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Guantanamo: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

By possum

Andy Worthington is always a worthy read at his website but this week at least one of his postings is superlative.  Read the whole article.  

Worthington begins with reminders of Obama's January 22 signing of a Presidential order closing Guantanamo within a year.  The process of detainee review is to be led by the Justice Department under the auspices of the new Attorney General, Eric Holder.  More bits and pieces follow over the fold.
In his acceptance speech Holder said:

I call on every employee of this Department - from this moment on - to return to the practices that are the foundation of this entity. It is time once again to base our actions on policies that are rooted in fairness and in a desire to ensure a more just America.

Change is in the wind.

As we have already heard from Lt. Col Vandeveld, former prosecutor in the Military COmmissions

the evidence, such as it was, remained scattered throughout an incomprehensible labyrinth of databases ... or strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks vacated by prosecutors who had departed the Commissions for other assignments. I further discovered that most physical evidence that had been collected had either disappeared or had been stored in locations that no one with any tenure at, or institutional knowledge of, the Commissions could identify with any degree of specificity or certainty.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of US intelligence, who worked in 2004-05 on the tribunals at Guant?namo, went even further in damning the Bush administration process of evidence collection saying

because the body responsible for compiling the material - the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants (OARDEC) - was not empowered to demand information from the intelligence agencies, "Most of the information collected ... consisted ... of information obtained during interrogations of other detainees" (and was often produced in circumstances that were not conducive to voluntary confessions). He also pointed out that other material consisted of intelligence "of a generalized nature - often outdated, often 'generic,' rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals' status," and that "what purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence."

Further according to Abraham

The classified evidence was stripped down, watered down, removed of context, incomplete, and missing essential information.

Worthington continues by examining the media statements suggesting the "worst of the worst" are in the ones in detention.  In fact only a few detainees may be a real danger.

Of the 182 other prisoners tarred as terrorists by the official, it has long been established that only between 35 and 50 are regarded by intelligence officials as connected in any meaningful way with al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

Worthington concludes saying

The cause of justice, which has been suspended in Guant?namo for seven long years, is not served by allowing unsubstantiated rumors by former Bush administration officials to disguise the fact that the main reason that the evidence against the prisoners is "in disarray" is not because it is scattered to the four winds, but because it either doesn't exist at all, or because it was extracted from other prisoners under duress, or because it serves only to prove that the prisoners in question had traveled to Afghanistan to help the Taliban fight the Northern Alliance in a long-running civil war that, in most cases, had nothing whatsoever to do with al-Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks, or any other form of terrorist activity.

What more need be said?

Peace.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).