Guantanamo, Private Manning and huge Taliban prison break

[the_future_modernes]

xposted to journal
GUANTANAMO BAY

The Guardian says that it got the documents from the NYT, which claims that the document dump is not from Wikileaks. Everyone else is claiming its a Wiki dump. *shrugs* I have no idea.

Guantánamo leaks lift lid on world's most controversial prison

• Innocent people interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts
• Children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held
• 172 prisoners remain, some with no prospect of trial or release
• Interactive guide to all 779 detainees

More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers, obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian, reveal how, alongside the so-called "worst of the worst", many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759 Guantánamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there.

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

 

The old man was transported to Cuba to interrogate him about "suspicious phone numbers" found in his compound. The 14-year-old was shipped out merely because of "his possible knowledge of Taliban...local leaders"
The documents also reveal:

• US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.
Interrogators were told to regard links to any of these as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity.

• Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantánamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide.

MORE

 

Digby points out re: the suicides that the American political and miliatry response... was to accuse the detainees of conducting asymetrical warfare. Yes, yes they did:Wiki Dump

The New York Times> Charlie Savage published a story about the number of suicides at the prison and how vexing they were to the authorities. I was interested to see that a rehash of the old rationalization that suicides are a form of asymmetrical warfare. I wrote a lot about this back in 2006 and 2007 --- the commandant sounded like some kind of cartoon character:

Hey, did you hear about the latest terrorist attack?

A Saudi Arabian detainee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay apparently committed suicide Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

Lest you think I've gone nuts, recall that the US government considers prisoners committing suicide in Guantanamo an act of war. I'm serious. Remember this?

Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States.

He told me they use any weapon they can - including their own urine and faeces - to continue to wage war on the United States.

The suicide of three detainees, he reaffirmed to me, amounted to "asymmetrical warfare."

The state department disagreed. They saw the Gitmo suicides as a PR tactic:

"Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good P.R. move," Graffy said of the deaths. Drawing on knowledge gleaned from work "on improving the United States' image abroad, especially in Islamic countries" (a detail The New York Times pulled from her State Department bio), Graffy elaborated on her remarks on the BBC show "Newshour": “It does sound like this is part of a strategy--in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic."

Keep in mind that the reason suicide was considered a form of warfare was because it made the US look bad. The existence of the prison itself, or the fact that huge numbers of innocent people were being held and tortured, some committing suicide was apparently not a big problem.:MORE

What are the Guantanomo Files

The Guantánamo Bay files spell out the Americans' suspicions about individual detainees' involvement with terrorism, their intelligence value and the threat they are considered to pose if released.

The Guantánamo files consists of 759 "detainee assessment" dossiers written between 2002 and 2009 and sent up through the military hierarchy to the US Southern Command headquarters in Miami. They appear to cover all but 20 of the prisoners.

A number of other documents in the cache spell out guidelines for interrogating and deciding the fate of detainees. One, the "JTF-GTMO matrix of threat indicators" details the "indicators" which should be used to "determine a detainee's capabilities and intentions to pose a terrorist threat if the detainee were given the opportunity." Another provides a matrix for deciding whether a prisoner should be held or released.
All the detainee assessments are classified "secret" but sometimes they mention separate, more sensitive "secret compartmented intelligence" (SCI) dossiers held elsewhere.
The most recent prisoner assessments are from January 2009 when Rear-Admiral DM Thomas Jr, who was the Guantánamo commander at the time, protested about the plan to transfer out two Saudis and a Yemeni, all of whom he still regarded as "high risk".MORE

 

The Guantanomo Files: Al Quadea assasin worked for MI-6

Anti-extremist author framed and whisked to CubaAbdul Badr Mannan was handed over to Americans who later came to believe Pakistani intelligence had set him up

Guantánamo Bay files: Casio wristwatch 'the sign of al-Qaida'Casio F-91W, a cheap digital watch sold around the world, was taken as evidence of detainees having bomb-making training


Guantánamo Bay files: Star informer freed after implicating 123 prisonersMohammed Basardah rewarded despite unsupported claims and interrogators' doubts about sheer number of names he gave up You can also view a PDF about two men who supposedly gave up a quarter of the detainees there.



