Fewer than 24 real Intelligence assets at Guantanamo? Wilkerson says so.

Lawrence Wilkerson, retired US Army Colonel, Vietnam veteran and Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has written a powerful article pointing to aspects of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that have not been discussed in the media.

First was the utter failure of the segregation in Afghanistan of high value prisoners from accidental detainees. He attributes that largely to mismanagement by then-secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. second was the failure of Guantanamo and military managers to act when they realized that a very large number of relatively innocent and mostly useless detainees were being housed at Guantanamo. Wilkerson's third issue is to explain how extremely hard both Colin Powell and Richard Armitage worked to correct the problems created by the first two failures of Bush administration and military management.

Wilkerson's fourth issue is to point to the truly bizarre ad hoc "Intelligence-gathering doctrine dreamed up to conceal the extreme degree to which Guantanamo and its detainees were being mismanaged. The purpose of the new doctrine was to permit the managers to ignore the fact that almost all of the detainees in Guantanamo were both innocent of any real crime and were in fact of no real value as intelligence assets.

There were no more than at most two dozen real leaders with any Intelligence information at all located at Guantanamo. The rest of the detainees were individuals swept up on the battlefield and (properly) handed off by the combat troops to the people who should have been evaluating them and segregating the potential high-value Intelligence assets for Interrogation. The support individuals were not trained to do this and were also under great pressure by the Bush administration civilian leadership to get as many possible people sent back to Interrogation as possible. The result was the beginnings of the disastrous mismanagement of detainees.

In my opinion Wilkerson addresses only a few aspects of the way in which the support of the combat troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan was totally mismanaged by the incompetent Bush administration. Wilkerson is, in my opinion, way too kind to how badly the Bush administration handled the entire set of middle eastern issues. The Bush people had already failed in so many things they had tried that the very threat of exposing one more drove them to commit utter absurdities just to avoid press coverage of another major set of failures.

Because of the continued highly defensive posture taken by ex-Vice-President Dick Cheney and so many other ex-officials of the Bush administration these issues are still being highly covered up. That's the basis for Cheney's attack on Obama the other day, for example. The cover up is not least perpetuated by the Washington political media which seems to have a vested interest is supporting the Bush administration and tearing down the Obama administration. Oddly enough, the Bush administration's attitude towards the massive economic downturn afflicting our economy was "I'll fix itself. We'd just screw it up if we tried to fix anything." So they took a very Hoover-like approach to the economy.

That may have been an accurate assessment of the competence of the conservative Republicans then in power. In fact, most of the current downturn can be tracked back directly to economic policies the conservatives have put into place in the last 30 years.

Obama obviously thinks otherwise and so do most sentient Americans. So he is trying to fix the economy as much as possible as his first priority. But for some reason, the media is still hung up on defending the Bush administration, so they are participating in the conservative cover up. Only the alternate media, such as Steve Clemon's blog where this current article by Wilkerson was published provide the real truth about the degree of sickening mismanagement and incompetence that was the hallmark of the most recent eight years of government.

It is this kind of media defensiveness that has Jon Stewart on the warpath against MSNBC. But as Wilkerson documents in his excellent article, the whole set of problems goes back to the gross mismanagement that has characterized literally every action of the Bush administration, followed by a continued cover up of most of the worst of the Bush administration's failures to govern with even a modicum of competence. The Bush administration was wall-to-wall "Michael Brown at FEMA" from 2001 right through 2009. Guantanamo was only a small part of the overall picture.

Go read Wilkerson's excellent article. This summary can't do it justice.

The right-wing lie regarding "30 released Guantanamo detainees " returning to the battlefield

In his impassioned dissent to the 5 to 4 Boumediene decision Justice Antonia Scalia declared that “[the Court’s decision] will almost certainly cause more
Americans to be killed.” To buttress his argument Justice Scalia stated, “In the short term, however, the decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.”

Since I have sufficient respect for his ethics as a Jurist [*], I can only suspect that Scalia does not know he was repeating a lie. He said it again to Charlie Rose on the show aired June 21, 2008. The Pentagon has released the truth of the matter in in a Seaton Hall study of the issue.. The report essentially says that the Pentagon has no way of tracing released Guantanamo detainees, so it is reduced to culling unverifiable reports from the press. What is known, however is that the prior released detainees were not released through and process that was even quasi-judicial (some were released by political appointees against the will fo the military, and they were not tracked once they were released. There was only a single possible individual who might have returned to the "battlefield" (whjtever that means) and even that report is highly speculative.

From the summary of the report, here is what is known.

