the bush admin knowingly held innocent people in gitmo...what should happen?
 

George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent' - Times Online

this is curious: there's a way in which nothing in this article surprises me, but at the same time it's a confirmation of some of my more cynical assumptions about the bush people and the process of manufacturing their "war on terror" figleaf to cover colonial occupation of iraq brought to you courtesy of the project for a new american century.

that this has not as yet been picked up by the american press is at once outrageous and not at all surprising, given the nature of the american "Free" press and it's aversion to excessively critical information unless that information comes from the right. there is something deeply deeply wrong with the information context in the united states and as a function of that something deeply deeply wrong with the functioning of the entire political apparatus.

it seems to me clear that there needs to be something on the order of the chilcot inquiry--perhaps even a variation with teeth that would result in actual prosecutions--and it seems to me that such an inquiry would be supported by people across the political spectrum in the interest of maintaining something of the legitimacy of the american system as a whole. because i think the bush administration damaged something quite fundamental about the american arrangement. and i think pretending it's not there, which seems to be the present administration's plan, is not enough.

what do you make of the article?
the claim that at the highest level of the bush administration it was known that innocent people were being held at guantanomo bay from the start. they were held there in the interest of continuity in the fabrication (and i use this word in all its senses) of the "war on terror."
how is this not criminal?
how is launching a war on false pretenses not a criminal action? (i still can't get my head around this one...)

what do you think should happen more broadly?
do you support a kind of inquiry or other legal action into the bush administration's iraq debacle?

personally i think such an action would benefit the united states immeasurably and would go some distance in reversing the international-scale damage the bush people left behind (we can talk about the collapse of empire if you like)...

but what do you think?

Well, I read this earlier this morning. And when I realized how relatively untouched it was in the American media, I was too flabbergasted; otherwise, I would have made a thread about this before you did.

It was too "politically dangerous" to release the innocent, and so they kept them in a place that conducted what is arguably the highest violation of human rights on American territory in recent history.

Perhaps a part of me wanted it to be merely unfounded allegations, or maybe a hoax, or maybe, if anything, it would "blow open" in the American media later in the day. I don't know.

What I do know is that, assuming it is true, this is the last straw. We have this much evidence of wrongdoing (I really should say "criminal actions"), and this is something I think the international community should take seriously, how can we not now pursue justice?

More so now than ever, I hope that the key players in the Bush administration are forced to stand trial. The total sum of their alleged crimes are such that if they go unpunished it will greatly undermine America's moral, political, and military integrity.

Are there no real checks and balances in American power?

This will most likely be my only post in this thread:

Having no immediate knowledge of this person or his career, at this point, it is one man's claim. Without supporting emails (and there would have to be at least one), without any other people willing to say they were in the same room and heard the same things, without any dates, other participants in the room, ....in short, I'm not dismissing this. I just need more than one man's claim to indict the administration. I'm perfectly willing to, no one is above the law, but at this point I'm going to need more than this article.

you obviously haven't been paying attention.

this may help:

FRONTLINE: bush's war | PBS

roach, though I agree with you and I think the video is a good source, it really doesn't answer to Cimarron's very reasonable objection that we know very little about "Lawrence Wilkerson" and his credibility or lack thereof. I hadn't heard of him until now.

o---well, the reason i put the link up was came from two elements in the post: first that it was wilkerson alone who raises irregularities concerning the bush administration's actions in the contexts of the "war on terror" and invasion of iraq. the frontline piece is a pretty effective demolition of the case for war and makes it pretty clear what the lines of power/influence/decision within the administration.

second, i am at this point agnostic about some aspects of this article, but wilkerson is not a new figure. he's among the former bush administration functionaries who turned against the "war on terror"/invasion of iraq shell games publicly. to wit:

CNN.com - Former aide:omgPowellomgWMD speechomg'lowest point in my life' - Aug 19, 2005

this particular document, which is at the heart of the article, comes

"(...) in support of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantánamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007. Mr Hamad claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damages action against a list of American officials."

at this point all i can find about the case online are echoes of this times piece.

where these two points converge is:

i think it's disengenuous to act as though this is the first serious allegation of potentially criminal wrong-doing by the bush administration around the war in iraq.
**but**
it's possible that cimmaron simply missed the controversy. whence the frontline doc, which is a good primer.

