One aspect of the CSR Tribunals which the SCOTUS ruled were inadequate, that is not addressed by apologists for the existing policy, is that the captives were stripped of the presumption of innocence.
The officers in the CSR Tribunals were specifically ordered to take the allegations at face value, without regard to how farfetched they were.
The captives were guilty, unless they could prove themselves innocent.
And since many of the allegations they had to refute were classified, were withheld from them, it is not surprising that so many captives failed to establish that they were not enemies. The surprising thing is that any of the captives established they were not enemies.
The Bush Presidency didn't want to publish the transcripts from the captive's Combatant Status Review Tribunals. But in early 2006 US District Court Judge ruled against the DoD, and ordered it to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests from the Associated Press. On March 3rd 2006 the DoD published several thousand pages of transcripts.
In the two years since then I have read all the CSR Tribunal transcripts.
I can assure all of you that they absolutely do not support the Bush Presidency claims that the captives were all terrorists -- or even that they were all combatants.
The "Summary of Evidence" memos prepared for the 558 captives who had a CSR Tribunal convenened on their behalf absolutely do not support the claim that more than a few dozen captives were "captured on the battlefield" -- for any meaningful definition of "battlefield". And, for those who were captured on a battlefield, my take is that at least half of them were merely the innocent civilian bystanders who lived near an attack, and were left behind when the actual combatants had gotten away scot free.
The CSR Tribunal process was very seriously flawed in several important ways.
There was no mechanism to refute or confirm the captive's alibis. One captive, Abdul Matin, faced the allegation that he had been the Taliban's intelligence chief in the large Northern city of Mazari Sharif. He testified that he had been a refugee in Pakistan during the entire period the Taliban was in power. Further, he testified that he had been a high school science teacher in Pakistan, at a real high school, not a Madrassa. He had to sign in every day. And his time sheets for the seven years he worked there would document that he was in Pakistan, not Mazari Sharif.
His Tribunal told him this alibi was irrelevant because -- wait for it -- he could have traveled to Afghanistan to serve as an intelligence chief during his summer vacation.
His story was not exceptional. It was typical.
Does this make you feel safer?
Another extremely disturbing flaw was that almost all the captives faced more allegations, and more serious allegations, during their first and second annual Administrative Review Board hearings. Those allegations were withheld from the captives during their CSR Tribunal -- thus giving them no opportunity to refute them. ARB hearings weren't authorized to overturn a CSR Tribunal determination that a captive was an "enemy combatant"
Some poor captives were able to offer completely satisfactory rebuttals during their ARB hearings of the allegations that had been withheld from them during their CSR Tribunal. The officers must have agreed with my assessment that their rebuttals were completely credible, since they didn't ask any questions related to the allegations. Instead the transcripts record truly Kafkaesque conversations where the officers said (paraphrasing):
Okay, you convinced us, you weren't an enemy, and you didn't hate us -- when you were captured. But now you have to convince us that, after years of unjust detention, you haven't started to hate us. Bear in mind, we know, for a certain fact, that you have spent the last four years in close proximity to some really dangerous men, who do hate us.
Another deeply inadequate aspect of the CSR Tribunals concerned the definition of a combatant.
According to the Geneva Conventions a veteran is not a combatant. A veteran is a civilian. Period. Unless he takes his varmint rifle down from above his mantelpiece, and takes some pot-shots at you.
But CSR Tribunals considered some captives "combatants" if they had fought against that Soviets during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Some foreign captives were classified as combatants because they had been conscripted back in their home countries.
But the flip side is that if you obtain stolen property it doesn't matter if you accepted it in good faith, it's still not yours and you have to return it.
You remind me of the anorexic, who couldn't decide whether or not they were on a diet.
So they ate a whole chocolate cake.
Afterwards, they decided they were on a diet, after all. So they took steps to return the cake to the uneaten state.
It seems to me what the original author and copyright holder is saying is:
* I wrote some great software;
* I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to release this software under the GPL;
* I thought my career would get a boost, from my reputation getting a boost, from releasing something good. Users might pay me consulting fees to maintain or extend my product. I might sell a book on how to use it. So even though I hadn't really made up my mind, I gave it away.
* Well, my career didn't get the boost I expected. So, now I have finally made up my mind. I don't want it out under the GPL after all.
This does not make anyone who received it from him a thief. It does not make anyone who received a legitimate copy, one that came with a copy of the GPL, and credited the original author, a thief.
And, IMO, it doesn't make anyone who redistributes his software, with the GPL liscense, and the appropriate credit, a thief.
Distributors who filed off the serial numbers, gave it away, or sold it, without crediting him, were thieves -- both before and after he tried to revoke the GPL.
Warning! Never do business with this individual! How could you tell he would honor any agreement you thought you had with him?
In theory all Guantanamo captive could have been part of a 777 man firing squad which shot a single American GI.
So?
We know. And Geoffrey Miller must have known that 90 plus percent of the captive were captured by bounty hunters, not GIs, on the battlefield.
Those who we know were captured by Americans were mainly rounded up in the middle of the night, or reasonable equivalent.
As I wrote above Khadr is the only captive who has been accused of killing a GI. So, even though you think it is important that, in theory 777 Guantanamo captives could have been part of a 777 man firing squad, they weren't, and Miller knew they weren't. But he encouraged his soldiers to believe half the captives were real killers.
Why did Miller do that?
My theory? Boredom is bad for morale. Taking highly trained soldiers, skilled, full of courage, fighting spirit, and making them serve as prison guards is going to be bad for morale. They are going to feel their efforts are pointless, when they know former comrades are putting their lives on the line every day. I think Miller knowingly wildly inflated how dangerous the captives were to keep up the guard's morale.
One of consequences of exaggerating how dangerous the captives were, and the role they played in 911, is that it pushed the guards into thinking it was okay to commit atrocities.
One of first five British captives, one of the unquestionably innocent ones, gave an account of one of the child captives. One of the techniques used that isn't talked about much is moving captives from one cell to another in the middle of the night. Re-assigning the captives to different cells presumably is not something that looks like abuse, if the log sin't detailed enough to show it was done in the middle of the night. The Brits said it was done often enough to keep the intended victims sleep deprived.
The guard force keeps riot squads suited up, and ready to go. Called the IRF, or ERF. Short for Immediate Response Force, or Emergency Response Force. They are only supposed to perform a "cell extraction" if a captive has been violent. But, in this particular incident the IRF did something I gather they were known to do. Invade the cell of a captive who hadn't been broken yet, when he is still asleep, and beat him senseless when he was still half asleep, then record in the log that he had performed something that justified the cell extraction.
The trouble with these unoffical, off-the-books, acts of retaliation, is that two different sets of guards can both target one captive, and end up royally screwing up.
One set of guards targeted one captive they wanted to break, woke him up, make him pack up his meager belongings -- so you can make him switch cells. Of course this disrupts the sleep of the captive you make him switch with.
Guantanamo contained aobut two dozen children. Three of the youngest, who were about 11, 12 and 13 years old, got to stay in camp iguana, where they were treated humanely, provided schooling, access to a fridge, with fresh fruit, got to play soccer with their guards, and go to the beach. The remaining children were confined with the adult captives. One of these children was the captive who was made to switch cells with the tough guy the guards wanted to retaliated against.
So, the second set of guards, in the IRF squad want to wake the hard guy up with a brutal beating. But the hard guy has already been moved. So, they bust in and wail away on the kid, and beat him senseless, before they realize they got the wrong guy. The Brit said the beating left the kid catatonic for a month.
Were the guards explicitly ordered to take these steps? I suspect that, either, as at Abu Ghraib, the guards weren't given orders, they were given hints, or that Miller had them keyed up to hate the captives so much, because they were told they were all responsible for 9-11, that they administered these beatings without any hints.
Well, the US military has a set of instructions on how to treat captives.
IANAL. But I have been told that nothing obliges a soldier to surrender, if they are called on to surrender. Opting to fight it out to the last man standing, I was told, does not make a combatant an unlawful combatant. And, I was told, the corollary was also true. That there were situations when your opponents might want to surrender to you, but you weren't obliged to accept their surrender.
This, I was told, was the meaning of the phrase used in old novels, and old movies, "I ask no quarter, and I offer none." There is a danger that those of us who aren't combatants can rely on fiction. I am skeptical about the corollary.
But there is one other thing I was told, which I am confident is the truth.
