The Shame That Is Gitmo

This Slate article does a pretty good job of presenting the futility and stupidity of the Bush Administration's detention policies in one relatively succinct article. Dahlia Lithwick is my favorite writer over at Slate not only because she knows what she's talking about, but because she does a pretty good job of summing it up for the rest of us. Here's what she has to say in light of the recent accounts of what's going on there:

Guantanamo Bay currently holds over 400 prisoners. The Bush administration has repeatedly described these men as "the worst of the worst." Ten have been formally charged with crimes and will someday face military tribunals. The rest wait to learn what they have done wrong. Two major studies conclude that most of them have done very little wrong. A third says they are being tortured while they wait.

No one disputes that the real criminals at Guantanamo should be brought to justice. But now we have proof that most of the prisoners are guilty only of bad luck and that we are casually destroying their lives. The first report was written by Corine Hegland and published two weeks ago in the National Journal...The data suggests that maybe 80 percent of these detainees were never al-Qaida members,
and many were never even Taliban foot soldiers.

So why exactly did we pick these guys up?:

Most detainees are being held for the crime of having "associated" with the Taliban or al-Qaida—often in the most attenuated way, including having known or lived with people assumed to be Taliban, or worked for charities with some ties to al-Qaida. Some had "combat" experience that seems to have consisted solely of being hit by U.S. bombs. Most were not picked up by U.S. forces but handed over to our military by Afghan warlords in exchange for enormous bounties and political payback.

So it would seem alot of the "hardcore terrorists" we have down there are actually nobodies. But there's a hearing process in place for clearing those who have no association with terrorists, right?

Calling these proceedings "hearings" does violence to that word. Detainees are assumed guilty until proven innocent, provided no lawyers, and never told what the evidence against them consists of. That evidence, according to another report by Hegland, often consists of little beyond admissions or accusations by other detainees that follow hundreds of hours of interrogations...Another detainee "confessed" following an interminable interrogation, shouting: "Fine, you got me; I'm a terrorist." When the government tried to list this as a confession, his own interrogators were forced to break the outrageous game of telephone and explain it as sarcasm. A Yemeni accused of being a Bin Laden bodyguard eventually "admitted" to having seen Bin Laden five times: "Three times on Al Jazeera and twice on Yemeni news." His file: "Detainee admitted to knowing Osama Bin Laden."

It's worse than that. I'm just adverse to reprinting entire articles whole-sale. But suffice to say, not only have most of these guys had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but our government is fully aware of that fact. But, we can at least take comfort in the fact that they're being treated humanely while they're there. Oh wait...

The third report was released today by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Five rapporteurs spent 18 months investigating conditions at Guantanamo, based on information provided by released detainees or family members, lawyers, and Defense Department documents. The investigators were not scrutinizing charges. They were assessing humanitarian conditions. They declined to visit the camp itself when they were told they'd be forbidden to meet with the prisoners. Their 41-page document concludes that the government is violating numerous human rights—including the ban on torture and arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial. The investigators were particularly bothered by reports of violent force-feeding of hunger-strikers an interrogation techniques including prolonged solitary confinement; exposure to extreme temperatures, noise, and light; and forced shaving.

Well, as our right-wing commentators would probably tell us, countless frat-boys have probably been forcibly shaved throughout American history, and what's a little force-feeding when their being force-feed high quality American food? Besides, we can't be soft on these guys when these techniques are garnering us valuable intelligence in the "war on terror." About that though...

And why doesn't the government want to put these prisoners on trial? The administration has claimed that it needs these men for their intelligence value; to interrogate them about further 9/11-like plots. But as Hegland reports, by the fall of 2002 it was already common knowledge in the government that "fewer than 10 percent of Guantanamo's prisoners were high-value terrorist operatives," according to Michael Scheuer, who headed the agency's Bin Laden unit from 1999 until he resigned in 2004. Three years later, the government's own documents reveal that hundreds of hours of ruthless questioning have produced only the quasi-comic, quasi-tragic spectacle of weary prisoners beginning to finger one another.

So if most of these guys didn't do anything, the intelligence they're giving us is crap and they're going to be their forever, what are the tangible effects of our detention policy?

The government's final argument is that we are keeping them from rejoining the war against us, a war that has no end. But that is the most disingenuous claim of all: If any hardened anti-American zealots leave Guantanamo, they will be of our own creation. Nothing will radicalize a man faster than years of imprisonment based on unfounded charges; that's why Abu Ghraib has become the world's foremost crime school. A random sweep of any 500 men in the Middle East right now might turn up dozens sporting olive drab and Casio watches, and dozens more who fiercely hate the United States. Do we propose to detain them all indefinitely and without charges?

The real answer to that question is if the Bush administration they could get away with it, you bet your ass we would.

As I've written before, our Gitmo policy was a stupid, short-sighted mistake. Because we've dug ourselves in a hole where we can't put most of these guys on trial because of how we've detained, abused or flat-out tortured them, and because we can't realistically keep them there forever whether we want to or not, there's really only one thing to do: let them go. Lithwick says that's exactly what's happening:

The only real justification for the continued disgrace that is Guantanamo is that the government refuses to admit it's made a mistake. Releasing hundreds of prisoners after holding them for four years without charges would be big news. Better, a Guantanamo at which nothing has happened in four years. Better to drain the camp slowly, releasing handfuls of prisoners at a time. Last week, and with little fanfare, seven more detainees were let go. That brings the total number of releasees to 180, with 76 transferred to the custody of other countries. Are these men who are quietly released the "best of the worst"? No. According to the National Journal one detainee, an Australian fundamentalist Muslim, admitted to training several of the 9/11 hijackers and intended to hijack a plane himself. He was released to his home government last year. A Briton said to have targeted 33 Jewish organizations in New York City is similarly gone. Neither faces charges at home.

I would like to think our government doesn't continue to pursue absurd or short-sighted policies because it refuses to admit to a mistake. I would also like Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny to be real. Lithwick sums up the absurdity for us:

It grinds on because the Bush administration gets exactly what it pays for in that lease: Guantanamo is a not-place. It's neither America nor Cuba. It is peopled by people without names who face no charges. Non-people facing non-trials to defend non-charges are not a story. They are a headache. No wonder the prisoners went on hunger strikes. Not-eating, ironically enough, is the only way they could try to become real to us.

And somewhere, George Orwell is rolling over in his grave.