if you know about the broader range of allegations/realities manipulated by the bush administration, this latest is still surprising (i think) but certainly not out of left field. wilkerson is easily identified for who he was (an aide to colin powell); powell's position in the iraq war fiasco is well-documented in the frontline special; the cnn link speaks to the humilitation that was powell's speech at the un...

i'm interested in seeing more of wilkerson's affadavit.

but that doesn't change the question at the source of the thread:
i think that there really should be **Some** kind of formal inquiry into/prosecution of the bush administration for the war in iraq.
i think alot of folk feel the same way.

but is there a tipping point in terms of information that would make undertaking such an inquiry more important than the maintaining of this pollyanna nothing-to-see-here-folks and we're-looking-forward posture that the obama administration has adopted?

rb, what I am saying is that he is making claims that he has intimate knowledge, distinct public admissions that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld knew that specific individuals held had not committed attacks against the US and that they ordered those individuals to remain captive, in spite of that knowledge.

That is a new claim to me. One I have never heard before and it should easily be able to be corroborated with multiple sources. The times piece makes no attempt to pull evidence from any other place other than Wilkerson's mouth. It is practically a single source piece. What's more, rather than linking to the "obtained document" so we can read it ourselves, they cherry-picked from it for the article in a "trust us, it's there" sort of way. It's completely nonsensical not to link to the document and let us read the context. Unless, of course, there's other stuff in there that contradicts the story you are trying to write...

You have even stated yourself that you can find no other source for the case other than this times piece. So, until I get more - I'll retain my wait and see approach.

As for the other stuff, I am well aware of the many sides of suspicion leading up to the Iraq campaign. That has little to do with whether this guy in this story is a bonafide whistle blowing patriot or a "golly, I wish I was still relevant" loon.

Here is what we should do.

1) Round up everyone in the Bush administration (starting with Bush and Cheney).
2) Throw them into a secret prison.
3) Deny them access to lawyers and representation
4) Use enhanced interrogation techniques until they admit thier guilt or prove their innocence.

What we really need to do is kick the democrats out of office and give the Republicans majorities in congress. Unlike the Democrats, they believe in justice and the rule of law and will get this situation taken care of.

Ok, not really.

This just makes me sad. :-(

considering that the obama administration has argued in federal court that there is no constitutional right to not be framed by the federal government, what can you do? apparently, imprisoning totally innocent individuals is not a crime when done by the government. so much for that 'equal protection' crap.

That's one of the saddest things about this whole business - Obama went from a 'look forward, not backwards' approach, which I wasn't very happy with, to explicitly agreeing with and defending many of the Bush administration's tactics.

Glenn Greenwald is (or at least was) a good writer on this and related subjects. I stopped reading his blog about 6 months ago, when it became too depressing.

What bothers me most about this is the general apathy of the American population to this squandering of their accumulated moral capital. As a supposed bastion of justice and human rights, this should be sending shock waves through the US, led by the American media. That it does not is a reflection of America's insular society and its inability to truly understand the global situation. As the only current superpower, the US government feels itself above reproach for its actions, and cannot conceive that it is losing the moral high ground on all fronts.

And it is sadder still that the Americans who do realise this, and care about it, and would like to change things, are heard only by those countrymen who already agree with them, and cannot raise any real outrage at what is being done to them through guilt by citizenship.

This is absolutely true. The apathy of Americans when it comes to acknowledging the ugly side of 'what we do' is as much a tragedy as the actual crimes we've committed. You know, when I was in my teens and early 20s I believed that if people really knew what we'd been up to - at that time it was School of Americas, Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada, etc. - that there would be such an outpouring of anger and demand for cessation of all unjust meddling and warmaking, that the entire country would come to a standstill. Yep, I was a real starry-eyed fool.

What I find most perplexing is the idea many seem to have that, since "America" is a bastion of morality and justice, that anything we do is de facto both moral and just. There is a certain beauty in the cerebral contortions Americans can exhibit in justifying our actions when those actions are clearly immoral and unjust.

The American media, over the past couple decades, has devolved into an electronic version of People magazine. When I say media, I refer only to the portion of the media that still considers itself journalistic, as by now most have forgone that journalism in favor of an "analytical commentary" style that is about as analytical as the 20-Minute Workout.

