Reply #6: Just goes to show what a farce this "war on terror" is.

[JohnyCanuck]

Like this case:

I Was Slow to Recognize the Stain of Guantanamo

By Darrel J. Vandeveld

SNIP

"From June 2007 through September 2008, I worked as a prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Warning signs appeared early on, but I ignored them. The chief military prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis, complained to me and others that he was being bullied by political appointees in the Bush administration. They wanted him to bring charges against detainees before he was ready. He eventually resigned, saying that he didn't believe detainees could get fair trials at Guantanamo.

I had heard stories about abuse at Guantanamo, but I brushed them off as hyperbole. When one of the detainees I was prosecuting, a young Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, told the court that he was only 16 at the time of his arrest, and that he had been subject to horrible abuse, I accused him of exaggerating and ridiculed his story as "idiotic." I did not believe that he was a juvenile, and I railed against Jawad's defense attorney, whom I suspected of being a terrorist sympathizer.

My experience with the Jawad case led me to file a declaration in federal court this week stating that it is impossible to prepare a fair prosecution against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I had concluded that the system of handling evidence is a haphazard farce.

I saw this clearly with Jawad.

He was not lying about his age. Nor was he lying about the abuse. Evidence from U.S. Army criminal investigators -- taken in the course of investigating homicide charges at Bagram air base -- showed that while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, Jawad had been hooded, slapped repeatedly across the face and then thrown down at least one flight of stairs. Detainee records show that once at Guantanamo, he was subjected to a sleep deprivation regime during which he was moved to different cells 112 times over a 14-day period -- an average of every 2 1/2 hours. It was called the frequent flier program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011402319_pf.html

This is a case of terrorism alright, but in this case the USA is the perpetrator, not the victim.