WikiLeaks Releases Guantanamo Prisoner Files 426
HungryHobo writes with news that WikiLeaks has started to release a collection of 779 files involving the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
"The details for every detainee will be released daily over the coming month. ... In thousands of pages of documents dating from 2002 to 2008 and never seen before by members of the public or the media, the cases of the majority of the prisoners held at Guantánamo — 758 out of 779 in total — are described in detail in memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida. These memoranda, which contain JTF-GTMO's recommendations about whether the prisoners in question should continue to be held, or should be released (transferred to their home governments, or to other governments) contain a wealth of important and previously undisclosed information, including health assessments, for example, and, in the cases of the majority of the 171 prisoners who are still held, photos (mostly for the first time ever)."
Reader rrayst notes that according to one such document, if you use a Casio F-91W wristwatch, you might be a member of al-Qaida.
Re:If You See Suspicious Activity (Score:5, Insightful)
Patriotism, the last refuge of the fucking moron.
GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the trash can next to habeus corpus and the presumption of innocence.
Re:Infected with moles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
Awaiting congress to overturn the line in the last defense spending bill which prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US courts system. Of course, even without that, all of the evidence against the key detainees is irrevocably tainted by torture and other factors.
Re:Hey Obama, remember you promised to close Gitmo (Score:5, Insightful)
...because if we aren't willing to take the innocent ones, why should they?
Because they are citizens of those countries. We try to give them BACK, first.
Yes, it is his fault because he made a big deal about this during the campaign. He was either too IGNORANT of the process, or just didn't care and was saying anything to get elected.
My vote is "both".
Of course, this is no different than 99% of other politicians.
Re:Infected with moles (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I think we are all very clear on that. You think that there are good reasons for ignoring the Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights, I don't. Ignoring the Constitution is about as unpatriotic as it is possible to be.
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, even without that, all of the evidence against the key detainees is irrevocably tainted by torture and other factors.
BINGO Afaict there is no way to give these detainees a fair and effective trial. So the choice essentially comes down to either releasing them, convicting them in a show trial or continuing to detain them without trial. None of which are very attractive options.
There is also the side problem that even if they weren't enemies of the USA to begin with they are very likely to have become enemies of the USA after experiancing gitmo.
Re:Hey Obama, remember you promised to close Gitmo (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is his fault.
The whole point is not just to put these guys in another prison: If they're guilty of nothing, as they are in many cases, then the correct thing to do is to say "You're free to go. If you want, we'll set up travel arrangements back to your home. Please accept our humblest apologies, and $X for some reparations for what we put you through for no reason whatsoever. If you were tortured, we would like your help putting your torturers behind bars."
About the only piece of this that Barack Obama as president couldn't do without authorization from Congress is the reparations. Presidents can pardon people, they can tell the military to move somebody from point A to point B, he can definitely apologize to people, and he can direct his Attorney General to investigate possible war crimes.
Re:Casio F-91W wristwatch (Score:5, Insightful)
By that logic:
"The skin pigmentation was known to be consistent to the students at an al-Qaida bomb-making training course in Afghanistan."
"Approximately 3/4 of the JTF-GTMO detainees that were captured being brown have known connections to explosives, either having attended explosives training, having an association with a facility where IEDs were made or where explosives training was given, or having association with a person identified as an explosives expert"
"More than 50 detainees appear to be brown. The skin pigmentation of 32 detainees appear to be "Mexicanish", while a further 20 appear to be "Almost Italian".
Not silly at all.... Except there are a whole hell of a lot of brown people. And equally a whole hell of a lot of people with these watches. Hell It looks to be very similar to the first watch I ever got around when I was 10. Not to mention if I started making decisions on 33% accuracy, I'd get fired.
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bullshit excuse. The President is sworn to uphold the constitution. When Congress passes an unconstitutional law, the President has to challenge it. Obama has done no such thing.
Also, there are other ways to close Guantanamo. He's forbidden from using budgeted funds to close Guantanamo. So, lets have a bake sale. If Obama asked for donations to go towards closing Guantanamo I'd gladly pony up $100. I bet there are a few tens of thousands of freedom loving Americans who would do the same. But Obama hasn't tried anything, so it's hard to look at this as anything but an excuse.
Also, it's worth pointing out that Obama's Justice Department hasn't indicted anyone for torture. Not one. He can't blame that on Congress. Obama condones torture.
In every way shape and form Obama has failed to deliver on his promises of change. He has no one to blame for this but himself.
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
What?
You let them go. Plain and simple, if you have no admissible evidence that is the rule. There is no choice involved.
As to your side problem, maybe someone should have thought of that before kidnapping and torturing them?
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ha, that's pretty optimistic. Obama would take the money and Guantanamo would remain open because of some other reason.
Re:Infected with moles (Score:5, Insightful)
While I understand that you would like us to believe it is "real simple," it is not. Not everyone in Gitmo was captured in combat. Many were taken from their own homes, turned in by neighbors with a grudge for a cash reward. An American citizen was detained in Gitmo. The people in Gitmo are not POWs. If they were, we would be breaking the Geneva Convention, we have agreed not to treat POWs that way. Even prisoners of war have the right to a trial.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Infected with moles (Score:5, Insightful)
How do we know anyone in Gitmo is actually a member of Al Queda? It sure as hell isn't based on evidence, so I'm guessing it is wishful thinking.