Once an individual is taken into custody American GIs have a firm set of rules as to how to treat them. I think I remember a mnemonic. Five "P"s, or five "S"s, or something like that. Those rules apply to all captives -- without regard to whether the American GIs who made the capture THINK the captive is a war criminal. According to the Geneva Conventions no soldier is allowed to take the law into their own hands. According to the Geneva Conventions ALL captives are supposed to be treated as if they were POWs -- until a specific formal process determines that they aren't. It is called a "competent tribunal". That Army regulation I mentioned lays out the specific rules.
Up until the Supreme Court rulings about the captives the Bush Presidency was offering a rather deceitful interpretation of that aspect of the Geneva Convention. The GC said that a competent tribunal had to be convened "if any doubt existed". What it means, of course, was, "if any doubt existed as to whether the captive was actually a lawful combatant entitled to POW status." The Bush Presidency stated "we don't have any doubts they are war criminals, so we don't need to convene any competent tribunals.
The Supreme Court over-ruled them.
During the first Gulf War the US military convened comptetent tribunals for about 1300 captives. They detemined that about 800 of them were innocent civilians, and the rest of them were lawful combatants entitled to POW status.
Even Saddam was entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Do you remember those first images that were broadcast of him? They showed him looking very disheveled, and meekd, while a medic checked his hair and beard for lice. Some commentators pointed out that, under the Geneva Conventions, he was entitled to protection from not just torture, but also from public humiliation.
I am not sure if I understand you. Are you saying that my post was too blunt? That even though it was convincing, it is so blunt that it will leave the feelings so shocked that those in a position to change the situation will be paralyzed into inactivity?
Is it propaganda? Yes. However don't you think just for a moment that our enemies might have a psychological operation going on as well?
Your post is an example of one of the USA's weaknesses. The USA is still in a kind of paralyzing state of shock after the 9-11 attacks. One consequence is to imagine your enemies are a funhouse mirror reflection of yourselves, or your worst fears.
Cast your mind back to late 2001 early 2002. The DoD kept leaking these very detailed technical drawings of Osama bin Laden's underground shelters. These drawings looked like Islamic versions of Cheyenne Mountain.
Osama didn't, in fact, have any underground shelters like Cheyenne Mountain.
Saddam didn't, in fact, have an arsenal of WMD. An example of projecting your worst fears on your opponent.
Don't get me wrong. I am not unsympathetic. They death of almost 3,000 innocent civilians should be shocking. But it is not responsible to react on a hyterical purely emotional level. Which, no offense, the US reaction to those attacks largely remains.
You write:
...For too long enemies of the United States have been able to strike the soft underbelly of the United States. That is the people who fear combat or losing soldiers more then they fear tyranny and oppression. The enemies jump in bed with the Liberal Media and just offer up a scent of dissenstion...
My advice to Americans is that your most realistic fear of tyranny and oppression comes from within, not without. Many commentators, including, it seems to me, yourself, suggest rolling over, and surrendering vast rights to the Presidency, with zero oversight, in spite of the current administrations shocking record of corruption, incompetence, and deceit.
You can't call a killing of a US soldier "murder" if the shooter has complied with the Geneva Conventions, and the other rules of war. The Geneva Conventions specify that the captors convene what it calls a "competent tribunal" to make a determination of the suspected combatant's status. The US military has a 150 page manunal, Army Regulation 190-8, also called: "Military Police: Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees".
Competent tribunals, like the AR-190-8 Tribunals, can determine that a captive is:
[1] An innocent civilian, who wasn't a combatant, took no part in any hostilities, who should be released immediately. After reading most of those 2200 documents I'd say about half the Guantanamo captives would fall into this group.
[2] A combatant, who took part in hostilities, but carried their arms openly, wore a distinctive marking, answered to officers responsible for their conduct, didn't commit any war crimes. These captives are "lawful combatants" entitled to all the protections of POW status.
[3] A combatant, who didn't comply with the criteria above. They can be stripped of POW status. They are still protected against torture, summary judgement. They are still protected by the rule of law. They can be tried, for murder, or other hostile acts they committed. But they are supposed to be tried by the same system of justice as the captor's own soldiers. That is, a court martial. Since GIs like Lewis Welshofer only got a fine and two months confinement to barracks for the torture and murder of the captive he was interrogating, one could ask why anyone the US tries for war crimes wouldn't get similarly light sentences.
No. The CSR Tribunals do not fulfill the USA obligation to convene "Competent Tribunals". They outwardly resembled the AR-190-8 Tribunals. But they had a totally different mandate. Various Tribunal Presidents told captives they lacked the mandate to do anything but confirm, or not confirm, whether the captives were an "enemy combatant". Moazzam Begg had been issued a POW card. He was entitled to request any witnesses he thought could offer exculpatory evidence. He requested the testimony of the employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross who issued him the POW card. And he requested the testimony of a US officer who had knowledge of his POW status. His Tribunal President disallowed this testimony. She ruled, backed up by the Tribunal's legal advisor, that CSR Tribunals did not have a mandate to rule on whether the captive's qualified for POW status.
So, what is an "enemy combatant" you ask? DC Court judge Joyce Hens Green, who considered a couple of dozen of the captive's habeas corpus cases. She asked: "If a little old lady, in Switzerland, sends a donation to what she thinks is a legitimate charity, and, unknown to her, some portion of her widow's mite is diverted to finance a terrorism-related project, is she an "enemy combatant"?
The DOJ official answered that, yes, the little old lady could be considered an "enemy combatant".
So far the USA has only accused a single captive of killing a US soldier -- Omar Khadr. It is still premature to say the killing he is accused of would be "murder". Last summer the Presiding Officer of his Military Commission ruled that he lacked the jurisdiction to try Khadr. The Military Commissions Act said the Military Commissions could try "unlawful enemy combatants". But Khadr, like all the other remaining Guantanamo captives, had only been determined to be an "enemy combatant". The Prosecution wanted to appeal. But the appeal court hadn't been set up. Officers hadn't been appointed. Rules hadn't been set. These were rushed in. The appeals court decided that the Presiding Officer could decide himself whether he Khadr was an "unlawful enemy combatant". The Presiding Officer was going to make that determinat a few weeks ago. However it turned ou
...But the government is in a position to know more about certain things...
Only if you assume that they are halfways competent, intellectually honest, and not blinded by preconceptions.
The DoD fought tooth and nail to keep these documents arising from the captive's administrative proceedings secret. But they failed. There are about 2300 documents released under the freedom of information Act where you can read the actual "Summary of Evidence" memos, and the captives' testimony.
Try reading them and I suspect you might find some of the stories surprisingly compelling. Try reading them and I guarantee your charming faith in your government shaken.
Here is a package of documents
released around Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari's Combatant Status Review Tribunal.
It is not the most shocking. But is the first one I read that really shocked me.
Note the three allegations on page 20. One of the allegations was that he was found wearing a Casio F91W digital watch. When I read that allegation in September 2005 I did what any of you would do. I spent thirty seconds doing a google image search, so I could see what a Casio F91W looks like. I recognized this watch. I used to own one. It is one of the most widely produced digital watches ever made.
I found it kind of shocking that this very weak allegation was being used to justify his continued detention.
But, it got worse. In his testimony, (pages 12-18) he expresses his distress at learning that the watch was one of the triggers for his detention. As part of this distress he gave a detailed description of his watch. Guess what?
His watch wasn't a Casio F91W. The F91W is an accurate, reliable, water resistant watch, with a stop-watch, a little light, a little beeper, and a daily alarm. It has no other features.
The watch he described was much more featureful. It was a watch specifically designed for observant Muslims. Observant Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day. This watch called out a call to prayers at the required times. Observant Muslims are supposed to bow down facing Mecca when they pray.
This watch pointed to Mecca. It had a little magnetic compass. If the wearer was a world traveler, when they landed in a new city, they told the watch where they were, and the watch had enough computing power to do the spherical trigonometry to calculate the direction of Mecca. When the compass was pointing North an LCD arrow on the compass would point at Mecca. The wearer entered their current location either by picking a nearby city from a list of 200 cities, or by entering their latitude and longitude.
That is technically cool.
Well, thirty seconds to find the image of the F91W. About five minutes to figure out that Al Kandari's watch was the "Casio Prayer Watch". It looks NOTHING like an F91W. The Casio logo doesn't even look the same. And it costs about six times as much.
How competent can the JTF-GTMO staff be, how interested can they have been in determining who was an actual threat if any competent computer user can blow away one of the allegations in just a few minutes?
In March 2006 the DoD was forced, by court order, to release about a thousand documents. They showed that well over a dozen captives faced the allegation that owned a Casio F91W watch. In September 2007 the DoD released the second thousand documents. Almost two dozen captives faced this very flimsy allegation. The record shows only one courageous officer challenging the credibility of this allegation.
