts, the press, and a huge portion of the public should have been.
It wasn’t just that we had a government where George W. Bush’s concern was starting and ending his meetings on time and that everyone had their nice white shirts, ties and jackets on… and substance was secondary (if that high)… in short,a government of apple polishers and brown nosers, where “personal loyalty” was the currency. Under such rules, if one wanted to keep their cushy job, one went with the program. It was more than that. Why stop with the higher rungs of the executive branch ladder? Congressional leadership thought the best use of its time was to organize singings of the national anthem outside the Capitol while it passed thousand page “national security bills” that no one even read! Anything of real substance… the enemy!
And the courts were usually just willing to “defer” to the other two feckless branches of government.
And as to the press, other than readers of this blog, I have no doubt that millions more people can identify the final five contestants on American Idol than could name a single member of “the war council”… the little working group with a fantasy of toughness that gave us so much of what we have today…
And let’s not forget a citizenry that, despite to its credit a huge swathe that was not jiggy with the program, still reelected Republicans in 2002 and 2004 solely on the basis of being scared out of their pants by the notion of dark-skinned people being terrrrrrrrorists (as if the Democrats were much better anyway!).
And thus was the whole problem: a toxic brew whose base stock was a society primed to be dummed down after decades of being told that everything is fine, everyone is wonderful and everything we do is perfect, once reality in the form of 11 September intervened, Americans failed to question any of those (patently absurd) suggestions, and only now, with the economy collapsing under us, are we even starting to.
Let’s give Cheney and Addington their due: they saw this big picture, and pushed it for all it was worth. But a healthier society could have resisted their particular virulent strain.
...on May 27th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ow!
Thanks, TD, for setting this week’s honesty test, asking Americans to look in the mirror and answer the question, “When Dick Cheney and David Addington were eviscerating the rule of law, establishing a global gulag to interrogate randomly-seized prisoners for the rest of their natural lives, and extracting lies through torture to justify an illegal war that they had desired since long before coming to power, did you oppose it, or were you complicit, either by turning away, or — in all manner of ways — by helping facilitate it?”
...on May 27th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Frances Madeson says...
Thanks to the publication of Cooperative Village, I like what I see in my mirror, Andy. I tried with all my heart, mind and resources available in the place and moment when it counted most, not from the safety of distance and time, to affect consciousness, to stir the air currents, to enliven the atmosphere around these issues for ordinary Americans. I was helped a little and stymied a lot. Whatever the ultimate outcome of my efforts I know in my heart I leave behind a legacy of light. Even rainbows.
...on May 27th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I know you did, Frances. And so did many, many others. I was quite happy to direct my ire at Cheney and Addington and their monstrous little circle of enthusiasts for dictatorship and torture, but I felt that TD raised a valid point about complicity and complacency.
I think the struggle is always — in every walk of life — between those who seek power over others, and those who don’t, and that the latter, through tolerance and their desire NOT to control, rarely appear to have the upper hand — although life as it is lived at its best involves cooperation rather than competition, so we are constantly victorious on a daily, everyday basis.
The problem, as I think TD has highlighted, is when those in control reach beyond the kind of everyday abuse of power that we might expect, concoct grandiose schemes that affect the entire world, and manage to persuade others that they are showing strength and leadership rather than psychopathic tendencies.
...on May 27th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Frances Madeson says...
That’s exactly right. That malevolent force has to be resisted with all our might. To overcome it requires wit, brawn and stamina–all of the attributes I find right here with you, Andy.
...on May 27th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
The Boiling Frog says...
Not for the first time in the past several years, I am reminded of something Justice Louis Brandeis famously said:
“Men feared witches and burnt women.”
While I find this quote otherwise apropos, I am loathe to ever use the word “fear” in the context of this ill-begotten “war” on “terror”. I firmly believe that fear has played an exceedingly small role in motivating those who have effected and conducted this “war” (although fear has obviously played a key role in terms of how the U.S. population has been conditioned to accept what is being done in their name).
As time goes by and our knowledge of the true facts of Guantanamo slowly surface (driven by people such as Mr. Worthington), it becomes increasingly clear this is as much an old-fashioned cover-up of government incompetence as it is anything else.
