Posted on 04/09/2010 6:01:07 AM PDT by autumnraine
The Bush White House knew that hundreds of early Gitmo detainees were innocent, but refused to release them because the admission would weaken support for the war in Iraq, according to a new document obtained by the Times of London. The charge, by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, was made in a declaration in support of a lawsuit for a Gitmo detainee. Wilkerson claims that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees had been picked up, not by the US military, but by Afghans and Pakistanis for a bounty, and there was no evidence against them. But they saw it as "politically impossible to release them."
If innocent detainees were released, he writes, “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were.” Of Cheney, he writes: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent. If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.” Wilkerson also says he discussed the issue with Powell, who told him it was not just Cheney and Rumsfeld, "but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”
They only celebrated because we were arrogant; The One told me so.
I guess all those Nazi’s the French underground picked up and turned over to Americans as POW’s were wrongly detained also since there was zero evidence on them plus they were rewarded for turning over prisoners.
Heck, those wily French underground commanders could have just picked up any German and told him to put a Nazi uniform on or be shot.....
“Minority Report” - We just captured them BEFORE they had time to become guilty. Yeah, that’s the ticket...
Does not sound at all in character with George Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge or other honorable men we used to have in office or
I call BS on this one. And yes, the Colin Powell staff connection is not impressive.
Wilkerson is at least 3 levels away from the vice president. There is no way he knew what Cheney did or did not know. When I was in a large organization, the guy 3 levels above me hardly knew my name, let alone have frequent conversations with me. There was no way I would have known what his thoughts, unless the entire organization knew it.
A reality check here shows Wilkerson is nuts.
Bingo.
I never did trust Colon Bowel!
A comment from the original cited article, conveniently left out by Newser:
“A former associate to Mr Rumsfeld said that Mr Wilkerson’s assertions were completely untrue.”
Gitmo is not a penal institution but a detention facility. This means it's a place to put people until a matter is sorted out, and if someone is turned in for a bounty in a war zone that's pretty decent reason to detain them.
BTW, there are innocent people -- U.S. citizens no less -- who are detained every year in jails in every county in this country.
It took several years of discussiosn and legal explorations and twisting to even deternmione whether these guys (and who among them) had rights under the Geneva Convention, since they were not identifiable military members in uniform fighting for a nation at war in a declared war
minor points (sarc)
you could have left out your left paragraph, not that it’s untrue but it looks like a lame excuse.
Waiting......
The absurdity of this allegation is beyond clueless. HOW exactly would Cheney or anyone else KNOW that the suspected terrorist were in fact, "innocent?"
LAST paragraph
It did become known later that a goodly number were not directly captured but were seized for a bounty. While it would be expected that the high-ups knew from the start HOW the captures were made, these folks are going on to hold that kind of capture as synonymous with known to be innocent.
This man has a head full of conspiracy theories about “neocons” and the “Bush Administration”. He’s unethical and opens his mouth only when he believes it will enhance his standing. This is nothing new.
It’s reality. If you are going to bitch about detaining innocent people at Gitmo you may as well bitch at the county sheriff as well.
There are agencies that do this. Your implication that the critics are inactive in this matter are far off the mark.
If you capture people on the battlefield they are POWs. And yes it does accommodate non-State actors.
I agree, Bush needlessly mulled it around, mashed it up, and it came out almost meaningless. He should have just stated it’s a war, and these are POWs.
It’s only in hindsight you figure out how bad Bush was.
Wilkerson has a history of this. He just found a new place to dump his same old lies.
As the democrats would say “this is old news”.
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