One of the other two allegations was that his "known alias" was found on a suspicious list on a suspected al Qaeda member's computer. This alias wasn't listed for him to challenge. But
In this day and age, there is a decidedly anti-government and anti-Bush perspective that is promoted by many in the mainstream media and, often, in places like Slashdot and Wikipedia.
Oh? Examples please? If this claim was really true why have so few of the stories about rogue GI had any legs. It seems to me that the MSM has dropped a lot of stories as if they were radioactive.
Here is a counter-example. Carolyn Wood. This officer was in charge of interrogations at Bagram when her troops slowly, methodically, brutally beat two innocent men to death. All the captives in her prison were subjected to a couple of days or a couple of weeks of beatings, isolation and sleep deprivation. The sleep deprivation was administered by having their hands shackled above their heads. If passing guards saw them nodding off, in spite the shackling, they were supposed to administer a "peroneal strike".
These two men died, while the others survived, because they got more than their share of blows. One was rumored to have a brother who was a taliban commander. He wasn't accused of being a member of the Taliban himself. But he was mouthy. Even though his autopsy showed he died of these blows. Even though the military pathologist classed his death as a homicided Wood failed to rein in her troops, and the other man was beaten to death. The troops didn't believe he was really an enemy. They just found his cries amusing. He was estimated to have received over 400 of these peroneal strikes. The military pathologist who examined his body said she had only seen legs so badly damaged once -- someone whose legs had been run over by a bus.
So, what happened to Wood? Court-martial? Dishonorable discharge?
Nope. She was given a Bronze Star, and a promotion, and a new assignment.
Next stop Abu Ghraib.
No. I am not making this up. It was mainly military police in the pictures the DoD released from the Abu Ghraib gallery. But in the background of some of those pictures you can see some of Wood's interrogators. The hapless MPs said that they had been instructed and egged on by Wood's troops.
Wood drafted the infamous "Interrogation Rules of Engagement" that went out of Sanchez's signature in September 2003. Wood's interrogators are known to have used unauthorized interrogation methods she developed in Bagram in Iraq.
So, what happened next? Court-martial? Dishonorable discharge? Have her Bronze Star stripped from her?
Another Bronze Star. And a plum assignment. She was made an interrogation instructor at Camp Huaxcha, the US Army's intelligence college.
No. I am not making this up.
The Fay-Jones Inquiry made the following recommendations to her commanding officers:
Finding: CPT Carolyn A. Wood, Officer in Charge, Interrogation Control Element (ICE), Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, 519 MI BDE A preponderance of evidence supports that CPT Wood failed to do the following:
*Failed to implement the necessary checks and balances to detect and prevent detainee abuse. Given her knowledge of prior abuse in Afghanistan, as well as the reported sexual assault of a female detainee by three 519 MI BN Soldiers working in the ICE, CPT Wood should have been aware of the potential for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. As the Officer-in-Charge (OIC) she was in a position to take steps to prevent further abuse. Her failure to do so allowed the abuse by Soldiers and civilians to undetected and unchecked.
*Failed to assist in gaining control of a chaotic situation during the IP Roundup, even after SGT Eckroth approached her for help.
*Failed to provide proper supervision. Should have been more alert due to the following incidents:
*An ongoing investigation on the 519 MI BN in Afghanistan.
*Prior reports of 519 MI BN interrogators conducting unauthorized interrogations.
*SOLDIER29's repo
Omar Khadr, a fifteen year old born in Canada, whose family moved to Afghanistan in 1995 or 96, stands accused of tossing a grenade that mortally wounded Sergeant Christopher Speer. He is one of the three captives who currently faces charges before a military commission.
Another captive who stands accused of having a role in an attack where an American soldier was injured was also a teenager when the alleged incident occurred. He was only charged recently.
One stands accused of playing a role in an attack where a Red Cross worker was killed. One of the allegations that JTF-GTMO analysts suggests his denials of involvement in, or knowledge of this attack? Interrogators pounced on how, in his initial replies to this allegation he referred to the Red Cross worker as a "he" -- when his interrogator said they never mentioned the Red Cross worker's gender. Need I point out how flimsy this allegation is? It is hardly surprising that someone from a patriarchal society, where women are covered from head to foot, and aren't allowed out of their home unless they are in the company of a male relative, would refer to every stranger they hear about as male.
One of the seven other captives who were charged under the military commissions President Bush initially authorized, and which were over-ruled as unconstitutional by Supreme Court faced extremely flimsy allegations that he played a role in a third incident where a grenade was tossed into a van with Canadian journalists, seriously wounding Canadian journalist Kathleen Keena. His transcript is on pages 108 of this.pdf.
Do any of the allegations against other captives support the allegation they were captured near an incident where uniformed Pakistanis or uniformed Afghans were killed or injured?
What you have to understand about how the captives came into US custody is that Omar Khadr's capture was the exception. Most captives were turned over by bounty hunters, who merely told the Americans the captive was an enemy. And the Americans did absolutely zero sanity checking before they paid the bounties. Of the remainder, who were captured by Americans, it wasn't following a skirmish, but was based on a denunciation, for which the denunciator got a big bounty.
IMO, none of the claims of these bounty hunters should be given any trust whatsoever.
This is not an isolated case. The DoD didn't take any steps to verify ANY of the captives' alibis.
Captives were allowed to request any witnesses they thought could provide exculpatory evidence. However, this was a shameful, shameful charade.
When a captive's witness request was deemed "relevant", the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants would send a request to the State Department. That letter requested the State Department to send a request to embassy of the country they thought the witness lived in.
The embassy was requested to start the process to give permission for a representative of the USA to take a statement from the witness. The embassy was was requested to get the country's civil service to supply the contact information for the witness.
Not one embassy replied to the these requests. Personally, I suspect those embassies never got those requests.
The OARDEC rules only allowed three weeks for the letter to flow from Guantanamo to the State department, to the embassy, to the country's foreign minister, then to the country's interior ministry, and all the way back. If that had ever succeeded then presumably a State department type would have humped out to whereever the witness was.
Even witnesses who were US citizens weren't locatable. OARDEC couldn't even get the cooperation of other elements of the Defense Department. About a dozen of the witness they said weren't available because they were "off-Island" were actually ALSO captives in Guantanamo. One Tribunal was told that the witness was in US custody in Bagram -- but the Bagram authorities wouldn't cooperate.
There were occasions when captive's requests for documents they knew were in Guantanamo were met. But, in general, OARDEC was not able to get the JTF-GTMO evidence clerks to find exculpatory evidence in the evidence locker, like the captives' passports, which would have shown that they were not in Afghanistan on the dates they were accused of being.
JTF-GTMO couldn't even figure out how to spell the captive's name consistently.
I am sorry to disillusion anyone who thinks that the secrecy the DoD wants to wrap around Guantanamo helps preserve US security. All this secrecy is protecting is the DoD's reputation. It is preventing the public from learning how truly, appallingly, amazingly, bizarrely incompetent it has been.
The unfortunate side effect of this shameful, truly shameful deceit is that the public is much less safe. The DoD laughably claims that the Guantanamo interrogations are continuing to produce "invaluable intelligence." This so-called invaluable info has absolutely, completely, irredeemably polluted to pool of intelligence.
Making sensible decisions about how to allocate our counter-terrorism resources requires reliable information. When we trust unreliable information about what is and isn't a threat, we will make bad decisions allocating those counter-terrorism resources. We will allocate it guarding against non-existent threats, while leaving real threats unguarded.
This is the real cost of the DoD's deceit and incompetence.
This is what those JTF-GTMO public affairs kids should really be ashamed about.
According to this report the Taliban's last Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, learned of al Qaeda's attack plans in July 2001. Learned of them, and did his best to warn the USA -- weeks prior to 9-11.
Tohir Yuldash, the leader of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, tipped him off. Yuldash's rebel group was being given sanctuary in Afghanistan. And he feared that the attacks would trigger a massive US retaliation which would have a negative effect on his group.
This story has not received much attention. But the BBC is a pretty credible source.
This story is overblown. The wikipedia edit history doesn't come into it.
What we see here looks more like a college prank because it was committed by young enlisted GIs who were probably no older than college students. As various newspapers pointed out, they couldn't spell. They called Fidel Castro a "transexual", when the correct spelling is "transsexual". This was not a campaign of disinformation, it was a couple of bored kids goofing off on company time.
Now, is the Bush administration capable of out-sourcing a less-traceable campaign of disinformation? Well, was it capable of giving secret payoffs to corrupt journalists like Armstrong Williams?