But for the horror, that is.
...on May 27th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Boiling Frog,
Good to hear from you and thanks for the insight. It hardly seems credible that covering up incompetence could be a major factor in determining government policy, but I think it’s certainly a major factor in the reluctance to close Guantanamo sooner rather than later, with other, “cautious” voices also playing the fear card, and warning of the dangers posed by the prisoners.
However, at the heart of it all (which was why I drew on Jane Mayer’s work), I think there must be an extreme reluctance to really take on board the fact that, in the demonstration of unfettered executive power that was sought and realized by Cheney and Addington, guilt and innocence were irrelevant, and what was of particular importance was simply the President’s “right” to break the law however he saw fit.
That — like the steady flow of revelations that prisoners were tortured to provide information that could be used to justify the invasion of Iraq — seems to me to be forbidden territory for most of the media, presumably because it paints such an unflinchingly grim demonstration of the crimes of the Bush administration, but, like the embarrassment and the mistaken fearmongering, it’s all going to have to come out eventually.
...on May 28th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Andy Worthington says...
After I wrote back to the Talking Dog suggesting that he was “on fire,” I received the following reply:
Thanks much; the only solace we can take is that no one seems to want to hire Mr. Addington; you’d think the Cheney household would need a butler if nothing else…
It seems, as btw we all knew was inevitable, that when Obama proposes dictatorial measures (and note that he is a good “process liberal” and suggests doing them with Congressional and court imprimatur)… then his dictatorial measures are good and glorious (unlike Bush’s which were dark and nefarious), because, of course, they emerged from the kewl kid Democrat, and not from the nasty Republican.
Interesting times, I suppose, just keep getting interestinger.
...on May 30th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Forgotten: The Second Anniversary Of A Guantánamo Suicide by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] vacillates, Dick Cheney’s monstrous lies once more draw politicians of both parties to resort to preposterous fearmongering, unable — despite the evidence available to them — to differentiate between the few dozen […]
...on June 1st, 2009 at 2:45 am
Political Jib.com » Andy Worthington: Free The Guantanamo Uighurs! says...
[…] advantage by shifting in the wind and, as a result, giving more, and not less power to the cowardly or cynical politicians who have leapt on President Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo — as well as plans to […]
...on June 1st, 2009 at 11:19 am
Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] advantage by shifting in the wind and, as a result, giving more, and not less power to the cowardly or cynical politicians who have leapt on Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo — as well as plans to move prisoners to […]
...on June 1st, 2009 at 11:26 am
A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] all the recent hysteria about the supposed dangers posed by the remaining 240 prisoners at Guantánamo, it has been easy to […]
...on June 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 am
Political Jib.com » Andy Worthington: From Guantanamo To The South Pacific: Is This A Joke? says...
[…] unable to understand that the majority of the prisoners in Guantánamo were bought for bounties, and were never adequately screened to determine their status, these fearful politicians continue to ignore the copious amounts of […]
...on June 9th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
The Last Iraqi In Guantánamo, Cleared Six Years Ago, Returns Home by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] it is, I hope, abundantly clear that Jawad al-Sahlani’s story exemplifies many of Guantánamo’s most persistent problems: prisoners handed over to US forces by opportunists seeking the handsome bounty payments being […]
...on June 15th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Guantánamo: Charge Or Release Prisoners, Say No To Indefinite Detention by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] had any basis for reaching objective “conclusions” about the Guantánamo prisoners it had rounded up so randomly), what this means is that 48 prisoners face indefinite detention, plus 42 Yemenis if plans to put […]
...on July 1st, 2009 at 2:08 am
Andy Worthington: Why Trial Date For African Embassy Bombing Suspect Is Good News » A Couple Things » A couple things about politics, sports, travel, and other stuff. says...
[…] Ghailani — the first Guantánamo prisoner to make it to the U.S. mainland — will persistently expose the lies of the cowardly, scaremongering politicians who recently whipped up a frenzy about bringing […]
...on July 3rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
Andy Worthington: Why Trial Date For African Embassy Bombing Suspect Is Good News | Second Reagan Revolution says...