PRIVATE MANNING


President Obama speaks on Manning and the rule of law

Protesters yesterday interrupted President Obama's speech at a $5,000/ticket San Francisco fundraiser to demand improved treatment for Bradley Manning. After the speech, one of the protesters, Logan Price, approached Obama and questioned him. Obama's responses are revealing on multiple levels.First, Obama said this when justifying Manning's treatment (video and transcript are here):

We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

The impropriety of Obama's public pre-trial declaration of Manning's guilt ("He broke the law") is both gross and manifest. How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt? Numerous commentators have noted how egregiously wrong was Obama's condemnation. Michael Whitney wrote: "the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime." BoingBoing's Rob Beschizza interpreted Obama's declaration of guilt this way: "Just so you know, jurors subordinate judging officers!" And Politico quoted legal experts explaining why Obama's remarks are so obviously inappropriate.


....


 

But even more fascinating is Obama's invocation of America's status as a "nation of laws" to justify why Manning must be punished. That would be a very moving homage to the sanctity of the rule of law -- if not for the fact that the person invoking it is the same one who has repeatedly engaged in the most extraordinary efforts to shield Bush officials from judicial scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution of every kind for their war crimes and surveillance felonies. Indeed, the Orwellian platitude used by Obama to justify that immunity -- Look Forward, Not Backward -- is one of the greatest expressions of presidential lawlessness since Richard Nixon told David Frost that "it's not illegal if the President does it."
But it's long been clear that this is Obama's understanding of "a nation of laws": the most powerful political and financial elites who commit the most egregious crimes are to be shielded from the consequences of their lawbreaking -- see his vote in favor of retroactive telecom immunity, his protection of Bush war criminals, and the way in which Wall Street executives were permitted to plunder with impunity -- while the most powerless figures (such as a 23-year-old Army Private and a slew of other low-level whistleblowers) who expose the corruption and criminality of those elites are to be mercilessly punished. And, of course, our nation's lowest persona non grata group -- accused Muslim Terrorists -- are simply to be encaged for life without any charges. Merciless, due-process-free punishment is for the powerless; full-scale immunity is for the powerful. "Nation of laws" indeed.
One final irony to Obama's embrace of this lofty justifying term: Manning's punitive detention conditions are themselves illegal, as the Uniform Code of Military Justice expressly bars the use of pre-trial detention as a means of imposing punishment. Given how inhumane Manning's detention conditions have been -- and the fact that much of it was ordered in contradiction to the assessments of the brig's psychiatric staff -- there is little question that this is exactly what has happened. The President lecturing us yesterday about how Manning must be punished because we're a "nation of laws" is the same one presiding over and justifying Manning's unlawful detention conditions.
Then, in response to Price's raising the case of Daniel Ellsberg, we have this from Obama:

No it wasn't the same thing. Ellsberg's material wasn't classified in the same way.

What Obama said there is technically true, but not the way he intended. Indeed, the truth of the matter makes exactly the opposite point as the one the President attempted to make. The 42 volumes of the Pentagon Papers leaked by Ellsberg to The New York Times were designated "TOP SECRET": the highest secrecy designation under the law. By stark contrast, not a single page of the materials allegedly leaked by Manning to Wikileaks was marked "top secret"; to the contrary, it was all marked "secret" or "classified": among the lowest level secrecy classifications. Using the Government's own standards, then, the leak by Ellsberg was vastly more dangerous than the alleged leak by Manning.
(And the notion that Ellsberg's leak was limited and highly selective is absurd; he passed on thousands of pages to the New York Times in the form of 42 full volumes worth. Among the documents leaked by Ellsberg were some of the nation's most sensitive cryptography and eavesdropping methods: documents The New York Times withheld from publication upon the NSA's insistence that their publication would gravely harm American national security [see p. 388 and fn 170]. By contrast, none of the documents allegedly leaked by Manning comes close to anything as potentially damaging or sensitive as that.)MORE