The "Military Commissions" are not Courts-Martial. They do not follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Did you read David Hick's Australian lawyers account of why he was barred from attending his client's trial? The Presiding Officer wanted him to sign a disclaimer, stating that he would abide by the Commission's rules, and that he would be in trouble if he didn't. He says he was prepared to sign, once he had been allowed to SEE the rules he was agreeing to abide by.
So, why couldn't he see them? BECAUSE THEY HADN'T YET BEEN WRITTEN.
Nevertheless, the Presiding Officer insisted the lawyer agree to abide by these not yet written rules. And, when he wouldn't do so he was barred from attendance.
Military Prisons, like Leavenworth, hold people convicted of crimes. None of the captives currently at Guantanamo has been convicted of a crime. With three exceptions, none of the captives are even charged with a crime.
The DoD does not call Guantanamo a Military Prison. It does not call Guantanamo a POW camp. It calls Guantanamo a "detention camp".
David Hicks was convicted, because he pled guilty. But he only pled guilty after this shameful act where one of his lawyers, the one his family chose, was barred from attending his trial. Please don't confuse this with justice.
A civilian who takes down their varmint rifle, from above their mantle, when their property is invaded by their country's invaders, will still be considered a "lawful combatant", under the Geneva Conventions, provided they carry arms openly, and otherwise obeys the laws and conventions of war.
Feel free to look it up for yourself.
That patriotic civilian could be held for the duration of hostilities -- but not under the conditions the Guantanamo captives were held.
But, what should be said here is, the allegations the DoD has released against the captives largely don't support the claim that they were combatants.
The DoD has released Summary of Evidence memos listing the allegations against 572 of the 777 captives. If you read some of those allegation memos for yourself you will find that very few of them support the allegation that they were "captured on a battlefield."
In the eighteen months since the memos were first released I have read those 572 memos. Not only do a small fraction of them support this allegation. My assessment is that of the small fraction of those allegation memos that support the "captured on the battlefield" claim more that half of those captives were poor saps who were just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The real shooters in these skirmishes fled, and got away scot free.
Like a couple of million other Afghans their family fled the decades of warfare in Afghanistan. The brothers grew up as refugees, in Pakistan. They went to school there. They went to medical technician college. The more ambitious, or academically gifted brother worked his way through medical school.
When the Taliban was ousted, and Hamid Karzai took over, one of the problems his country faced was a terrible lack of professionals and literate men. Karzai broadcast a request for educated Afghan refugees to return home. And these two brother decided to heed his request.
So far this is a good news story. This is exactly what everyone hoping for Afghanistan becoming a peaceful, prosperous country would wish for.
The brothers returned the region where their family was from. They borrowed money to equip their medical clinic with modern lab equipment, so the clinic could supply modern medical care, take X-rays, do standard blood tests.
So far this is a good news story. This would almost certainly be the first modern medical care this area ever had. This would save the lives of dozens of babies, old folks, etc.
The Americans established a small firebase nearby.
Okay. Good news. Provide some security.
The first American CO was sensible. He sought out the doctor -- a respected local, who spoke English, and asked him to go around with him, and introduce him to the elders at the various local village councils, and help explain to them that the American intentions were to help the Afghan people, help provide security, help rebuild the country's infrastructure.
So far this is a good news story.
Our doctor agreed. And consequently the elders on these local village councils saw the doctor as the intermediary through whom they could direct requests to the American firebase commander. I imagine these were requests like: "could you allocate some of that discretionary reconstruction fund you control to put our idle young men to work rebuilding the irrigation canal east of here?"
And, so far this is a good news story.
The doctor was a busy guy. So, when the other locals made these kinds of requests he wrot
I fixed a couple of the JTF-GTMO edits. There is nothing really to see here. Wikileaks found that something like 60 edits were made from an IP address traceable to the JTF-GTMO's Public Affair Office.
You can read here, on page 3 of this pdf, about the most recent rotation of public affairs GIs. They are just kids. Most of what they do are puff pieces -- interviews for the "Chaplain's Corner". Sixty wikipedia edits, of this sort, could have been done by a couple of bored privates, over their lunch hour, the day the Sergeant was out of the office.
More notable is the goodbye essay of Colonel Lora L. Tucker, a retiring PCH officer, on page 2.
The way I see it her retiring essay provides a big part of the answer to the question how could American soldiers be involved in abusing captives?
Guarding men, held without charge, for an indefinite term, would be bad for the morale of young American GIs.
What I think happened is that officers like Geoffrey Miller, Harry Harris, made the conscious decision to demonize the Guantanamo captives, keeping up the GI's morale by vastly overstating the importance of the captives, the danger they represented, and the confidence responsible officers could have about their role in terrorist attacks.
Colonel Tucker seems to have accepted the unsubstantiated claims of spin doctors at face value.
Back in 2005 there was a brief period when camp authorities allowed the press to interview some of the ordinary troops who served as the camp's guards. I remember a brief clip the BBC broadcast about his frustrations about serving as a camp guard. He made two points:
Guards weren't given enough scope to retaliate against captives who spit on them, or threw urine on them.
(paraphrasing)"Half of these guys killed a US soldier." Well, I checked. At the time the guard made this comment 192 American GIs had died in Afghanistan -- including those like Pat Tillman who were victims of "friendly fire". At that point about 500 captives remained in Guantanamo. So even if every American death could be attributed to a Guantanamo captive, that still wouldn't have been "half".
When examined in detail the allegations faced by only a few dozen captives could be honestly reported to have been "captured on the battlefield" -- for any reasonable definition of battlefield. The allegations against most of the captives don't support the claim that they were "combatants". Under the Geneva Conventions a demobilized soldier is considered a civilian. According to the Geneva Conventions only soldier who are currently part of an army, or militia -- or civilians who choose to engage in hostilities against their countries invaders, are combatants. A veteran might be highly decorated, or admired -- according to the Geneva Convention, if that demobilized veteran stayed home, didn't try to re-enlist, and left his rifle hanging over his mantle, he remained a civilian.
The Guantanamo captives included a couple of dozen grandfathers, who were considered combatants because they fought against Afghanistan's Soviet invaders during the 1980s. One grandfather's military service dated back to 1960s, when he served in the Afghanistan Army when Afghanistan was still a monarchy.
And yet the guards believed, "over half these guys killed a US soldier". The authorities demonized them. And this set the stage for the abuse.
But this comment, and several similar comments, make the mistake
of asserting that the CEO answers to our hero and his friend.
The CEO should answer to those investors our hero is so interested in acquiring. And, in theory at least, if our hero and his friend take key positions on the Board of directors, they are supposed to answer to the shareholder, their investors.
If our hero and his friend make decisions the investors aren't happy with, the investors can replace them.
Some commentors here have recommended letting the finance guys take care of all those boring meetings. If our hero and his friend think they can retain control, by retaining 51% of the stock, they may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Ted Nelson tells the story of a friend of his, who founded a company, and wanted to avoid those boring meetings. At one meeting his investors decided to issue a second round of stock. He no longer controlled 51% of the stock, and those investors took control.
So, the initial technical idea was his -- so what? Can he do the whole thing by himself? If so why does he need his friend? Why does he need those investors? Now maybe our hero is such a genius that he is irreplaceable. Maybe, if he were hit by a bus, the firm would have to fold because no other technical guy could be hired to take his place, and take the idea to completion?
But, if that isn't the case, that puts a practical limit to how much control he should be retain. If he thinks he is irreplaceable, when he is not, that is a very good reason why he should not be the CEO. Same for his Finance friend.
If our hero and his friend don't want to be accountable to investors, they shouldn't take investors.
There is a commercial for a soda pop, where a cute animated Polar Bear cub accidentally slides into the middle of a flock of penguins. Friendship ensues when a bottle of soda pop is exchanged.
Sorry, I can't remember what brand of soda pop it was.:-)
Sea Leopards fill a similar ecological niche in the Antarctic that Polar Bears fill in the Arctic. I think Sea Leopards would make mincemeat of Polar Bears if someone were nutty enough to import some Polar Bears down there...
Canadian journalist Irshad Manji participated in a panel commenting on the Danish cartoons. She said that
the restriction on rendering images of Mohamed only applies to muslims -- those controversial cartoons are only blasphemous if a moslem drew them or published them.
I am not "new to the political scene". I just haven't abandoned my principles. You cite three Democratic Presidents to show everybody did this. JFK appointing RFK is the worst example you can come up with? Well here is how RFK differs from the bigoted militant Christian fundamentalist kid.
* RFK was not a dropout.
* RFK had fulltime employment prior to taking a high level government appointment.
