The Evil that Men Do

December 21, 2007
by Cliff Carson

The first Commentary I ever posted was titled "The Immorality of the Iraqi War". In that article I spoke of the deception of spin and how good our current Administration was at framing an issue. I saw a classic example of the result of that constant spin and the suffering it has caused for many innocent people just this past week

I was watching C-Span and took in a Senate hearing concerning the status of detainees at Guantanamo. From what was revealed at that hearing, the Government has long preached several "facts" that are absolutely not true and they did it so good that nearly anyone in America would be totally oblivious of the actual facts about the detainees. And the result is that hundreds of detainees currently languish there and hundreds more who have come and gone are victims of an Administration stream of lies and deceit advanced to push an agenda.

The hearing was chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein and among several witnesses was a Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall Law School who testified about his and his students research of the Department of Defense records concerning 571 of those detainees and the report that they generated to detail the facts about the detainees http://law.shu.edu/aaafinal.pdf.

It addressed who was being detained, why they were being detained, how they happened to come into United States custody, and the deception utilized to keep them there and finally, touched on the immorality of what was our Government's policy for these detainees.

Professor Denbeaux stated at the hearing that what the Defense Department speaks is usually taken as a truth by the public at large, and when the Defense Department makes statements such as "The people at Gitmo are Dangerous", "The worst of the Worst", "Captured on the Battlefield trying to kill American Soldiers", "Shooting at our Armed Forces", " Members of Al-Qaeda", "Terrorists", etc., the Defense Department knows this characterization is just not true except for a very few being held there and that a search of the Defense Department records reveals a very different picture.

Of the detainees at Gitmo, when Professor Denbeaux and his team compiled the report (571 detainees), only one of those were actually captured by American Soldiers on the battlefield and only 21 of the 571 were ever proved as having ever been on any battlefield during the war. Just 24 were captured by USA Armed Forces anywhere and the rest were sold to American Soldiers for the bounty promised to those who turned them over to the U S Forces.

Of all the detainees who ever came through Guantanamo, 93% were actually sold to United States forces by either the Northern Alliance or Pakistan, and only one has ever been brought to trial for a "War Crime". That one was David Hicks an Australian who actually offered to plea bargain so that he could get a trial and get out of Gitmo. He got that trial from an agreement between Dick Cheney and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. He was sentenced to 9 months and will be released and be back home for Christmas.

He was not caught on the battlefield. He was captured while leaving Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and sold to the Americans. When he was apprehended, he was unarmed. Originally when the U S Forces got hold of him he was described as a murdering terrorist member of Al-Qaeda. His "Charge" would later be changed to terrorist sympathizer before his trial was scheduled.

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Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union describes the Hicks case as "an unwitting symbol of our shameful abandonment of the rule of law". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks U S Judge Susan Crawford dismissed the Murder charge stating that there was "no probable cause to justify the charge". During his 5 years of imprisonment at Gitmo Hicks alleged torture at the hands of his jailers including being beaten while handcuffed and blindfolded and also having objects stuck up his rectum and being drugged.

In October 2007 an Officer reported that a high level political compromise had been reached in the Hicks case, and although a staff member of a U S Military Officer reported to have been present when Dick Cheney was reported to have interfered directly to assure the plea deal as a favor to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, both deny it.

Senator Jeff Sessions Alabama Republican and Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann defended the military commissions process as "working" even though more than half of the detainees have been released over time. The implication is that these released were unjustly placed into Guantanamo originally, and the General was put in an awkward position of having to admit mistakes on the front end of the incarceration or admit to mistakes rising from holding innocent people for up to six years with no trial, etc.

Also on this day, General Hayden told a closed session of the Senate that he was unable to answer questions about destruction on "Interrogation of Detainees" echoing positions taken by General Hartmann and solidifying the Bush Administration policy of forbidding Defense Department personnel to testify on matters that might be telling of violations of Constitutional Law undertaken by the current Administration. Colin Powell had told George Bush while he was still in the State Department that Guantanamo an embarrassment to America and its supporters and should be closed down. For my part, I have heard reports that those tapes show the torture of one witness against Jose Padilla at his trial. I have been unable to confirm that, so it is mere speculation.

I would urge any reader to read material on the Guantanamo fiasco and Abu Gharib. What has gone at these places would have gotten convictions at Nuremberg and there is no reason for the American people to continue to give George Bush and his minions a pass on this travesty that they have brought on the World.

The one sure way to tell Republicans from Democrats in the Senate is to watch one of these hearings. The Republicans, to their shame, defend the criminal in the White House, to try and shift the blame to the Democrats, and the Democrats pound at the Republicans looking for election benefits in 2008, but to their shame, they won't initiate and hold Impeachment hearings for Cheney and Bush.

It is a sad state of affairs when one Party (Republicans) will defend their actions knowing all along that they have taken an immoral position defending torture, destruction, death, and robbery of a Country's resources, and at the same time the only other viable party (Democrats) attack the Republicans for their shameful acts and yet do such that they don't force a cessation to those nefarious activities, possibly because they want to inherit the Power and Profit that issues from the acts.

The American people deserve better. Eminem in his rendition " 8 Mile " asked a simple question: "If everything you ever wanted was available to you simply by reaching out and grabbing it, would you do it?" A new government and a more moral government are within our grasp. Will we reach out for it in 2008?

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