 

The Washington Post has an article: Guantanamo Bay: Why Obama hasn’t fulfilled his promise to close the facility


MY THOUGHTS

The problem is that they ask Administration officials, who have a vested interest in making themselves look as good as possible, so; of course, most of the blame is placed on Congress. Where was the full court press to convince the American people that we are a rule of law? Where was the down and dirty fight clashing headfirst with the Republicans? Where was the enlisting of his at the time enthusiastic liberal base to help him make the case? Til this fucking day, there are lots of people who think that if Obama says so, they are fine with it, even if what he says now goes against what they were advocating during the Bush years. So, if he was seriosu about closing Guantanomo why didn't he enlist their help? It's the same damn thing he did with healthcare. Deliberatley blocked liberal help in some cases, compromised the bejesus out of it even BEFORE the debate started, came up with a badly flawed plan and then is all, well I passed healthcare elect me nao!!! Except in this case, at least something got passed. Guantanomo will apparently continue to remain open. HURRAHHHH. The Washington Post also ignores the signal role of the manistream media (including them) in amplifying the conservative "SCARE THE AMERIKUNS" tactics and decrying any hint of actually following the law because "OMG THE TERRORIST WILL GET US, AMERICA IS EXCEPTIONAL" Blah blah blah. Frankly, I want the reporters like those @ The Phoenix New Times or from Rolling Stone to cover this topic. They are more likely to properly dig into the issue, rather than parrot the party line.

TALIBAN PRISON BREAK:

Taliban Help Hundreds Tunnel Out of Prison’s Political Wing


 

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The Taliban staged an audacious prison break here early Monday, freeing at least 476 political prisoners through a long tunnel, according to the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar.
He said that security authorities had discovered in the morning that the prisoners from the political wing of the building were gone, and that the authorities had just found the tunnel. “We do not know if the tunnel was dug from outside or inside the prison,” he said.
The Kandahar prison is the largest and most substantial prison in southern Afghanistan, and it houses Taliban who were captured in Zabul, Oruzgan and Kandahar, including some senior Taliban figures as well as many lower level Taliban, according to security officers working with the prison.
It was the second time there has been a major prison break at the Sariposa prison in Kandahar. The Taliban orchestrated the freeing of 1,200 prisoners, of whom 350 were Taliban members, on June 13, 2008, staging an attack on the prison that killed 15 guards.
The break comes at a critical moment in the Taliban’s fight in southern Afghanistan. Pushed out of their strongholds in the rural areas outside the city and under pressure from a large number of NATO troops who have fanned out into the villages, they have been able to maintain a presence, but nothing close to the dominant role they had even a year ago.
Bringing back a large cadre of experienced fighters, many of whom will have been able to refine their skills in prison, will give the Taliban leadership the flexibility and human resources to send fighters into new districts where there are fewer NATO troops and bolster their numbers in those closer to Kandahar.MORE

Comments

[nagasvoice]

I can understand that none of the Dems wanted to deal with "not in my neighborhood" issues as far as where to relocate the Guantanamo prisoners. But why not release and deport those prisoners who are clearly no risk? Are the extra numbers just being used as cover to confuse or misdirect anyboy who might attack the place trying to rescue prisoners, similar to the prison break in Kandahar?
And I have no explanation for the treatment of Private Bradley, other than somebody's being stubborn and vindictive about something revealed in the wikileaks material. They have to be aware of the fuss about his illegal detention conditions now. If they're trying to crazymake him into being incapable of defending himself at a real courtmartial, it's obviously taking longer than they expected. Just the delay alone is unconscionable.
I can't say about bitterly disappointed I am about either one of those.
It's enough to make you skeptical about who helped on that prison break, if perhaps somebody wants an excuse to keep that war front going.
Yeah, cynical, wonder why.

[the_future_modernes]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised. everytime i think that this can't possibly get any worse, the powers that be prove me wrong. At this point, all I can hope for is the Interantional Criminal Court to acquire some spine.