* RFK did not lie on his resume.
* RFK was a lawyer -- did have expertise in his department, the Department of Justice's field.
* RFK was not an extremist from planet Wacko.
Appointing an anti-Science bigot to a responsible position at NASA is an insulting as it would be as appointing an animal-rights activist to head the Federal meat inspectors. Moreover, these appointments show Bush has no serious understanding of what the USA needs to do to reclaim the lead role in Science.
Carter's cabinet included people he knew, from back in Georgia. Bert Lance was one of his Finance guys. He appointed that colleague of MLK as the Ambassador to the UN. Well, the Ambassador did an okay job. Lance had a credible background, but he turned out to be corrupt. And Carter got rid of him.
A President has the power to chose the nominees. Something like 3,000 positions are his or hers to nominate. He or she has an obligation to nominate competent people. Sure, if the guy who is generally considered the most qualified doesn't agree with his policies he should appoint someone else, who does agree with his policies. But they have to be qualified.
I read what that militant fundamentalist wrote about his actions. He gave his loyalty solely to President Bush and he gave none ot his country. Well, that is wrong. Once you are appointed, you serve the country, not your sponsor. In the end your personal loyalty to your sponsor can't trump the Nation's interest. It did in the case of the NASA kid. Is there any suggestions RFK ever betrayed the country to honor his loyalty to his brother?
What a joke. He appointed that militant fundamentalist to censor NASA. The kid was a dropout, who had never had a full-time job, and whose only qualification was that he had served on Bush's 2004 electoral campaign.
Before he awards any Science awards he should fire all the ignorant political appointees he placed to oversee real scientists. He should fire anybody who is as incompetent and unqualified as "You are doing a heck of a job Brownie."
Note: At 47 degrees to the ecliptic this body won't appear to pass through most of the Zodiac constellations anyhow. The zodiac constellations are those that lie closest to the plane of the ecliptic. Buffy's orbital plane will intersect just a couple of zodiac signs. How will they dream up new meanings for our grandchildren, who are born with their Buffy in Lyra, or Ursa, or whatever? I guess they will have a few decades to dream up those meanings.
However, my sympathy for astrologers is remains limited.
Slashdot Mirror
The officers in the CSR Tribunals were specifically ordered to take the allegations at face value, without regard to how farfetched they were. The captives were guilty, unless they could prove themselves innocent.
And since many of the allegations they had to refute were classified, were withheld from them, it is not surprising that so many captives failed to establish that they were not enemies. The surprising thing is that any of the captives established they were not enemies.
In the two years since then I have read all the CSR Tribunal transcripts.
I can assure all of you that they absolutely do not support the Bush Presidency claims that the captives were all terrorists -- or even that they were all combatants.
The "Summary of Evidence" memos prepared for the 558 captives who had a CSR Tribunal convenened on their behalf absolutely do not support the claim that more than a few dozen captives were "captured on the battlefield" -- for any meaningful definition of "battlefield". And, for those who were captured on a battlefield, my take is that at least half of them were merely the innocent civilian bystanders who lived near an attack, and were left behind when the actual combatants had gotten away scot free.
The CSR Tribunal process was very seriously flawed in several important ways.
There was no mechanism to refute or confirm the captive's alibis. One captive, Abdul Matin, faced the allegation that he had been the Taliban's intelligence chief in the large Northern city of Mazari Sharif. He testified that he had been a refugee in Pakistan during the entire period the Taliban was in power. Further, he testified that he had been a high school science teacher in Pakistan, at a real high school, not a Madrassa. He had to sign in every day. And his time sheets for the seven years he worked there would document that he was in Pakistan, not Mazari Sharif.
His Tribunal told him this alibi was irrelevant because -- wait for it -- he could have traveled to Afghanistan to serve as an intelligence chief during his summer vacation.
His story was not exceptional. It was typical.
Does this make you feel safer?
Another extremely disturbing flaw was that almost all the captives faced more allegations, and more serious allegations, during their first and second annual Administrative Review Board hearings. Those allegations were withheld from the captives during their CSR Tribunal -- thus giving them no opportunity to refute them. ARB hearings weren't authorized to overturn a CSR Tribunal determination that a captive was an "enemy combatant"
Some poor captives were able to offer completely satisfactory rebuttals during their ARB hearings of the allegations that had been withheld from them during their CSR Tribunal. The officers must have agreed with my assessment that their rebuttals were completely credible, since they didn't ask any questions related to the allegations. Instead the transcripts record truly Kafkaesque conversations where the officers said (paraphrasing):
Another deeply inadequate aspect of the CSR Tribunals concerned the definition of a combatant.
According to the Geneva Conventions a veteran is not a combatant. A veteran is a civilian. Period. Unless he takes his varmint rifle down from above his mantelpiece, and takes some pot-shots at you.
But CSR Tribunals considered some captives "combatants" if they had fought against that Soviets during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Some foreign captives were classified as combatants because they had been conscripted back in their home countries.
Afghanistan
You remind me of the anorexic, who couldn't decide whether or not they were on a diet.
So they ate a whole chocolate cake.
Afterwards, they decided they were on a diet, after all. So they took steps to return the cake to the uneaten state.
It seems to me what the original author and copyright holder is saying is:
* I wrote some great software;
* I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to release this software under the GPL;
* I thought my career would get a boost, from my reputation getting a boost, from releasing something good. Users might pay me consulting fees to maintain or extend my product. I might sell a book on how to use it. So even though I hadn't really made up my mind, I gave it away.
* Well, my career didn't get the boost I expected. So, now I have finally made up my mind. I don't want it out under the GPL after all.
This does not make anyone who received it from him a thief. It does not make anyone who received a legitimate copy, one that came with a copy of the GPL, and credited the original author, a thief.
And, IMO, it doesn't make anyone who redistributes his software, with the GPL liscense, and the appropriate credit, a thief.
Distributors who filed off the serial numbers, gave it away, or sold it, without crediting him, were thieves -- both before and after he tried to revoke the GPL.
Warning! Never do business with this individual! How could you tell he would honor any agreement you thought you had with him?
So?
We know. And Geoffrey Miller must have known that 90 plus percent of the captive were captured by bounty hunters, not GIs, on the battlefield.
Those who we know were captured by Americans were mainly rounded up in the middle of the night, or reasonable equivalent.
As I wrote above Khadr is the only captive who has been accused of killing a GI. So, even though you think it is important that, in theory 777 Guantanamo captives could have been part of a 777 man firing squad, they weren't, and Miller knew they weren't. But he encouraged his soldiers to believe half the captives were real killers.
Why did Miller do that?
My theory? Boredom is bad for morale. Taking highly trained soldiers, skilled, full of courage, fighting spirit, and making them serve as prison guards is going to be bad for morale. They are going to feel their efforts are pointless, when they know former comrades are putting their lives on the line every day. I think Miller knowingly wildly inflated how dangerous the captives were to keep up the guard's morale.
One of consequences of exaggerating how dangerous the captives were, and the role they played in 911, is that it pushed the guards into thinking it was okay to commit atrocities.
One of first five British captives, one of the unquestionably innocent ones, gave an account of one of the child captives. One of the techniques used that isn't talked about much is moving captives from one cell to another in the middle of the night. Re-assigning the captives to different cells presumably is not something that looks like abuse, if the log sin't detailed enough to show it was done in the middle of the night. The Brits said it was done often enough to keep the intended victims sleep deprived.
The guard force keeps riot squads suited up, and ready to go. Called the IRF, or ERF. Short for Immediate Response Force, or Emergency Response Force. They are only supposed to perform a "cell extraction" if a captive has been violent. But, in this particular incident the IRF did something I gather they were known to do. Invade the cell of a captive who hadn't been broken yet, when he is still asleep, and beat him senseless when he was still half asleep, then record in the log that he had performed something that justified the cell extraction.
The trouble with these unoffical, off-the-books, acts of retaliation, is that two different sets of guards can both target one captive, and end up royally screwing up.
One set of guards targeted one captive they wanted to break, woke him up, make him pack up his meager belongings -- so you can make him switch cells. Of course this disrupts the sleep of the captive you make him switch with.
Guantanamo contained aobut two dozen children. Three of the youngest, who were about 11, 12 and 13 years old, got to stay in camp iguana, where they were treated humanely, provided schooling, access to a fridge, with fresh fruit, got to play soccer with their guards, and go to the beach. The remaining children were confined with the adult captives. One of these children was the captive who was made to switch cells with the tough guy the guards wanted to retaliated against.