[…] — the first Guantánamo prisoner to make it to the U.S. mainland — will persistently expose the lies of the cowardly, scaremongering politicians who recently whipped up a frenzy about bringing […]
...on July 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
African Embassy Bombing Suspect To Face Trial In September 2010 by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Ghailani — the first Guantánamo prisoner to make it to the US mainland — will persistently expose the lies of the cowardly, scaremongering politicians who recently whipped up a frenzy about bringing […]
...on July 4th, 2009 at 9:18 am
July 4, 2009 « Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? says...
[…] Ghailani — the first Guantánamo prisoner to make it to the US mainland — will persistently expose the lies of the cowardly, scaremongering politicians who recently whipped up a frenzy about bringing […]
...on July 4th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] at a time when bounty payments, averaging $5,000 a head were widespread (PDF); that they were never screened according to the Geneva Conventions’ competent tribunals — held close to the time and place of capture — to establish whether they were actually […]
...on July 27th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think « Dr Nasir Khan says...
[…] at a time when bounty payments, averaging $5,000 a head were widespread (PDF); that they were never screened according to the Geneva Conventions’ competent tribunals — held close to the time and place of capture — to establish whether they were actually […]
...on July 29th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Two): Obama’s Shame by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] equate the Taliban with al-Qaeda, even though there was never any justification for doing so, has overlooked the fact that the majority of the prisoners were bought for bounties and were never screened according to […]
...on August 12th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo With World Can’t Wait « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] so many people who had no connection to militancy whatsoever ended up in Guantánamo, talking about the lack of screening in the prisons in Afghanistan that were used to process the prisoners, the bounty payments that […]
...on August 12th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Bagram Isn’t The New Guantánamo, It’s The Old Guantánamo « freedetainees.org says...
[…] on the battlefield, but had been sold to them by their Afghan or Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments were widespread, and — perhaps most shockingly — the transcripts also revealed that a vast amount of the […]
...on August 16th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Bagram Isn’t The New Guantánamo, It’s The Old Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] on the battlefield, but had been sold to them by their Afghan or Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments were widespread, and — perhaps most shockingly — the transcripts also revealed that a vast amount of the […]
...on August 18th, 2009 at 3:10 am
Arrogance And Torture: A History of Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] inside the US bases at Kandahar airport and Bagram airbase, the US military had been ordered to dispense with the Geneva Conventions’ Article 5 competent tribunals. The hearings, which involved calling witnesses close to the time and place of capture, were a […]
...on August 22nd, 2009 at 5:58 am
An Interview With Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Part One) by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] of course, the Article 5 competent tribunals didn’t take place either. (Held close to the time and place of capture, and designed to separate combatants from those […]
...on August 27th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Is Bagram Obama’s New Secret Prison? by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] of the case, the men were found to have been wrongly detained, and were released. The failure to implement these tribunals in the “War on Terror” contributed enormously to the filling of Guantánamo with prisoners who […]
...on September 16th, 2009 at 2:45 am
Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held | Vereniging Oeigoeren Nederland says...
[…] first public admission, by a senior Obama administration official, that some of the prisoners were nothing more than low-level Taliban recruits, in an inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance) that […]
...on September 19th, 2009 at 11:37 am
On Guantánamo, Lawmakers Reveal They Are Still Dick Cheney’s Pawns by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] involves stepping back to a time when Cheney and his associates were hatching their plans to hand out bounty payments, averaging $5,000 a head, to the US military’s Afghan and Pakistani allies, who seized at least […]
...on October 7th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize + OK, He’s A Nice Guy, But … by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] introduce Guantánamo-style reviews for the 600 or so Afghan prisoners held at Bagram, rather than the competent tribunals stipulated in Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, and who, as a result, appears to be endorsing […]
...on October 9th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Finding New Homes For 44 Cleared Guantánamo Prisoners by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] truth is out there — and I am only one of many writers who have been explaining it for the last four years — but I will spell it out again: the majority of the prisoners were […]
...on October 14th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Six Uighurs Go To Palau; Seven Remain In Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] other prisoners at Guantánamo, it offered bounty payments to its Afghan and Pakistani allies, and failed to provide any screening whatsoever for the prisoners who subsequently ended up in US custody, maintaining, instead, that they were all […]
...on October 31st, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Military Commissions Revived: Don’t Do It, Mr. President! « freedetainees.org says...