On December 10, 2007 The Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research issued a Report, THE MEANING OF "BATTLEFIELD": An Analysis of the Government’s Representations of ‘Battlefield Capture’ and ‘Recidivism’ of the Guantánamo Detainees, which demonstrated that statements asserting 30 detainees had returned to the battlefield were incorrect. Further developments since then, including recent hearings before Congress at which more information was provided by the Department of Defense, confirm that the 30 recidivist claim is simply wrong and has no place in a reasoned public debate about Guantánamo. This Report concludes the following:

• At most 12, not 30, detainees “returned to the fight.”
• Of these 12, it is by no means clear that all are properly characterized as having
  been so engaged since their release.
• According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data not a single detainee was ever released by a court. Moreover, every released detainee was released by political appointees of the Department of Defense, sometimes over the objection of the military.
• According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data and reports, not a single released Guantánamo detainee has ever attacked any
  Americans.
• The Department of Defense’s statements regarding recidivism are inconsistent with each other and often contradictory.
• This may be because, despite the importance of detainee recidivism, the Department of Defense’s sources of information are media reports.
• Despite national security concerns, the Department of Defense does not have a system for tracking the conduct or even the whereabouts of released detainees.
• The only indisputable detainee who took up arms against the United States or its allies was ISN 220.
• ISN 220 was not released as a result of any legal process, whether a CSRT or a federal habeas proceeding; no detainee has been released as a result of either process.
• The decision to release ISN 220 was made by political officers in the Department of Defense and was contrary to the recommendations of the military officers.
• The Department of Defense has never explained why ISN 220 was released or who is responsible for the decision.
• It is at least plausible that a more transparent process would have resulted in ISN 220 still being detained.

So. No thirty released detainees who have returned to the battlefield. Maybe there is one, and if there had been a transparent judicial process that case represents an individual who should not have been released. The Pentagon political appointees tend to overrule good sense and demand the Pentagon do what they are told.

---

[*]That is not to say that I consider Antonin Scalia's theory of of textualism and originalism as he uses it in Constitutional interpretation valid or reasonable. But I do consider him to be a rigorous thinker who, within his limitations, makes every effort to use known facts rather than lies or misrepresentations and then applies his theory to those facts. Scalia is quite inconsistent on his application of originalism because of his limited acceptance of Stare Decisis. The result is that he is able to "logically" justify whatever he wants the law to be rather than being bound by law.

The result is that, while Scalia can always get the result of his decisions to be what he personally wants them to be (See Bush V. Gore), he does it by using his imprecise and non-binding theory of jurisprudence, not by accepting lies or misrepresentations.

From Bush/McCain: Americans are to abandon civil liberties to protect American "Freedoms"

Here's two stories this morning that show the wrong-headedness and the anti-democratic anti-American manner in which the Bush administration is trying to defend America from "Terrorists." The first is from a McClatchy investigation into the manner in which people are rounded up, imprisoned, and subjected to abuse and imprisoned for indeterminate periods with no way of getting a review of the reason for their imprisonment.

It's not that the imprisonment is always wrong. It's that when it is wrong, it is never questioned, and that along with the imprisonment goes a great deal of abuse to anyone not seen as "cooperating" in the manner the authorities expect and demand. The Bush system is remarkably similar to the way the secret police of the Russian Czars used to arbitrarily arrest and imprison individuals alleged to be threats to the Russian government. What's wrong with it? Here's a description of what the McClatchy investigation has shown:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

Today's McClatchy article is entitled "America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men."

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo. [Snip]

One former administration official said the White House's initial policy and legal decisions "probably made instances of abuse more likely. ... My sense is that decisions taken at the top probably sent a signal that the old rules don't apply ... certainly some people read what was coming out of Washington: The gloves are off, this isn't a Geneva world anymore."

This is what the U.S. Supreme Court just rejected. But the demand for arbitrary and unreviewed arrests, detention and abuse of suspected terrorists is strongly supported by the entire Republican Party including John McCain.

The Republican Party has no competences on which to base runs for election and power, so they have to resort to frightening voters and saying "We'll do anything to get elected protect Americans (so that we can keep power.)

This use of fear to extend government arbitrary power in democracies is not unique to the United States. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labor Party are using exactly the same set of arguments to turn Great Britain into a surveillance state ruled by an arbitrary non-democratic government. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, Great Britain has some politicians willing to stand up to defend traditional British freedoms. Here is the opening of his discussion of British politicians as contrasted to the craven American politicians.

The intense and escalating political dispute in Britain over civil liberties is interesting in its own right, but it also vividly illustrates how craven and barren our own political system -- and the U.S. Democratic Party -- have become. The sacrifices now being made by British politicians of all parties in opposition to expanded government detention and surveillance powers is, with a few noble exceptions, exactly what our political elite in the Bush era have been -- and still are -- too afraid or too craven to undertake. As the Democratic Party prepares this week to endorse the Bush administration's illegal spying program and immunize telecoms which deliberately broke our surveillance laws for years, these contrasts become even more acute.