So, the second set of guards, in the IRF squad want to wake the hard guy up with a brutal beating. But the hard guy has already been moved. So, they bust in and wail away on the kid, and beat him senseless, before they realize they got the wrong guy. The Brit said the beating left the kid catatonic for a month.
Were the guards explicitly ordered to take these steps? I suspect that, either, as at Abu Ghraib, the guards weren't given orders, they were given hints, or that Miller had them keyed up to hate the captives so much, because they were told they were all responsible for 9-11, that they administered these beatings without any hints.
I don't think most Ame
IANAL. But I have been told that nothing obliges a soldier to surrender, if they are called on to surrender. Opting to fight it out to the last man standing, I was told, does not make a combatant an unlawful combatant. And, I was told, the corollary was also true. That there were situations when your opponents might want to surrender to you, but you weren't obliged to accept their surrender.
This, I was told, was the meaning of the phrase used in old novels, and old movies, "I ask no quarter, and I offer none." There is a danger that those of us who aren't combatants can rely on fiction. I am skeptical about the corollary.
But there is one other thing I was told, which I am confident is the truth.
Once an individual is taken into custody American GIs have a firm set of rules as to how to treat them. I think I remember a mnemonic. Five "P"s, or five "S"s, or something like that. Those rules apply to all captives -- without regard to whether the American GIs who made the capture THINK the captive is a war criminal. According to the Geneva Conventions no soldier is allowed to take the law into their own hands. According to the Geneva Conventions ALL captives are supposed to be treated as if they were POWs -- until a specific formal process determines that they aren't. It is called a "competent tribunal". That Army regulation I mentioned lays out the specific rules.
Up until the Supreme Court rulings about the captives the Bush Presidency was offering a rather deceitful interpretation of that aspect of the Geneva Convention. The GC said that a competent tribunal had to be convened "if any doubt existed". What it means, of course, was, "if any doubt existed as to whether the captive was actually a lawful combatant entitled to POW status." The Bush Presidency stated "we don't have any doubts they are war criminals, so we don't need to convene any competent tribunals.
The Supreme Court over-ruled them.
During the first Gulf War the US military convened comptetent tribunals for about 1300 captives. They detemined that about 800 of them were innocent civilians, and the rest of them were lawful combatants entitled to POW status.
Even Saddam was entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Do you remember those first images that were broadcast of him? They showed him looking very disheveled, and meekd, while a medic checked his hair and beard for lice. Some commentators pointed out that, under the Geneva Conventions, he was entitled to protection from not just torture, but also from public humiliation.
Your post is an example of one of the USA's weaknesses. The USA is still in a kind of paralyzing state of shock after the 9-11 attacks. One consequence is to imagine your enemies are a funhouse mirror reflection of yourselves, or your worst fears.
Cast your mind back to late 2001 early 2002. The DoD kept leaking these very detailed technical drawings of Osama bin Laden's underground shelters. These drawings looked like Islamic versions of Cheyenne Mountain.
Osama didn't, in fact, have any underground shelters like Cheyenne Mountain.
Saddam didn't, in fact, have an arsenal of WMD. An example of projecting your worst fears on your opponent.
Don't get me wrong. I am not unsympathetic. They death of almost 3,000 innocent civilians should be shocking. But it is not responsible to react on a hyterical purely emotional level. Which, no offense, the US reaction to those attacks largely remains.
You write:
My advice to Americans is that your most realistic fear of tyranny and oppression comes from within, not without. Many commentators, including, it seems to me, yourself, suggest rolling over, and surrendering vast rights to the Presidency, with zero oversight, in spite of the current administrations shocking record of corruption, incompetence, and deceit.Competent tribunals, like the AR-190-8 Tribunals, can determine that a captive is:
[1] An innocent civilian, who wasn't a combatant, took no part in any hostilities, who should be released immediately. After reading most of those 2200 documents I'd say about half the Guantanamo captives would fall into this group.
[2] A combatant, who took part in hostilities, but carried their arms openly, wore a distinctive marking, answered to officers responsible for their conduct, didn't commit any war crimes. These captives are "lawful combatants" entitled to all the protections of POW status.
[3] A combatant, who didn't comply with the criteria above. They can be stripped of POW status. They are still protected against torture, summary judgement. They are still protected by the rule of law. They can be tried, for murder, or other hostile acts they committed. But they are supposed to be tried by the same system of justice as the captor's own soldiers. That is, a court martial. Since GIs like Lewis Welshofer only got a fine and two months confinement to barracks for the torture and murder of the captive he was interrogating, one could ask why anyone the US tries for war crimes wouldn't get similarly light sentences.
No. The CSR Tribunals do not fulfill the USA obligation to convene "Competent Tribunals". They outwardly resembled the AR-190-8 Tribunals. But they had a totally different mandate. Various Tribunal Presidents told captives they lacked the mandate to do anything but confirm, or not confirm, whether the captives were an "enemy combatant". Moazzam Begg had been issued a POW card. He was entitled to request any witnesses he thought could offer exculpatory evidence. He requested the testimony of the employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross who issued him the POW card. And he requested the testimony of a US officer who had knowledge of his POW status. His Tribunal President disallowed this testimony. She ruled, backed up by the Tribunal's legal advisor, that CSR Tribunals did not have a mandate to rule on whether the captive's qualified for POW status.
So, what is an "enemy combatant" you ask? DC Court judge Joyce Hens Green, who considered a couple of dozen of the captive's habeas corpus cases. She asked: "If a little old lady, in Switzerland, sends a donation to what she thinks is a legitimate charity, and, unknown to her, some portion of her widow's mite is diverted to finance a terrorism-related project, is she an "enemy combatant"?
The DOJ official answered that, yes, the little old lady could be considered an "enemy combatant".
So far the USA has only accused a single captive of killing a US soldier -- Omar Khadr. It is still premature to say the killing he is accused of would be "murder". Last summer the Presiding Officer of his Military Commission ruled that he lacked the jurisdiction to try Khadr. The Military Commissions Act said the Military Commissions could try "unlawful enemy combatants". But Khadr, like all the other remaining Guantanamo captives, had only been determined to be an "enemy combatant". The Prosecution wanted to appeal. But the appeal court hadn't been set up. Officers hadn't been appointed. Rules hadn't been set. These were rushed in. The appeals court decided that the Presiding Officer could decide himself whether he Khadr was an "unlawful enemy combatant". The Presiding Officer was going to make that determinat a few weeks ago. However it turned ou
Only if you assume that they are halfways competent, intellectually honest, and not blinded by preconceptions.
The DoD fought tooth and nail to keep these documents arising from the captive's administrative proceedings secret. But they failed. There are about 2300 documents released under the freedom of information Act where you can read the actual "Summary of Evidence" memos, and the captives' testimony.
Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) Documents
Try reading them and I suspect you might find some of the stories surprisingly compelling. Try reading them and I guarantee your charming faith in your government shaken.
Here is a package of documents released around Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari's Combatant Status Review Tribunal. It is not the most shocking. But is the first one I read that really shocked me.
Note the three allegations on page 20. One of the allegations was that he was found wearing a Casio F91W digital watch. When I read that allegation in September 2005 I did what any of you would do. I spent thirty seconds doing a google image search, so I could see what a Casio F91W looks like. I recognized this watch. I used to own one. It is one of the most widely produced digital watches ever made.
I found it kind of shocking that this very weak allegation was being used to justify his continued detention.
But, it got worse. In his testimony, (pages 12-18) he expresses his distress at learning that the watch was one of the triggers for his detention. As part of this distress he gave a detailed description of his watch. Guess what?
His watch wasn't a Casio F91W. The F91W is an accurate, reliable, water resistant watch, with a stop-watch, a little light, a little beeper, and a daily alarm. It has no other features.
The watch he described was much more featureful. It was a watch specifically designed for observant Muslims. Observant Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day. This watch called out a call to prayers at the required times. Observant Muslims are supposed to bow down facing Mecca when they pray. This watch pointed to Mecca. It had a little magnetic compass. If the wearer was a world traveler, when they landed in a new city, they told the watch where they were, and the watch had enough computing power to do the spherical trigonometry to calculate the direction of Mecca. When the compass was pointing North an LCD arrow on the compass would point at Mecca. The wearer entered their current location either by picking a nearby city from a list of 200 cities, or by entering their latitude and longitude.
That is technically cool.
Well, thirty seconds to find the image of the F91W. About five minutes to figure out that Al Kandari's watch was the "Casio Prayer Watch". It looks NOTHING like an F91W. The Casio logo doesn't even look the same. And it costs about six times as much.
