http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of
innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared
that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on
Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations
were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former
Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit
filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have
been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson,
who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was
most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former
Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742
detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was
“politically impossible to release them”.
Now let's make it clear what our country has done: we have tortured and killed and incarcerated for years a significant number of people who were completely innocent. How can that be justified in the name of national security? Because we were attacked, does that give us the right to torture anyone who may possibly be a Bad Guy, even if we don't have any evidence?
Sickening.
Sickening, yes. Surprising, no.
ReplyDeleteNow that Obama is swimming in the deep end of the pool, his resemblance to Gandhi is likewise fading fast as he grapples with what to DO with people we've imprisoned and tortured for - is it eight years? Nine?
See, the problem is, in ordinary life, when a detainee (prisoner, suspect, call 'em what you want) is beaten and tortured into a confession, he usually wins in court as the confession is seen as bogus and thus is inadmissable.
However, Americans today like their justice, whether it is actually just or not. Guilt or innocence, while the "crux of the biscuit" to you or me, is really not that important to the lifeguards at the deep end of the pool (if I may annoy you, dear Reader, with a tortured metaphor).
Unraveling the clusterf**k created by Bush's debilitating bout of Cheneyitis and Poindexter-ism is the task at hand. Right and wrong were obscured so long ago that only civil rights fanatics like us even bring them up anymore.
Nobody seems to have any idea on how to proceed with this humanitarian disaster. The obvious path, if we follow U.S. history, is to release these people, innocent and guilty alike, due to illegal activity by the U.S. government. But no one, possibly even yours truly, seems to have the stomach for that even though it is probably the accordiing-to-Hoyle proper procedure.
We're in a new land here.
Any ideas, Foundryman?
Didn't think so.