Slashdot Mirror
Wikileaks Releases Sensitive Guantanamo Manual
James Hardine writes "Wired is reporting that a never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, via the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks.org, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002. The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. The disclosure highlights the internet's usefulness to whistle-blowers in anonymously propagating documents the government and others would rather conceal. The Pentagon has been resisting — since October 2003 — a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union seeking the very same document. Anonymous open-government activists created Wikileaks in January, hoping to turn it into a clearinghouse for such disclosures. The site uses a Wikipedia-like system to enlist the public in authenticating and analyzing the documents it publishes. The Camp Delta document includes schematics of the camp, detailed checklists of what "comfort items" such as extra toilet paper can be given to detainees as rewards, six pages of instructions on how to process new detainees, instructions on how to psychologically manipulate prisoners, and rules for dealing with hunger strikes."
By being unclassified, the release of this material is officially not "material that would cause "damage" or be "prejudicial" to national security if publicly available." See the wiki page on US classification levels- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information#Classification_levels
If it's not classified, it's not a threat to national security. Given the amount of useless info the Bush administration has classified (White house emails, papers documents and political strategies), one could easily make the case that even classification no longer implies the threat of danger to national security for some items.
Having held a clearance, one requiring special background investigation, in the military for 8 years, I will say that it's really important to protect some information. It's just as important to determine what information must have protection, and what information doesn't require it. What's interesting in this matter is that the document in question is marked Unclassified/For Official Use Only(U/FOUO). Check out this link http://www.ioss.gov/WhatDoesFOUOMean.html for an explanation. To summarize, U/FOUO simply means that the material is not releasable under the Freedom of Information Act.
So, this is material not intended to be available to the public, but not a threat to national security. That's simple enough to understand. Now that it has been released to the public, we can access whether the U/FOUO rating was justified. In general, operating instructions for military installations are not for public consumption, simply due to operational security concerns. On the other hand, this document relates to allegations concerning illegal behavior by members of the US Armed services, and their commanders, much in the same manner as those prosecuted for their actions at Abu Garib.
So here's the question- does the normal concern for operations security override the need to expose and investigate potential illegal activities? One could argue either way- but having seen the document in question, this looks more like a case of "let's not let the light of day into our questionable activities", rather than a genuine need to protect sensitive information.
No reasonable person would claim that this is a case of national security, as not even the government considers this material relevant to national security, but simply asks that the material be treated as such. Actually, that's fairly useful view into the government mind- "We have this information here, and it's vital to national security, so we will classify it and ask that all who handle it treat it that way. OK, so now we have this other information, which isn't vital to national security, but we're going to ask all who handle it to treat it that way too." It takes a certain mindset to think that way, and I don't have it.
The Internet has no garbage collection
There is the Lancet source.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Many of us are not aware how far reaching the precedents on war crimes and the "orders are no excuse" rule go. In the Nuremberg trial, the case was made that, even so the Navy never followed Hitler's order to execute all parachutists caught in Europe, they did turn over captured parachutists to the Army. And they should have known that the Army did execute them, so they are guilty just as if they'd done it themselves.
Every US soldier who sent a prisoner to Abu Grahib is guilty of war crimes under that precedent. We can only hope that we never loose a war and are actually put in front a tribunal. I bet Bush's biggest nightmare is a successor who signs the international war crimes tribunal treaty, and turns him over to The Hague. For irony, they could put him in Milosevic's cell.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
It is a lot of pages but so far this text seems to be pretty standard procedure for dealing with what the US claims are highly dangerous people. If the guidelines in this document are followed it is hard to see evidence of torture. Then again I thought abu ghraib was pathetic. If muslims talk just because a dog is barking at them, well, it is just pathetic. Read up on some real torture sessions, done against women and childeren and then come back. Being put into humiliating postions? Flushing a book? Oh yeah, that compares to electro shock, being beaten to death and seeing your fellows executed.
You don't know jack shit about Abu Ghraib. Men were beaten with table legs, and raped up the ass with broomsticks and chemical lights. Women were raped by guards. A man had his legs held open while an officer repeatedly kicked him in the crotch. You think it was pathetic because you don't know a damn thing about it. You only saw a couple photos of a guy with a hood on his head and thought "Oh that's nothing" and moved on with your life, even though you were told that there were even more pictures that were, and I quote, "much worse". Guess what? You bought into the media spin.
Do you think this guy was humilitated to death you dipshit?
A good place to start with actually informing yourself would be to google up the Taguba Report for a beginning of what went on.
Skimming the rest of your post, you make some decent points, I just get really pissed when people blow off Abu Ghraib because they think it's all just barking dogs and panties-hats. Well you're wrong. It was honest-to-god torture. People died from it. You don't die from dog barks.
The enemies of Democracy are