Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay ...by Lawrence Wilkerson

[marmar]

via MichaelMoore.com:



Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay ...by Lawrence Wilkerson

Washington Note


There are several dimensions to the debate over the U.S. prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the media have largely missed and, thus, of which the American people are almost completely unaware. For that matter, few within the government who were not directly involved are aware either.

The first of these is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the U.S. operations there. Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.

This was a factor of having too few troops in the combat zone, of the troops and civilians who were there having too few people trained and skilled in such vetting, and of the incredible pressure coming down from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others to "just get the bastards to the interrogators".

It did not help that poor U.S. policies such as bounty-hunting, a weak understanding of cultural tendencies, and an utter disregard for the fundamentals of jurisprudence prevailed as well (no blame in the latter realm should accrue to combat soldiers as this it not their bailiwick anyway). ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=1127

[L. Coyote]

1. K&R + US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites by Mark Danner

US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites by Mark Danner

Volume 56, Number 6 · April 9, 2009
ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody
by the International Committee of the Red Cross
43 pp., February 2007

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530