Gitmo: Where's the evidence? Cases prove impossible to prosecute
This latest story on Gitmo is just staggering:
A former military prosecutor said in a declaration filed in federal court yesterday that the system of handling evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay is so chaotic that it is impossible to prepare a fair and successful prosecution.
Vandeveld, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the lead prosecutor against Jawad until he asked to be relieved of his duties last year, citing a crisis of conscience. He said the case has been riddled with problems, including alleged physical and psychological abuse of Jawad by Afghan police and the U.S. military, as well as reliance on evidence that was later found to be missing, false or unreliable.
Do you want more incompetence?
He said the evidence was scattered throughout databases, in desk drawers, in vaguely labeled containers or "simply piled on the tops of desks" of departed prosecutors.
"I further discovered that most physical evidence that had been collected had either disappeared" or had been stored in unknown locations, he said.
Here is what I don’t understand: Why is this repeatedly framed as a problem for Obama, when this really is evidence that the Bush administration accomplished NOTHING with Guantanamo? This is not a problem for Obama. This is proof that the last administration was a group of incompetent hacks. Bush decided that he had the right to detain people forever, do whatever he wanted to them, and they had no rights whatsoever, he ruined our international reputation and most likely violated dozens of laws, yet he let these allegedly dangerous people go. Why? What was the purpose of Gitmo, anyway? Why do all this stuff and STILL let the dangerous guys go free?
Sounds a lot like my tax records.
But you know the IRS would prosecute my ass.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
these guys have been held long past their "try-by'" date.
me-oww!
You want to date them?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Gitmo is a disgrace, and contrary to the right wingers desire to simply shoot these people- I think they should get a fair trial- AND NOT IN THE US. The US has already judged these people guilty.
I say have a trial in Europe.
that many, possibly most, of the people in Gitmo are innocent. They got swept up in the fervor that came with our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They were either in the wrong place at the wrong time or the victim of some a*Hole who sold them out for a few $$.
Is this Iraq mess really a war? Or was that a convenient term when Bush wanted to spend and bomb and play political games? If this is a war, those involved in mishandling their duties at Guantanamo must be guilty of some malfeasance related to war- handling, prosecution, protecting the country from the enemy? Again, no responsibility, no accountability. Surely massive criminal behavior if there is no case file to accompany imprisonment of 'enemy combatants'. Remember,.." you're either with us or against". Those guilty of these human abuses are against us. Let the trials begin.
is what the Obama administration is afraid of. I.e., someone from Guantanamo who will be released and will end up allegedly involved in some terrorist plot and then become the poster boy for Sarah Palin or whoever challenges Obama in 2012.
Nobody who understands why and how Gitmo was created believes any of the prisoners are a threat. These are people who were sold to us so we could create a state of fear. We, the tax payers, paid money to people in dozens of countries to conduct a witch hunt so we could have physical bodies to support the lies of the War on Terror.
When you pay people to point fingers, you get as many people as there are fingers to pay for.
I'm in total agreement with you about the reality of Gitmo. My point is that some guy will get released and the right wing spin machine will manufacture some story about how he had the intention to do some heinous terrorist attack or actually participated in one. It will almost certainly be a complete lie or blown way out of proportion but since when has that mattered? Keep in mind John Kerry lost partly because the draft dodger smeared the war hero as anti-american. I'm just pointing out what Obama's team has to worry about.
The purpose of Gitmo (and the "extraordinary renditions" and other "black sites") was to obscure the identities and activities of the real perpetrators of 9-11.
Obviously.
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
Why are they blaming it on a CIA operative?
:
Some stuff you can't make up!
You'll notice that no one in Washington is talking about an investigation into 9/11 that includes subpoena and prosecution power. It's as if there are no questions about the official story at all.
Hey, they blamed Saddam Hussein for the gassing at Halabja, the one crime he couldn't have been guilty of, and the US government and media still lie about Ahmedinejad's words regarding Israel. Why be surprised?
(..............)"........was to obscure the identies and activities of the real perpetrators of 9-11.
"Obviously."
You nailed it. Now that would be a statement to send to Olbermann or Maddow. Those in Congress - except perhaps Rep. Kucinich - would never pay any attention to it.
I don't believe they ever intended to prosecute, just persecute.
And use them as a bogeyman that ever good American must fear, fear, FEAR!
yep!
Some stuff you can't make up!
That was my thought, too. They never intended to bring these prisoners to trial so didn't maintain the required records. Of course, if they had, the torture would have been documented, and THAT would also have precluded any trials. It was apparently a place where sadists got their rocks off by torturing people, and they should all be tried and jailed for life, along with the Bush administration.
Obama's only choice now is to apologize to them all and either send them home or to a host country willing to take them.
Speedy and open trials would've exposed these cases as frauds. They needed to delay as long as possible in order to scare us.
Dec. 1: A former Special Ops interrogator wrote a chilling editorial in the Washington Post Friday, claiming that the "number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on September 11, 2001." Countdown's Keith Olbermann explains why the torture situation at Guantanamo Bay needs to be dealt with immediately.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/280056...
WELL, WE DO HAVE PROOF OF SOMETHING, ANYWAY.
Some stuff you can't make up!
We've known this since the 1960s. The CIA knew it. The Army knew it. The guy involved in studying it graduated from West Point in the 1920s, retired in the 1970s.
In the Nixon-Kennedy years, Rumsfeld was at the briefing level that would have known. By the dubya years, both Rumsfeld and Cheney could have gotten the info, and either chose to not ask, or actively ignored it.