Here's the thing, you can keep bringing up points like this, saying, "But what about blah blah bah?" And I will keep saying the same thing, "How do we KNOW blah blah blah?" Without a trial, we don't. Like I said, most of these guys were not caught in the act, so how do we know they did anything wrong? Wishful thinking. We wish that they did something wrong, because if they didn't, then we are just as evil as the people we are fighting. That is why there are innocents in Gitmo.
What would you say to someone like the fellow who was held in Gitmo his entire adult life based on a mistaken identity? "Ooops, sorry, but you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet." How is that any different from saying, "You've got to blow up a few world trade centers to throw off American Imperialism?" When you throw out the rule of law, you leave yourself open to others throwing out the rule of law, too. You have no moral high ground to stand on to justify your actions, and you are no better than your worst enemies.
Re:Casio F-91W wristwatch (Score:4, Insightful)
The silliness enters the picture when you consider how many non-terrorists own such watches, not when you just look at all the suspected or actual terrorists who do.
How many people running around Afghanistan wear digital watches, much less this particular model? If it's very common in the region, I would agree. But I honestly don't know.
I remember seeing these in many stores in The Netherlands in the '90s. Owned one myself. In many ways it's a better watch than the fancy Swiss one I've got now. Very reliable, user-friendly, incredibly long battery life (people report 8+ years; I know I never had to change the battery in mine), and dirt cheap to boot ($8 on the web). I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's still popular in places like Afghanistan. If it wasn't so ugly I'd still be wearing mine.
Re:If You See Suspicious Activity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GITMO still open? (Score:5, Insightful)
As unattractive as those options are, only one of them is legal. Part of having a constitutional government with elected leaders is that the law supersedes anyone's desires to the contrary. If the founders had wanted the president to have the powers of royalty they would have written them in. Or left room for them. This is explicitly not the case. What else can we call detaining people in an extralegal prison based purely on the say-so of the President or forces under his command? This is one branch of government playing the role of two branches, and violates the checks and balances fundamental to the system. As another poster points out, the military base at Guantanamo Bay is not part of the criminal justice system.
And You Know, The Funny Thing Here (Score:4, Insightful)
So anywhoo some of those guys at Gitmo might be terrorist assholes. Hell most of them might be, but they've held some completely innocent people there for years too, and that is not how we operate. Well, except that it is, apparently. And we're supposed to be setting an example for the rest of the world? And there's anyone in Congress or the White House, who have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, who will express even a shred of remorse about this? Anyone in the military, since those guys swore a similar oath? Perhaps we could get a copy of this secret constitution you fuckers are working off, so we can know what we can expect in the future.
Re:I am currently a terrorism suspect (no joke) (Score:4, Insightful)
I really do sympathize with you, but I hope that you can sympathize with others too.
I think that what happened was the guy tried to tell it like it was, but his memory got the better of him. A couple of books, "The Tipping Point" and "The Invisible Gorilla", clearly document this. In the first book, if I recall correctly, a "Chinese American" prof went on a day tour or something like that, during a holiday. He carried a brochure, and people thought that he was a Japanese spy carrying a camera. It seems so paranoid from our perspective, but this took place during WW II, so it is somewhat paranoid, but being caught off guard at Pearl Harbour, I wouldn't judge Americans for their misconceptions. In the second book, 1 of the authors was convinced that he clearly remembered his experiences on 9/11, but when he called in 2 friends to discuss those details, none of them completely agreed on significant details. The authors of the latter book give examples of people saying things to others, while others make claims that things were said to the people.
Something like this even happened to me yesterday. I wanted to ask this lady where she got her books that she was selling on the streets. I thought that she would be interested in selling a book that I wrote, but she acted angry and defensive. She basically wanted to know why she should participate in any surveys or anything like that. Even though I explained my request to her, she just couldn't understand my words. I think the thing that threw her off was my clipboard and pen. I sympathized with her, because I actually was conducting surveys, but not of her. In other words, I wasn't trying to survey her. I just happened to see her in between my questioning, and my questioning was completely unrelated.
I think that we need to remember that people can absorb information at certain speeds, and some are slower. It makes sense that he probably only heard enough words to get the impression that you would photograph the oil stuff. Or maybe it was like I initially said, and he just had a bad memory, but didn't realize it.
Regarding what he first said, he might have thought that he did first say that.
Remember that when people forget things, they don't just forget things, they actually fill in the blanks, without even knowing it.
Re:If You See Suspicious Activity (Score:4, Insightful)
While it's great to love the ideals that are in stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, you have to keep in mind the reality and how well it matches. For instance legalized slavery for nearly 100 years after Independence, and institutionalized racism for much longer. The USA has done a lot of nasty brutal things in the last 100 years in Central and South America and in the Middle East and a lot of the problems it faces now are blowback for those actions.
It certainly isn't the only developed country with that problem of course. But it's kind of like falling in love with your ideal of an airbrushed woman (or man) in a magazine and asking them to marry you, not realizing that they are a chain smoking, philandering, alcoholic. Now, they may be one of the best available chain smoking, philandering, alcoholics, but...