The current Republican leaders fear and hate democracy, openness in government, and the right of individuals to demand accounting from their political leaders. This can be seen in the consistent Republican efforts to restrict voters to those who keep them in office by voter suppression methods like strict voter ID laws. The shrieking and complaining from the Republicans over the Supreme Court Decision to allow Guantanamo prisoners access to the federal courts for habeas corpus is exactly about this demand that they not ever be questioned in their arbitrary and often illegal government decisions. The most striking complaint was from Justice Scalia in his dissent where he stated that granting Guantanamo detainees access to habeas corpus “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Here, from Andy Worthington, is how the Bush administration and the Republican Party accomplished the avoidance of oversight and review:

The Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which originated as an anti-torture bill conceived by Senator John McCain, was hijacked by the executive, who managed to get an amendment passed that removed the prisoners' habeas rights, although the legislation was so shoddy that it was not entirely clear whether the prisoners had been stripped of their rights entirely, or whether pending cases would still be considered. What was clear, however, was that the DTA limited any review of the prisoners' cases to the DC Circuit Court (rather than the Supreme Court), preventing any independent fact-finding to challenge the substance of the administration's allegations, and mandating the judges to rule only on whether or not the CSRTs had followed their own rules, and whether or not those rules were valid.

For the Rule of Law to exist, laws must be enforced, and for them to be enforced they have to be questioned for fairness as they are applied. The only alternative to a government by the Rule of Law is a government run based on the arbitrary whims of the leaders. Democracy cannot long exist in such a leader-oriented tyrannical environment. Elections are not democracy. Saddam Hussein had elections every so often. Democracy requires laws which the public generally accepts as just. Those laws must be based on a Constitution of basic law and those laws must be enforced by institutions (especially an independent judiciary - look at Pakistan) that make the Rule of Law apply to real people as they interact with government.

The fact is that America is losing its way as a democracy (or as a constitutional democratic Republic if you must be picky) under the 9/11-panicked Bush administration and its conservative backers. Not all of those conservative backers are Republican, either. Guantanamo is only one example of how American is losing its way.

John McCain, by his objection to the recent Supreme Court ruling requiring habeas corpus access to the federal courts for Guantanamo detainees is on the Bush administration side in this debate. McCain would do nothing to change the very worst elements of the Bush legacy. No surprise, he has to attract the previous Bush supporters plus a lot of independent voters to get elected President. But it's also his nature to be autocratic and Imperial. He really is running as Bush/Cheney's third term on a platform of leading America deeper into the ditch the Bush administration has dug.

Bush administration and conservative tout arbitrary government, ignore rule of law

Want to see an example of arbitrary government command as oppose to Rule of Law? Digby presents the perfect example from the current hearings on prisoners and Guantanamo.

Read her article. Then go read my essay on Rule of Law vs. Arbitrary Command.

America is based on the Constitution as implemented through the Rule of Law. The movement conservatives are simply not Americans. They believe in neither the Constitution, nor the Rule of Law. Instead of Americans, they are plunderers and pirates, who deserve the penalties International Law prescribes for piracy.

Ideologues imprison and torture their opponents

Glenn Greenwald [*] has a story today of an individual that a government considered to be an enemy. That person was

• Captured by military forces,
• imprisoned for life (indeterminate time, no sentence) with no charges,
• allegedly tortured and mistreated while in captivity
• the government refused to let outside agencies evaluate claims that the prisoner was tortured and mistreated in captivity,
• Then the government finally agreed to let the individual go after five years provided he
  • signed a statement "stipulating" he was treated properly and
  • vowed to remain silent about the mistreatment to which he was subjected.

But what's new? We have all heard such stories of prisoners of Argentina, Franco's Spain, Communist China, North Vietnam, the USSR, Cuba, and North Korea just to name a few. Such stories have been a staple of the "Readers Digest" since the 1950's.

It's what we expect from a government run as a tyranny by a small groups in order to impose their ideology on their nation and sometimes others. There is no rule of law, just rule of the whim of the tyrant in these cases. It is the very opposite of what a democracy does.

There have been a lot of such stories which have come out of various tyrannies in the last sixty years. Some such stories have been clearly verified, but most have been taken from statements by the captives and their families and supporters. When the governments speak to counter those stories, we usually discount what the governments have to say. We suspect we know who to believe, since the governments of Argentina, Franco's Spain, Communist China, North Vietnam, the USSR, Cuba, and North Korea are all vicious tyrannies and cannot be trusted to tell the Truth.

Still, how do we really know that the prisoners themselves are telling the Truth and the governments are not? The governments refuse to let independent agencies, non-government organizations (NGO's) or the Press investigate these stories. The surviving prisoners are trying to tell their stories, while the governments are trying to stop them. If the governments were telling the Truth, all they needed to do was let independent investigators verify which was telling the the Truth. It is the government cover-up in every case which confirms the allegations of the prisoners.

Sadly, this story is one of an Australian, David Hicks, picked up by the U.S. forces in Afghanistan and imprisoned first in Afghanistan and then Guantanamo. Except for the fact that we know that the U.S. government is not a vicious ideologically based tyranny, the rest of the pattern is the same. Especially the efforts to cover up what really happened.

The patterns of behavior by the Bush administration are those of guilty tyrants, not of Americans representing the government of the oldest Republic in the World.

---

[*] Suffer with the day-pass. It's a quick ad and Greenwald is worth it.