Covering a story like this would require them to abandon the between-advertisement time-filler format they've adopted. I can't imagine that happening anytime soon.

How many lives of the innocent have been ruined or destroyed by upholding American "justice" and "freedom"? How hollow those words are now today.

But the ends justify the means, right?

Right...?

It has gone on before and will go on after we're worm food.

At least those in power aren't in power for a lifetime.

But power is no longer concentrated so much in individuals. I think that's part of the problem.

Can't have it both ways... the responsibility is dispersed among many.

I see this problem with groups. No one is responsible, it's Kitty Genovese on a massive scale.

Do you mean to say the responsibility is dispersed among the "no longer in office"?

no, it's not just those folks but to the entire organization.

Really? Do you not see the irony in this statement? I'm sorry but I have to call you out on this. Every policy I have ever seen you support has concentrated power in the government and away from individuals. Now, because that government misuses the power you so willingly handed them (well, not you because you are not an American, but would have done it had you been one) you bemoan that the power is no longer in the individual?

I'll spend my day trying to wrap my brain around this one...

this libertarian stuff gets old fast. no matter the issue, it's always the same silly binary between "the individual" and "society" or "government" or "the collective" as if john locke was not writing speculative fiction in the second treatise on government and was instead offering a coherent view of the origins of the social as a voluntary association of "individuals" who otherwise have no relations one to the other except mysteriously enough they are able to communicate and that means they use that collective dimensioning (*gasp*!) of experience that is language.
which must be in libertarianville like it was for william s burroughs, a virus from outer space.

enough. this loopy ayn rand stuff lets you say nothing---at all---about the actual topic of this thread, which concerns yet another bit of information that's surfaced concerning the extent of the bush administration's flaunting of law under the cover of the "war on terror"

which is not a matter of any general opposition between "the individual" and anything else, but rather a matter of a particular (conservative) administration undertaking a particular (conservative) view of foreign and domestic policy based on a particularly expansive (conservative) view of executive power which was enabled by that favorite of fascist and neo-fascist regimes (conservative) the world round, the state of emergency packaged for your pleasure as "the war on terror."

and it's about consequences for these political choices, whether there are or should be or will be any for the people inside that administration who were responsible for these choices.

which means its about the question of whether the american political system can self-correct as the edifice it's a part of continues its sliding away from being an imperial power thanks in large part to the consequences of the bush administration's (conservative) actions.

but i can sure see the appeal of trying to divert the thread into yet another rehashing of some ayn rand binary.

you can of course always start your own ayn rand threads in which important ayn rand-y topics are debated by people who can find it within themselves for whatever reason to take them seriously.

Where power is concerned, we cannot so easily pin responsibility on the level of the individual. This is because power isn't concentrated in individuals so much as in groups or organizations, both political and nonpartisan.

Yes, I believe in a strong central government, but I also believe in a certain level of individual power. Unfortunately individual power is limited, which is why we give power to larger groups. It's an intricate social system that, with hope, will work to ensure the fair treatment of individuals, in addition to ensuring the rights and freedoms of individuals. This is what I mean by power being concentrated more in groups rather than the individual.

If an individual wants to make changes, said individual won't go far on his or her own. This is a reality when working within a society.

My comments referred to the problem of not being able to pin blame or responsibility in cases where it could be said that a group is responsible. Blame Bush? No, blame his administration; blame the Republicans; blame complacent taxpayers. See, you don't get very far.

This is why systems of power require systems of checks and balances to ensure empowered groups are subject to the rule of law. I'm more familiar with the Canadian government system than I am with the American system. You want to know what happens when the shit hits the fan here? Depending on the situation, there is a vote of non-confidence. And when opposing parties/members get enough votes for that? Goodbye government. It gets flushed and we head to the polls to get the public's opinion how the new government should be made up.

We also have several arm's reach bodies that act as watchdogs on the various offices of government. The Members of Parliament can use the information reported therein as material for their proceedings in the House. It's a matter of public record. Even matters that aren't for public record, you can be sure the government is going to be held accountable when it comes to light that the government has done something untoward.

But that's Canada. I don't see this kind of thing happening much in the U.S. Maybe I'm missing something. What recourse does the American public have?