I know it, since the guy that ran our internal programs also put a gun in my hands at age seven and taught me to shoot. I'm from a military family that hunts, this was normal. When the kick knocked me on my butt he howled at me, then showed me how to do it right. He had a dual commission as a Col. in the Army, and was serious about troop's lives. He was teaching me since he knew my dead father would have wanted that. I know the cost in troops' lives on acting on bad intelligence would have been in his reports. He knew testifying before the Church commission would kill him (bad health, age, no tin foil hats) but did it anyway to ensure his memos would come out. He then died within weeks.
I get really mad on this topic, since, yes .. its personal. How can we repeat the well documented mistakes of the past?
against any talk of 'criminal proceedings' (as in the proceedings are criminal) it just struck me -- there's all this talk of wasting time and money and resources on these guys our government kidnapped and tortured, and at the exact same time, in the same breath, all this weenie-arsed hand wringing over the POSSIBLE divisiveness trying the REAL criminals in this tragedy, CheneyBushCo. And what a waste of resources it be.
Fuck me, I thought we'd been voted out of Bizzaro World.
me-oww!
we still have the same, booshluvin media to contend with. they still are loyal inhabitants. they only come out to spew propaganda.
Some stuff you can't make up!
You know where all of the "evidence" is against the Gitmo detainees.....it's in White House emails back and forth..emails which were part of the millions that have been "lost."
and the juiciest evidence is in those boxes which Cheney spirited away. You know, all those great videos and such.
all hat no cattle, lots of sizzle no steak, plenty of bent metal, no accident, put that terrist over there, the AP will be here soon, we need better lighting for this photo op, "give me something for the evening news"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2PxAIAI1QQ
Oh Snap! We should have known BushCo and Cheney were gonna screw US over. We should have known the things they did were wrong. We should have known they would be harmful to all of US for generations to come... Oh wait, we did. It was the MSM that never figured that out. What to do with the MSM...
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
When are people going to realize that. The supposed hijackers worked, lived, and trained on U.S. military bases. The CIA was paying people in Afghanistan to turn in suspected terrorists for transport to Guantanamo etc. It was bribery. People just turned in their enemies for the money. This is so stupid. Our media is incompetent.
Research this shit on the web. These people are most likely innocent and never posed a real threat to the U.S. The real threat was from whoever left our eastern seaboard unprotected the day of 9/11 and was in control of NORAD that day.
Look further into the story for the truth. This is a damn ruse.
why if memory serves me DICK CHEANY was the gate keeper on 911! oh no! it really was an inside job!
It doesn't help when after eight years of him you misspell Cheney's name.
[I think tyree does that as a sign of disrespect. You knew who he was talking about, didn't you? Sitemonitor]
A ruse by any other name...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
‘Go find me a way to do this,’ GWB Jan 2001… And They Want to investigate, What? Wiretapping?
“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’” says Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. … And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/%E...
The corporate owned media may dribble out facts little by little in attempt to keep the masses pacified, but we know they aren't going to do the job necessary to keep our country informed. So that leaves it up to blogs like this to courageously report all the dirt and facts and do the muckraking few others are inclined to do regarding this disaster we find ourselves in. Here's to hoping this blog and others are up to the task.
Connect the dots.
Now this is the kinda screw-up that Obama could investigate (What happened to all the evidence regarding the Gitmo detainees?) that starting out is far enough away from Bush, and with enough of a 'protect america' theme so that repubs won't go ape-shit over, that could eventually lead to Bush.
Nice to hear too. I hope this works out. Calling Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, and any other politicians and journalists with the balls to begin.
I'll believe he'll actually do something when I see it. Remember, he was the guy who couldn't quite find the energy to enforce subpoenas of various Bushco criminals. I think he's the Arlen Specter of the House: All talk, no action.
Hey Wolf, this is a great story. I know you'll stay on it!
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Harriet Meirs had been confirmed.
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
One assumes that was not the top priority of the Bush regime.
IMO, the Gitmo detainees were never really meant to be anything but political props and pawns that Bush & company could use and point to as *scary terrorists.* Calling them "the worst of the worst" was just a handy, lowest-common-dominator way to shut down debate. Lookee here America, we're lockin' em up and throwin' away the key! We're bold and resolute.
Bush always excelled at keeping the debate keyed to the most simple-minded cliches. His "gut" told him to just go for it in Iraq. And anyone who disagreed was a terrist-lover.
The Rovian calculation was that Bushco would be long gone before the FUBAR legal consequences would have to be faced (by Obama).
Looks like we should be paying millions in restitution. Our War of Terror has killed more people than any terrorist organization could ever dream of. Ok, we proved we are the world's biggest terror state. Can we please stop the War of Terror and get back to fixing what is wrong with America?
fudge.
NOBODY 2012
and the CIA black ops sites: to normalize torture. Torture is now debatable, and if it's debatable, it's acceptable. The most powerful people in the US don't want to prosecute people for torture and murder; they want them to go free, with no consequences for their actions. Torture is now acceptable in the U.S. That's quite an accomplishment by Bushco.
!
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common sense matters as much as truth
(.........)"Or was that a convenient term when Bush wanted to spend and bomb and play political games?"(............)
you mean, when Bush wanted to use the political capital his daddy wouldn't after Gulf War 1?
is that the asshole who previously inhabited the White House left him a burning bag of shit on the porch. Now that these people have been taken, many of the countries that they were taken from don't want them back. Now we have to sort out those that actually did something from those to which we owe reparations. We also need to sort out those with admissable evidence, versus those that don't. It's a burning bag of shit, all right.
which were always, somehow, hated as much as the axxissssssss of eeeeeeeeeeviiiiiiil, would not want to take back anyone that has been brainwashed and mindphucKKKed by the US.
If someone from brantlandia were renditioned and reconditioned, would YOU take them back?
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
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