How competent can the JTF-GTMO staff be, how interested can they have been in determining who was an actual threat if any competent computer user can blow away one of the allegations in just a few minutes?
In March 2006 the DoD was forced, by court order, to release about a thousand documents. They showed that well over a dozen captives faced the allegation that owned a Casio F91W watch. In September 2007 the DoD released the second thousand documents. Almost two dozen captives faced this very flimsy allegation. The record shows only one courageous officer challenging the credibility of this allegation.
One of the other two allegations was that his "known alias" was found on a suspicious list on a suspected al Qaeda member's computer. This alias wasn't listed for him to challenge. But
Oh? Examples please? If this claim was really true why have so few of the stories about rogue GI had any legs. It seems to me that the MSM has dropped a lot of stories as if they were radioactive.
Here is a counter-example. Carolyn Wood. This officer was in charge of interrogations at Bagram when her troops slowly, methodically, brutally beat two innocent men to death. All the captives in her prison were subjected to a couple of days or a couple of weeks of beatings, isolation and sleep deprivation. The sleep deprivation was administered by having their hands shackled above their heads. If passing guards saw them nodding off, in spite the shackling, they were supposed to administer a "peroneal strike".
These two men died, while the others survived, because they got more than their share of blows. One was rumored to have a brother who was a taliban commander. He wasn't accused of being a member of the Taliban himself. But he was mouthy. Even though his autopsy showed he died of these blows. Even though the military pathologist classed his death as a homicided Wood failed to rein in her troops, and the other man was beaten to death. The troops didn't believe he was really an enemy. They just found his cries amusing. He was estimated to have received over 400 of these peroneal strikes. The military pathologist who examined his body said she had only seen legs so badly damaged once -- someone whose legs had been run over by a bus.
So, what happened to Wood? Court-martial? Dishonorable discharge?
Nope. She was given a Bronze Star, and a promotion, and a new assignment.
Next stop Abu Ghraib.
No. I am not making this up. It was mainly military police in the pictures the DoD released from the Abu Ghraib gallery. But in the background of some of those pictures you can see some of Wood's interrogators. The hapless MPs said that they had been instructed and egged on by Wood's troops.
Wood drafted the infamous "Interrogation Rules of Engagement" that went out of Sanchez's signature in September 2003. Wood's interrogators are known to have used unauthorized interrogation methods she developed in Bagram in Iraq.
So, what happened next? Court-martial? Dishonorable discharge? Have her Bronze Star stripped from her?
Another Bronze Star. And a plum assignment. She was made an interrogation instructor at Camp Huaxcha, the US Army's intelligence college.
No. I am not making this up.
The Fay-Jones Inquiry made the following recommendations to her commanding officers:
That would be Karen Hughes. Dr Rice gave her efforts very faint praise when Hughes retired a month or so ago.
Another captive who stands accused of having a role in an attack where an American soldier was injured was also a teenager when the alleged incident occurred. He was only charged recently.
One stands accused of playing a role in an attack where a Red Cross worker was killed. One of the allegations that JTF-GTMO analysts suggests his denials of involvement in, or knowledge of this attack? Interrogators pounced on how, in his initial replies to this allegation he referred to the Red Cross worker as a "he" -- when his interrogator said they never mentioned the Red Cross worker's gender. Need I point out how flimsy this allegation is? It is hardly surprising that someone from a patriarchal society, where women are covered from head to foot, and aren't allowed out of their home unless they are in the company of a male relative, would refer to every stranger they hear about as male.
One of the seven other captives who were charged under the military commissions President Bush initially authorized, and which were over-ruled as unconstitutional by Supreme Court faced extremely flimsy allegations that he played a role in a third incident where a grenade was tossed into a van with Canadian journalists, seriously wounding Canadian journalist Kathleen Keena. His transcript is on pages 108 of this .pdf.
Do any of the allegations against other captives support the allegation they were captured near an incident where uniformed Pakistanis or uniformed Afghans were killed or injured?
What you have to understand about how the captives came into US custody is that Omar Khadr's capture was the exception. Most captives were turned over by bounty hunters, who merely told the Americans the captive was an enemy. And the Americans did absolutely zero sanity checking before they paid the bounties. Of the remainder, who were captured by Americans, it wasn't following a skirmish, but was based on a denunciation, for which the denunciator got a big bounty.
IMO, none of the claims of these bounty hunters should be given any trust whatsoever.
Detainees not given access to witnesses: But in one case, 3 quickly found -- Farah Stockman, Declan Walsh, Boston Globe -- June 18, 2006
This is not an isolated case. The DoD didn't take any steps to verify ANY of the captives' alibis.
Captives were allowed to request any witnesses they thought could provide exculpatory evidence. However, this was a shameful, shameful charade.
When a captive's witness request was deemed "relevant", the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants would send a request to the State Department. That letter requested the State Department to send a request to embassy of the country they thought the witness lived in. The embassy was requested to start the process to give permission for a representative of the USA to take a statement from the witness. The embassy was was requested to get the country's civil service to supply the contact information for the witness.
Not one embassy replied to the these requests. Personally, I suspect those embassies never got those requests.
The OARDEC rules only allowed three weeks for the letter to flow from Guantanamo to the State department, to the embassy, to the country's foreign minister, then to the country's interior ministry, and all the way back. If that had ever succeeded then presumably a State department type would have humped out to whereever the witness was.
Even witnesses who were US citizens weren't locatable. OARDEC couldn't even get the cooperation of other elements of the Defense Department. About a dozen of the witness they said weren't available because they were "off-Island" were actually ALSO captives in Guantanamo. One Tribunal was told that the witness was in US custody in Bagram -- but the Bagram authorities wouldn't cooperate.
There were occasions when captive's requests for documents they knew were in Guantanamo were met. But, in general, OARDEC was not able to get the JTF-GTMO evidence clerks to find exculpatory evidence in the evidence locker, like the captives' passports, which would have shown that they were not in Afghanistan on the dates they were accused of being.
JTF-GTMO couldn't even figure out how to spell the captive's name consistently.
I am sorry to disillusion anyone who thinks that the secrecy the DoD wants to wrap around Guantanamo helps preserve US security. All this secrecy is protecting is the DoD's reputation. It is preventing the public from learning how truly, appallingly, amazingly, bizarrely incompetent it has been.
The unfortunate side effect of this shameful, truly shameful deceit is that the public is much less safe. The DoD laughably claims that the Guantanamo interrogations are continuing to produce "invaluable intelligence." This so-called invaluable info has absolutely, completely, irredeemably polluted to pool of intelligence.
Making sensible decisions about how to allocate our counter-terrorism resources requires reliable information. When we trust unreliable information about what is and isn't a threat, we will make bad decisions allocating those counter-terrorism resources. We will allocate it guarding against non-existent threats, while leaving real threats unguarded.
This is the real cost of the DoD's deceit and incompetence.
This is what those JTF-GTMO public affairs kids should really be ashamed about.
According to this report the Taliban's last Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, learned of al Qaeda's attack plans in July 2001. Learned of them, and did his best to warn the USA -- weeks prior to 9-11.
Tohir Yuldash, the leader of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, tipped him off. Yuldash's rebel group was being given sanctuary in Afghanistan. And he feared that the attacks would trigger a massive US retaliation which would have a negative effect on his group.
This story has not received much attention. But the BBC is a pretty credible source.
What we see here looks more like a college prank because it was committed by young enlisted GIs who were probably no older than college students. As various newspapers pointed out, they couldn't spell. They called Fidel Castro a "transexual", when the correct spelling is "transsexual". This was not a campaign of disinformation, it was a couple of bored kids goofing off on company time.
Now, is the Bush administration capable of out-sourcing a less-traceable campaign of disinformation? Well, was it capable of giving secret payoffs to corrupt journalists like Armstrong Williams?
Did you read David Hick's Australian lawyers account of why he was barred from attending his client's trial? The Presiding Officer wanted him to sign a disclaimer, stating that he would abide by the Commission's rules, and that he would be in trouble if he didn't. He says he was prepared to sign, once he had been allowed to SEE the rules he was agreeing to abide by.
So, why couldn't he see them? BECAUSE THEY HADN'T YET BEEN WRITTEN.
Nevertheless, the Presiding Officer insisted the lawyer agree to abide by these not yet written rules. And, when he wouldn't do so he was barred from attendance.
Military Prisons, like Leavenworth, hold people convicted of crimes. None of the captives currently at Guantanamo has been convicted of a crime. With three exceptions, none of the captives are even charged with a crime.
The DoD does not call Guantanamo a Military Prison. It does not call Guantanamo a POW camp. It calls Guantanamo a "detention camp".