EDIT: And what roachboy said, especially the part about the fiction author/failed philosopher Ayn Rand.

The only thing that gets older faster is the intellibabble of tenured academia! :thumbsup:

But the difference is that one appears in this thread, while the other does not. I suppose it would be like my saying I think Rick-rolling gets old faster as well.

Alrighty then. You guys can sit around in your group-think and continue to pine over the "never going to fucking happen" wet dream of putting Cheney in jail. Rather than responding to my second post (#7), it gets completely ignored in the group-think. In order to engage in the thread, we must accept the "fact" that everything this guy says is absolutely true, since he doesn't like Bush and we don't like Bush.

To your post:

When you push every power up to groups (government), it is inevitable that
a) Like-minded groups will form because those in the groups choose membership (cronyism)
b) The groups will use that power to do what they want rather than it's original intent.
c) (OMG!!!) They will cover for one another when necessary or they will create systems to avoid responsibility and maintain their power.

The only solution is to not give them the power in the first place. Or we could go your route and believe that we are just one more oversight committee away from utopia.

You can have your thread back. No doubt, it will somehow get tied to a failed 18th century uprising of a French farmer, or some shit. Of course, that will be relevant to the thread, rather than discussing how principles in belief systems fashion the government which fails them.

P.S. I've never read a word of Ayn Rand. God's honest truth. Undoubtedly, this fact will somehow be viewed as a character flaw, as well.

I understand where you're coming from, Cimarron, but assuming that the people actually want more power is just as silly as believing that government can somehow 'heal itself.'

Cimarron, I think, if anything, some of us would like some kind of action taken. This is just one of a long line of things that have come to the surface regarding alleged wrongdoings coming out of the GWOT. What's it going to take? Lawrence Wilkerson is just one player. Do you not want to see whether his allegations flesh out? I don't accept what he says as fact at the moment. What I do accept is the idea that it should be investigated.

Do you know the meaning of the word inevitable? Assuming that you do, are you aware that this isn't a blueprint to all manifestations of power and its practice? (Read: you're wrong on this.)

Hmm, so the only solution to your idea of power is anarchy. No, thank you. And "my route" by no means strives for a utopia. I hope it keeps rooted in reality. Still, a utopia is definitely more desirable over your anarchy.

You've done neither here. Unless I missed something...?

cimmaron: you demonstrated my argument.....if i understand you correctly, your point comes down to what the bush administration did around guantanomo is just a version of what any evil bad group in any evil bad state would do.

therefore some kind of bourgeois anarchism.

so there's no particular problem here. nothing to be seen, nothing to be learned, nothing to be done.

one of the many many things that made anarchists more interesting than conservative libertarians is that they worried about the possibility of one or another form of revolution and so were looking at the socio-political world for signs that one or another form of revolution might be about to happen. so they looked at things that happened in places like the state even if their interest was in fashioning ways of thinking about the organization of the social world that would make the state wither away.

personally, as i've said in the thread i think this is an interesting test of the american system capacity for self-correction. so far, the place has fallen down pretty thoroughly.

..

Perhaps roachboy meant to say "American neocolonialism of Iraq." I think this extends past mere occupation, as non-military American entities are involved as well.

Well, considering that the US determines even what seeds Iraqi farmers can use, "colonial" seems to be an accurate word. But that is the subject for another thread.

There is a sad irony in the support of the right for spending $1 trillion (not to mention the thousands of lives lost) to bring democracy and guaranteed Constitutional rights to Iraqi citizens -- the right to work, the right to join trade unions, minimum wage, universal health care, ... -- and oppose those same rights and scream "socialism" when it comes to providing those same rights (through legislation) to many US citizens.

So you're saying the "Right" did all that by themselves!
... and then they had the audacity to scream "socialism"?

Amazing! When did that happen?

Is it on the YouTubes?

Huh?

The neo-con initiated invasion/occupation and the resulting Iraq Constitution, that the US spend a $trillion, spilled blood for, and helped write, provides more rights to Iraqi citizens than US citizens have under our own Constitution.

What part of that dont you understand?

And, yes....the right keeps screaming "socialism".....where have you been for the last year?