[…] To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No “Preventive Detention” (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians (May 2009), A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad (June 2009), A Broken […]
...on November 5th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Profile « Emptysuit says...
[…] To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No “Preventive Detention” (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians (May 2009), A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad (June 2009), A Broken […]
...on November 19th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Chaos and Confusion: The Return of the Military Commissions by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] close to the time and place of capture, whether non-uniformed personnel are combatants or not, were abandoned in the “War on Terror” by Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department. This was in spite of the fact that they had been […]
...on December 11th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Judge Confirms That an Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions | themcglynn.com/theliberal.net says...
[…] that there were innocent men at Guantánamo — and it has been clear for many years that hundreds of innocent men were held, who had no connection whatsoever to any form of militancy, let alone terrorism — had set in […]
...on January 22nd, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Judge Orders Release from Gitmo of Kuwaiti Who Met Bin Laden | themcglynn.com/theliberal.net says...
[…] and David Addington (the one that begins with torture and calls for prosecution, but also includes a whole section on arrogance and incompetence), but it amazes me that no one in the Justice Department, under […]
...on January 22nd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] came from on high that, in the “War on Terror,” they were unnecessary. In its extraordinary arrogance and contempt for the law, the Bush administration decided that no screening was required, and that it was sufficient for the […]
...on February 6th, 2010 at 1:10 am
LT Saloon | Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions says...
[…] came from on high that, in the “War on Terror,” they were unnecessary. In its extraordinary arrogance and contempt for the law, the Bush administration decided that no screening was required, and that it was sufficient for the […]
...on February 8th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
CrossTalk on Gitmo: Morphing injustice – Andy Worthington vs Cully Stimson « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] the prisoners be either charged or released – which, essentially, involves an ongoing attempt to highlight the incompetence that led to so few genuine terrorist suspects being captured, and the lamentable introduction of […]
...on April 4th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Fahad Hashmi And Terrorist Hysteria In US Courts says...
[…] attack on the US through the intelligence agencies’ inability to communicate with one another), Guantánamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib andthe CIA’s torture dungeons are not the only places where the rule of law […]
...on April 30th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Andy Worthington: Bagram Isn’t The New Guantanamo, It’s The Old Guantanamo | BlackNewsTribune.com says...
[…] on the battlefield, but had been sold to them by their Afghan or Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments were widespread, and — perhaps most shockingly — the transcripts also revealed that a vast amount of […]
...on October 6th, 2010 at 2:47 am
CommonDreams.org | The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files | Anti-War Committee says...
[…] and treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, but also threw out safeguards designed to protect innocent people from being wrongly imprisoned in […]
...on April 27th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
The Hidden Horrors Of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files – OpEd « « Eurasia Review Eurasia Review says...
[…] laws and treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, but also threw out safeguards designed to protect innocent people from being wrongly imprisoned in […]
...on April 27th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files « roger hollander says...
[…] laws and treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, but also threw out safeguards designed to protect innocent people from being wrongly imprisoned in […]
...on April 27th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files | Amauta says...
[…] laws and treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, but also threw out safeguards designed to protect innocent people from being wrongly imprisoned in […]
...on April 27th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Tim Arango and ‘what the hell is Daniel Dombey’s problem?’ (C.I.) | thecommonillsbackup says...
[…] laws and treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, but also threw out safeguards designed to protect innocent people from being wrongly imprisoned in […]
...on April 28th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Psyche, Science, and Society » Worthington explains Guantánamo Detainee Assessment Briefs says...
[…] not even seized by US forces, but were seized by their Afghan and Pakistani allies at a time when substantial bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects” were […]
...on May 2nd, 2011 at 1:20 pm
How To Read WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files – OpEd « « Eurasia Review Eurasia Review says...
[…] not even seized by US forces, but were seized by their Afghan and Pakistani allies at a time when substantial bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects” were […]
...on May 2nd, 2011 at 1:28 pm
WikiLeaks Reveals Yemenis Cleared For Guantanamo Release Up To Seven Years - OpEd says...
