90% of Gitmo prisoners innocent:-Lawrence B. Wilkerson deputy to Colin Powell
by Moin Ansari
March 24, 2009
Lifelong Republican, and chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, stepped forward in ablog post on Tuesday to say not only that there are still innocent people being held at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, not only that we’ve been holding innocent people there for more than six years, but that the U.S. government has known all along that they pose no risk to national security.
Wilkerson told the Associated Press that he was informed by briefings, and military commanders, that big brass knew those captured had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, or the so-called war on terror, but held them anyway as information-gathering tools for a so-called “mosaic ” of intelligence.
Moreover, Powell’s former chief of staff insists that the process by which these “enemy combatants” were so designated itself was shabby and incompetent, and that those sent to Gitmo weren’t properly “vetted” before they were hauled off to Cuba. Pakistanis, Wilkerson added, often acted as bounty hunters, securing as much as $5,000 a head.
While human rights groups, and others, have speculated for years about the dearth of bona fide terrorists at Gitmo, the information Wilkerson provided this week was classified until now.
The former chief of staff to Colin Powell acknowledges, too, that both Rumsfeld and Cheney knew innocent men were being detained as enemy combatants, without charges, were held indefinitely, and they did nothing about it as “to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership” which only goes to show that while there might be innocent people left at Gitmo, there aren’t many left in our nation’s capital.
According to Wilkerson, fewer than 10% of the 240, or 24 men, who remain at the detention camp, in Cuba, can be considered a security risk, yet a former vice president, Dick Cheney, would aim to convince us that releasing even a single detainee would increase our terror threat. Didn’t the fact that half of the executive branch went missing for eight years following 9/11 pose a terror risk to this republic? We are only starting to learn the kind of mischief Cheney was hiding.
Please read the entire article at:
http://rupeenews.com/2009/03/24/90-of-gitmo-priosners-innocent-lawrence-b-wilkerson-deputy-to-colin-powell/And read Lawrence Wilkerson's article at:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/03/some_truths_abo/