My guess is that the U.S. and Iraq see these elements of socialism as a stabilizing force within the fledgling democracy. It's harder to incorporate those things in an already existing and older democracy such as at home in the U.S. It's the change that people are afraid of more than anything, and it's a completely human thing. Most of us fear change.

However, the case of Iraq is different. The change from despot, to anarchy, to democracy, to social democracy, or whatever, I imagine to be a welcome thing. So much extreme change over so short a time, and in a direction that seeks to uphold the rights of all individuals rather than just one.

It's a tough comparison to make.

I understand what you are saying, but I dont think it is that tough.

Basic rights should not be dependent on the age of democratic institutions.

And, yes, part of is fear of change...but much of it is purely political hypocrisy.

Well, on the one side you have the politics (no matter how hypocritical), but on the other side you have public perceptions.

In Iraq, the moves of the government are such that rights and freedoms previously unknown to you are being granted regardless (ostensibly) of your religion, class, education, etc. This is moving away from being in a state of fear that Saddam's guard could steal you or your brother or your father away to have them executed in the dead of night. It was a place where you had few economic liberties, you had few social liberties, you had few cultural liberties, etc.

In America, a shift in policy towards granting more rights and freedoms, policies often viewed as liberal or socialistic, are viewed by a large portion of the population as an assault on liberty and as "taxes are theft" or "taking money out of my pocket to feed society's deadbeats" or "it's not my damn problem" or whatever. And by large, I mean really sizable. How many conservatives are there in the U.S.? And that's just type of group that would take on some of these sentiments.

Also realize that in American politics, even your centrists (Obama included) are viewed internationally as too far to the right. When operating outside of American territory, it's a different game completely.

The US, as a whole, is probably marginally center/right.

The libertarian types, including most of the Tea Party supporters, while vocal and potentially influential, are far from a sizable force.

The hypocrisy is directed more at the more mainstream fiscal conservatives/neo-cons fearing anything involving the government...unless its torturing potential enemies and stepping on other constitutional rights in the name of national security.

more on Iraq irony....its interesting that the Iraq constitution guarantees all those rights....with the exception of a guaranteed right to bear arms (probably makes sense in light of the potential instability of a legally armed populace).

i think that otto was trying to be witty. that seems his m.o.---the vague drive-by that has some snide quip in it which would, were it interesting, call into question the idea that conservatives ever do or have done anything that could be questioned by anyone why it al must be some giant liberal chimera...it's the functional equivalent of "i know you are but what am i?" which seems appropriate given the schoolboy level of the posts.

i remain unclear as to the rationale for not initiating something on the order of chilcot in the united states---perhaps one reason for not doing it is that chilcot operated under the basic question "how was it possible for the blair government to simply follow the united states like that?"
while here, obviously, there's no-one else to blame.

i wonder if the problem is that to take on the bush administration would require taking on its entire conception of executive power which would mean that actions could not be taken as individually problematic but would be positioned in that legal viewpoint. in which case there would be a (**gasp!**) philosophical debate about the acceptable limits of executive power, something that would cut to the heart of the national security state doctrine (which remains in effect, de facto) that legitimates exactly the kind of authoritarian executive deployed by the bush people under the aegis of a state of emergency justified (in the cold war period) by the phantom of someone like stalin.

personally i think it's well past time to dismantle the old national security state. this would be a good way to do it formally...and it would be a final defeat for the neocons.

short of that, the position i think the bush people put the us system in amounts to: if you argue your position on rational-sounding legal grounds, you can do anything, including invade another country on false pretenses, and there are no consequences.

within that, it seems to me that either there are other problems which are actionable:
the iraq war itself.
gitmo on civil liberty violation grounds-->problem with this is that it will run into the same issue because all this stuff was justified by way of a conception of the state of emergency.
that seems to be the problem really...what is a state of emergency inside the us legal system. are there limits to what an administration can do within that context? who decides on those limits?

but right now, there are no limits. there aren't even any checks. and no consequences.

seriously, i do not understand how it is possible that after the bush period that the tea bagger right can be freaked out about an authoritarian presidency. we just had one that in the end found a limit entirely as a function of its own incompetence. for which we have to be almost grateful because it is now clear that the american "checks and balances" do neither in a state of emergency-style situation (terror alert anyone?)