Most Guantanamo Detainees Are Innocent: Ex-Bush Official

[No Elephants]

Source: Associated Press via cbc

Most Guantanamo detainees are innocent: ex-Bush official

Many detainees locked up in Guantanamo Bay were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.

"There are still innocent people there," Republican Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell, told the Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"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," Wilkerson wrote in the blog.



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/03/19/guantanamo-detainee-innocent.html

[acmavm]

1. Only one person deserved to be Gitmoized, and they never caught that

guy.

[Demeter]

2. You Mean Dubya?

[acmavm]

4. Okay, two.

[No Elephants]

3. Along with the guy they never caught, who maybe deceased by now, I would include

Dummy, Dicky, Condi, Rummy, Tenet and a few others. But, they'll never see Gitmo because they don't have Arab or Afghani surnames and therefore certain things would be totally inappropriate, like indiscriminate dragnets, indefinite detention without being charged or having access to counsel or a trial, torture and rendition.

(I hope to heaven no one needs the sarcasm emote for this post.)

[No Elephants]

5. I'll kick this once because, IMO, it is very significant.

[Supersedeas]

9. and the Media doesn't even want to touch it

[Judi Lynn]

10. It's worth kicking a thousand times. People MUST find out about this.

Thanks for the information.

[Jefferson23]

6. K&R, Rumsfeld and his asinine ideas to get the job done, idiots.

All the years they reigned, their accomplishments have been as a recruiter for extremists with the approaches they ordered. Yet the GOP base still does not understand that, as they remain clueless on how horrible and damaging this has been for our country.

[Echo In Light]

7. " innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants" = bullshit

They rounded up a bunch of innocent goat farmers cause it had to somebody/anybody to fulfill the ruse of the phony "war on terror," which only exists in propaganda form.

[No Elephants]

8. Guilty of being Afghani while goat farming in Afghanistan. And here I thought Dummya liked goats!

Democrats have talked about things like this for a long time. However, I think this is the first time a member of Bushco has said such damning things about the arrests and detentions.

[Rusty5329]

11. I'm interested...

In hearing how many of them they know were innocent, but have now been released and turned to terrorism because of what we did to them. Wonder if they'll ever release that number. Won't hold my breath.