David Hicks was convicted, because he pled guilty. But he only pled guilty after this shameful act where one of his lawyers, the one his family chose, was barred from attending his trial. Please don't confuse this with justice.
Feel free to look it up for yourself.
That patriotic civilian could be held for the duration of hostilities -- but not under the conditions the Guantanamo captives were held.
But, what should be said here is, the allegations the DoD has released against the captives largely don't support the claim that they were combatants.
The DoD has released Summary of Evidence memos listing the allegations against 572 of the 777 captives. If you read some of those allegation memos for yourself you will find that very few of them support the allegation that they were "captured on a battlefield."
In the eighteen months since the memos were first released I have read those 572 memos. Not only do a small fraction of them support this allegation. My assessment is that of the small fraction of those allegation memos that support the "captured on the battlefield" claim more that half of those captives were poor saps who were just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The real shooters in these skirmishes fled, and got away scot free.
Let me tell you two of the most memorable cases, that of two brothers: Naqeebyllah Shaheen Shahwali Zair Mohammed and Rasool Shahwali Zair Mohammed Mohammed. transcript at pages 64-76 and 22-28 of this .pdf and transcript at pages 13-28 of this .pdf.
Like a couple of million other Afghans their family fled the decades of warfare in Afghanistan. The brothers grew up as refugees, in Pakistan. They went to school there. They went to medical technician college. The more ambitious, or academically gifted brother worked his way through medical school.
When the Taliban was ousted, and Hamid Karzai took over, one of the problems his country faced was a terrible lack of professionals and literate men. Karzai broadcast a request for educated Afghan refugees to return home. And these two brother decided to heed his request.
So far this is a good news story. This is exactly what everyone hoping for Afghanistan becoming a peaceful, prosperous country would wish for.
The brothers returned the region where their family was from. They borrowed money to equip their medical clinic with modern lab equipment, so the clinic could supply modern medical care, take X-rays, do standard blood tests.
So far this is a good news story. This would almost certainly be the first modern medical care this area ever had. This would save the lives of dozens of babies, old folks, etc.
The Americans established a small firebase nearby.
Okay. Good news. Provide some security.
The first American CO was sensible. He sought out the doctor -- a respected local, who spoke English, and asked him to go around with him, and introduce him to the elders at the various local village councils, and help explain to them that the American intentions were to help the Afghan people, help provide security, help rebuild the country's infrastructure.
So far this is a good news story.
Our doctor agreed. And consequently the elders on these local village councils saw the doctor as the intermediary through whom they could direct requests to the American firebase commander. I imagine these were requests like: "could you allocate some of that discretionary reconstruction fund you control to put our idle young men to work rebuilding the irrigation canal east of here?"
And, so far this is a good news story.
The doctor was a busy guy. So, when the other locals made these kinds of requests he wrot
Oh yeah -- what is a "PCH officer".
You can read here, on page 3 of this pdf, about the most recent rotation of public affairs GIs. They are just kids. Most of what they do are puff pieces -- interviews for the "Chaplain's Corner". Sixty wikipedia edits, of this sort, could have been done by a couple of bored privates, over their lunch hour, the day the Sergeant was out of the office.
More notable is the goodbye essay of Colonel Lora L. Tucker, a retiring PCH officer, on page 2. The way I see it her retiring essay provides a big part of the answer to the question how could American soldiers be involved in abusing captives?
Guarding men, held without charge, for an indefinite term, would be bad for the morale of young American GIs. What I think happened is that officers like Geoffrey Miller, Harry Harris, made the conscious decision to demonize the Guantanamo captives, keeping up the GI's morale by vastly overstating the importance of the captives, the danger they represented, and the confidence responsible officers could have about their role in terrorist attacks.
Colonel Tucker seems to have accepted the unsubstantiated claims of spin doctors at face value.
Back in 2005 there was a brief period when camp authorities allowed the press to interview some of the ordinary troops who served as the camp's guards. I remember a brief clip the BBC broadcast about his frustrations about serving as a camp guard. He made two points:
Guards weren't given enough scope to retaliate against captives who spit on them, or threw urine on them.
(paraphrasing) "Half of these guys killed a US soldier." Well, I checked. At the time the guard made this comment 192 American GIs had died in Afghanistan -- including those like Pat Tillman who were victims of "friendly fire". At that point about 500 captives remained in Guantanamo. So even if every American death could be attributed to a Guantanamo captive, that still wouldn't have been "half".
When examined in detail the allegations faced by only a few dozen captives could be honestly reported to have been "captured on the battlefield" -- for any reasonable definition of battlefield. The allegations against most of the captives don't support the claim that they were "combatants". Under the Geneva Conventions a demobilized soldier is considered a civilian. According to the Geneva Conventions only soldier who are currently part of an army, or militia -- or civilians who choose to engage in hostilities against their countries invaders, are combatants. A veteran might be highly decorated, or admired -- according to the Geneva Convention, if that demobilized veteran stayed home, didn't try to re-enlist, and left his rifle hanging over his mantle, he remained a civilian.
The Guantanamo captives included a couple of dozen grandfathers, who were considered combatants because they fought against Afghanistan's Soviet invaders during the 1980s. One grandfather's military service dated back to 1960s, when he served in the Afghanistan Army when Afghanistan was still a monarchy.
And yet the guards believed, "over half these guys killed a US soldier". The authorities demonized them. And this set the stage for the abuse.
The CEO is answerable to the shareholders.
But this comment, and several similar comments, make the mistake of asserting that the CEO answers to our hero and his friend.
The CEO should answer to those investors our hero is so interested in acquiring. And, in theory at least, if our hero and his friend take key positions on the Board of directors, they are supposed to answer to the shareholder, their investors.
If our hero and his friend make decisions the investors aren't happy with, the investors can replace them.
Some commentors here have recommended letting the finance guys take care of all those boring meetings. If our hero and his friend think they can retain control, by retaining 51% of the stock, they may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Ted Nelson tells the story of a friend of his, who founded a company, and wanted to avoid those boring meetings. At one meeting his investors decided to issue a second round of stock. He no longer controlled 51% of the stock, and those investors took control.
So, the initial technical idea was his -- so what? Can he do the whole thing by himself? If so why does he need his friend? Why does he need those investors? Now maybe our hero is such a genius that he is irreplaceable. Maybe, if he were hit by a bus, the firm would have to fold because no other technical guy could be hired to take his place, and take the idea to completion?
But, if that isn't the case, that puts a practical limit to how much control he should be retain. If he thinks he is irreplaceable, when he is not, that is a very good reason why he should not be the CEO. Same for his Finance friend.
If our hero and his friend don't want to be accountable to investors, they shouldn't take investors.
Sorry, I can't remember what brand of soda pop it was. :-)
Sea Leopards fill a similar ecological niche in the Antarctic that Polar Bears fill in the Arctic. I think Sea Leopards would make mincemeat of Polar Bears if someone were nutty enough to import some Polar Bears down there...
Do you agree?
* RFK was not a dropout.
* RFK had fulltime employment prior to taking a high level government appointment.
* RFK did not lie on his resume.
* RFK was a lawyer -- did have expertise in his department, the Department of Justice's field.
* RFK was not an extremist from planet Wacko.
Appointing an anti-Science bigot to a responsible position at NASA is an insulting as it would be as appointing an animal-rights activist to head the Federal meat inspectors. Moreover, these appointments show Bush has no serious understanding of what the USA needs to do to reclaim the lead role in Science.
Carter's cabinet included people he knew, from back in Georgia. Bert Lance was one of his Finance guys. He appointed that colleague of MLK as the Ambassador to the UN. Well, the Ambassador did an okay job. Lance had a credible background, but he turned out to be corrupt. And Carter got rid of him.
A President has the power to chose the nominees. Something like 3,000 positions are his or hers to nominate. He or she has an obligation to nominate competent people. Sure, if the guy who is generally considered the most qualified doesn't agree with his policies he should appoint someone else, who does agree with his policies. But they have to be qualified.
I read what that militant fundamentalist wrote about his actions. He gave his loyalty solely to President Bush and he gave none ot his country. Well, that is wrong. Once you are appointed, you serve the country, not your sponsor. In the end your personal loyalty to your sponsor can't trump the Nation's interest. It did in the case of the NASA kid. Is there any suggestions RFK ever betrayed the country to honor his loyalty to his brother?
Before he awards any Science awards he should fire all the ignorant political appointees he placed to oversee real scientists. He should fire anybody who is as incompetent and unqualified as "You are doing a heck of a job Brownie."
However, my sympathy for astrologers is remains limited.