The main conflict of this story is:The senior Pentagon official in the Bush administration’s system for prosecuting detainees said in a published interview that she had concluded that interrogators had tortured a Guantánamo detainee who has sometimes been described as “the 20th hijacker” in the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The public record of the Guantánamo interrogation of the detainee, Mohammed al-Qahtani, has long included what officials labeled abusive techniques, including exposure to extreme temperatures and isolation, but the Pentagon has resisted acknowledging that his treatment rose to the level of torture.
But the official, Susan J. Crawford, told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post that she had concluded that his treatment amounted to torture when she reviewed military charges against him last year. In May she decided that the case could not be referred for trial but provided no explanation at the time.
“There’s no doubt in my mind he would’ve been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001,” Ms. Crawford said in the interview. “He’s a muscle hijacker.”So they can't just "Let him go" and because of the confirmed torture they can't try him.She added: “He’s a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don’t charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, ‘Let him go.’ ”
Tell me again why torture is such a good idea? It doesn't bring in any useful info, it taints future prosecutions and demolishes any claim to any sort of "moral high ground."
7 comments:
Doesn't it make you proud to be an American? /sarcasm
Dubya and Darth Cheney, your retirement mansions are ready. They have been built at Gitmo. There are no swimming pools or bathtubs, but we have other accommodations of which I am certain you will approve--because you already have on previous occasions.
It seems almost as if you sympathize with this man. Though, on a level, I agree with you. He shouldn't have been tortured. Unless he was planning on walking into that plane in an official 'Al-Qaeda turbin'/uniform, he should have been executed as a spy. I'm disgusted by all the reports I've read about this incident so far. You read the title, then your read the first paragraph, then somewhere in the middle, it mentions he was to be the 20th hijacker on September 11th. You haven't done this, to be fair, but Reuters and others have.
So, Mr. C, you agree the man should not have been tortured, you note that the "20th Hijacker" nickname was noted in the story fragment David reprinted, and then you complain that David does not say, in his short commentary, that this man was reputed to be the 20the hijacker. To be fair.
Did we get anything from this man? Did we get anything we didn't learn from some other source? All the warrant-less wiretaps, all the ”stress positions”, all the extraordinary renditions to foreign countries and the resultant “interrogations”. I keep coming back to the air force interrogator story that was cited here (I believe). This interrogator said that first he believed what the army and the CIA interrogators were doing in Iraq was torture, and that Iraqi’s and everyone else in the middle east knew the Americans were torturing. Second, he ordered his interrogation team not to torture, rather to get to know their subjects and talk with them about their culture and Islam. In so doing, his team got the address of the top Al Qaeda person in Iraq, whom the air force promptly killed. Third, the air force person said that interrogation subjects told him foreign fighters were coming to Iraq precisely because Americans were torturing prisoners. So the insurgency was continuing and being supplied with new troops because of the torture. Americans were being killed and maimed because of the torture.
We really can’t let this guy go, because he is likely go back and try to perpetrate some act of terrorism against the United States. But we can’t just kill him without a trial, and we can’t try him in a US court because it will want to let him go. Maybe we can ship him to an Arab country, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, but the people there will pressure their government to let this guy go. This is the position Bush and Cheney, with their Unitary Executive theory, have put us in.
I notice you did not include a description of the "Torture".
Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister.”
At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani “was forced to wear a woman’s bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation” and “was told that his mother and sister were whores.” With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room “and forced to perform a series of dog tricks,”
Great that the left is now setting the bar so low.
How quickly people forget the reason why civilized nations signed onto the Geneva Accords. The reason why we follow the Geneva Convention is that when our troops are captured, they are not subject to torture.
For anyone arguing is this or is this not torture, ask yourself a simple question, "What would be your reaction if the situation was reversed and a brave American soldier was subjected to this treatment?"
Ideology aside, the actions by this administration are unethical and probably criminal. While I do not support the idea of trials since it would only serve to pain the nation more, I hope the new administration reviews the so-called legal justifications put forth for this crap and tears them a new arse.
The reason why we follow the Geneva Convention is that when our troops are captured, they are not subject to torture.
The prisoners at Gitmo do not follow the Geneva Conventions and therefore are not granted the protections of them.
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