Some Truths About Guantanamo BayLawrence Wilkerson, in The Washington Note: There are several dimensions to the debate over the US prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the media have largely missed, and, thus of which the American people are almost completely unaware...
The first of these is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the US operations there. No meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials as to who we were transporting for detention and interrogation...
The second dimension is that several in the US leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on, and thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released. But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership...
[Another] unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people. This philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance...
But their ultimate cover was that the struggle was war and in war those detained could be kept for the duration. And this war, by their own pronouncements, had no end. For political purposes, they knew it certainly had no end within their allotted four to eight years. Moreover, its not having an end, properly exploited, would help ensure their eight rather than four years in office...
It has never come to my attention in any persuasive way that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed [by] intelligence and law enforcement.