[…] the children or geriatrics exposed in the classified documents released by WikiLeaks, swept up when all screening and safeguards are discarded, as they were in Afghanistan after the US-led invasion in October 2001. Nor are they the farmers […]
...on May 13th, 2011 at 10:41 am
Guantanamo: Jemeniten schon bis zu 7 Jahre eingekerkert « Ticker says...
[…] in the classified documents released by WikiLeaks, swept up when all screening and safeguards are discarded, as they were in Afghanistan after the US-led invasion in October 2001, Nor are they the farmers […]
...on May 13th, 2011 at 10:46 am
WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners Of Guantánamo - OpEd says...
[…] not even seized by US forces, but were seized by their Afghan and Pakistani allies at a time when substantial bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects” were […]
...on June 10th, 2011 at 4:18 am
Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo? « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] capture — largely at the hands of the US military’s Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments were widespread — sound less chaotic than it actually was, and it also disguised the kind of treatment to which […]
...on June 11th, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Judges Keep Guantánamo Open Forever - OpEd says...
[…] competent tribunals, and this, combined with the appalling incentives for dishonesty produced by offering substantial bounty payments for anyone who could be dressed up as al-Qaeda or the Taliban by America’s allies in Afghanistan […]
...on June 26th, 2011 at 1:03 am
WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 … » WeNewsIt says...
[…] noted by Maj. Gen, Michael Dunlavey, a commander of the prison in 2002. Contributing to this was the decision to offer substantial bounty payments for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects to the US military’s Afghan and Pakistani allies, and as a […]
...on June 28th, 2011 at 1:36 am
WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (All Ten Parts) – Andy Worthington « freedetainees.org says...
[…] […]
...on August 27th, 2011 at 12:39 am
A Call To Close Guantánamo On 10th Anniversary Of War In Afghanistan - OpEd says...
[…] worst of the worst,” but in reality a brutal and failed experiment, which never held more than a small number of genuine terror suspects, but, which, nonetheless, has proved resistant to calls for its […]
...on October 15th, 2011 at 3:18 am
Bounty Hunting, Islamophobia and Blaming the Victims | Dark PoliticksDark Politricks says...
[…] Andy Worthington has written, a chaotic assemblage of prisoners was handed to the U.S. military from Afghanistan and Pakistan as […]
...on October 12th, 2012 at 12:43 am
Bounty Hunting, Islamophobia and Blaming the Victims « Counter Information says...
[…] http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/27/guantanamo-and-the-many-failures-of-us-politicians/ […]
...on October 16th, 2012 at 12:04 am
Bounty Hunting, Islamophobia and Blaming the Victims « Counter Information says...
[…] http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/27/guantanamo-and-the-many-failures-of-us-politicians/ […]
...on October 16th, 2012 at 12:04 am
Government and Military's Faithfulness to Constitutional Oaths says...
[…] vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent” and that senior intelligence analysts believed that such Guantánamo detainees were “mistakes” and “had no connection to terrorism whatsoever.” […]
...on August 19th, 2017 at 2:33 am
Justice At Last? Guantánamo Uighurs Ask Supreme Court For Release Into US by Andy Worthington – Dandelion Salad says...
[…] the streets of Washington D.C. instead, and even Americans seduced by the Bush administration’s unsubstantiated rhetoric about the “terrorists” of Guantánamo would have been able to discover, first hand, that the […]
...on September 23rd, 2020 at 4:38 pm
From Guantánamo To The South Pacific: Is This A Joke? by Andy Worthington – Dandelion Salad says...
[…] unable to understand that the majority of the prisoners in Guantánamo were bought for bounties, and were never adequately screened to determine their status, these fearful politicians continue to ignore the copious amounts of […]
...on September 23rd, 2020 at 4:41 pm
Feeling Tortured by The Donald – Scott Lazarowitz's Blog says...
[…] vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent.” And senior intelligence analysts had already concluded long ago that one-third to one-half of Gitmo detainees were “mistakes” and “had no connection […]
...on March 5th, 2022 at 6:06 pm