On Feb 18, 2009, at 11:58 PM, David Cake wrote: > For the most part those in Gitmo were those picked up > actually in Aghanistan, but exactly what they were doing there is > another question. There are certainly organisations which proclaim > humanitarian goals that Cheney at least would consider terrorist.
I agree that the absolute numbers don't matter all that much. What does matter is the quality of the evidence that the administration used to justify incarcerating these people in the first place. 'Evidence' obtained through 'confessions' extracted under torture and from paid informants is no evidence at all. Cheney is arguing that the fact that he has 'good evidence' that 12% of those incarcerated were back in the "business of being terrorists" somehow proves that they were all terrorists before they were incarcerated. Apparently you and Chuck find this argument convincing. I'm merely asserting that it says nothing at all about the 88% that didn't engage in terrorist acts subsequent to their release and is not even conclusive concerning the 12%. They could well have been radicalized during their incarceration. I think it has been documented that the majority of those incarcerated weren't doing anything at all that a rational person would consider terrorism and that the US personnel in Afghanistan knew it. Very few were actually apprehended by US or allied forces. The vast majority were turned in by rival clans for the reward of $1,000 which was riches by local standards. There are even documented cases of local sheiks driving into villages populated by rival clans, scooping up a few men and then driving to the local NATO base, stopping to fire a few mortar rounds toward the base, and turning their captives in as the ones who fired the rounds. Of course the narcotics business is endemic in Afghanistan and many 'terrorists' were turned in by rival drug groups. I'm reading Tim Harris' excellent history of Charles II and James II. A question he sets out to answer is 'How did the Stuarts blow it given their popularity at the restoration.' Part of his conclusion is that they relied too much on paid informants and their fears of conspiracy became self-fulfilling prophesies. --- Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
