“The Worst of the Not-So-Bad” 0
The McClatchy report lives up to its billing.
The cynical among us might argue that one of the reasons the Current Federal Administration has been so adamant about denying any rights to the folks at Gitmo is that doing so would provide even more confirmation of its failure to get anything right.
Harry Shearer today observed that he thought that, in the United States, persons had rights which the government had to observe; that rights were not something granted on a whim by the king (whoops, my word, not his government.
From McClatchy:
McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.
This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.
The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.
Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.
