Somebody Sign Mitt Romney Up For Some

Posted by Greg Allen on 06.12.2007

Let's say I don't even care about the whole "Double Guantanamo" mess, Mitt's assertion that torture didn't occur there still flies in the face of all evidence, including the Government's internal investigations. When Mitt says "Enhanced Interrogation," what he means is "I don't have the analytical skills to be president. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade.

I'm trying to refrain from commenting on the 08' Presidential campaign and all that jazz because frankly I find the intensity of this campaign a year and a half away from the election nauseating. Unfortunately, regardless of how I try to isolate myself, the world moves along without me. Recently it moved so far toward stupid that I find myself forced to intervene. You all can thank Mitt Romney.

The incident to which I'm referring is Romney's assertion that America ought to "double Guantanamo," the detention facility in Cuba used by the Americans to hold terrorism suspects. He also stated that Guantanamo should and is a place for the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (which are supposedly distinct from torture).

I think Mitt is dead wrong about torture being a useful tactic in the War on Terror, but at least in that instance there are arguments for his side. Rational people can conclude differently than I have. Regarding Romney's other assertion, that Guantanamo has not been a house of torture... well, there is no argument. The evidence for torture at Guantanamo bay is so overwhelming, so patently obvious that it makes no sense to even describe the issue as a controversy. When Romney asserts that enhanced interrogation at Guantanamo somehow fails to meet the criteria for torture, he's either lying to appease the conservative base, or proving himself too stupid to be president. There are no other options.

With all that said and my objective observer status irreparably damaged, let's look at that evidence I keep saying is so good.

Guantanamo Bay houses roughly 400 or so individuals, down from close to 700 back in 2003. The 300 men making up the substantial difference between those two numbers were released. Typically, they were repatriated to their country of origin on the grounds that they knew nothing that made their detention useful in the war on terror. One might be tempted to assume that the 400 remaining are then surely the bomb-makers, recruiters, and other vital intelligence sources the Bush administration claims they are, but this is almost certainly not the case.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, a senior Pentagon intelligence officer responsible for every piece of intelligence going in and out of Gitmo before his retirement has said that the facility never prevented a terrorist attack because the majority of detainees are not terrorists. Often, according to his account, they were rounded up by poorly trained US forces, which employed largely incompetent interpreters. (Please don't send me hate mail saying I'm calling the troops incompetent. These are his words, and he's a soldier himself.)

Lacking the resources to properly distinguish between innocent civilians who had stumbled onto a battlefield and genuine Al Qaida operatives, soldiers set hundreds of innocents on a path to torture. The problem was compounded by the use of local bounty hunters. They provided Americans with juveniles, low level Taliban members, and innocent civilians in exchange for rewards posted by the US military. According to Christino, this led to an interrogation process that was "hopelessly flawed from the get-go."

Such incompetence might be forgivable were the prisoners treated humanely. Unfortunately, that's about as far as you can get from the truth. Again I must insist how one-sided the debate about torture at Guantanamo is. The administration and its apologists are quick to point out scores of journalists and politicians have made independent visits to the facility and have returned without the horror stories so pervasive amongst released detainees. To the lay person, this may seem to be strong evidence that practices at Guantanamo are humane, but this defense (the only real one given by people who cry no foul at gitmo) falls apart after even the most cursory analysis. Firstly, it doesn't matter how many someones are allowed access to the facility if everyone is denied full access.

Recall, for example, the Red Cross's visit to (and subsequent positive report about) the Terezin concentration camp during World War II.

The modern Red Cross is also present at Guantanamo. In fact, they are the only international monitoring organization allowed any level of access to the facility. In a leaked report—their agreement with the Pentagon requires monitoring to be confidential—they described the abuse as "tantamount to torture." They said this despite the fact that even the Red Cross doesn't have full access now and had even less then.

Only one group outside the military ever has had unrestricted access—the FBI. In classified reports obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, FBI agents who visited Guantanamo described widespread inhumane treatment, both mental and physical. The account describes detainees being spat upon and beaten, choked and hooded, harassed by dogs and had lit cigarettes put out on their bare skin.

This isn't audio, but if I could scream I would. CLASSIFIED GOVERNMENT REPORTS HAVE ADMITTED THAT TORTURE WAS WIDESPREAD AT GUANTANTAMO. This evidence is incontrovertible. No administration rebuttal can ever trump the direct correlation between released detainee accounts and classified documents. For all intents and purposes, the debate about whether or not torture occurs at Guantanamo Bay should have been over two years ago.

Alas, it's politically convenient to say that "the United States does not engage in torture" and so we continue to hear bogus statements like those from Mitt Romney backed up by bogus arguments. Take a look at this next one. The next argument given by supporters of Guantanamo is somewhat more plausible. This is the suggestion that torture may have only been used on the darkest and most powerful members of Al Qaida held there. It, however, also falls apart when considered in light of last year's events. Mani al-Utaybi, one of the three men who committed suicide at Guantanamo was said to have done so in an act of "asymmetric warfare." Were Utaybi one of the fabled terrorists at Guantanamo, this would not be irrational. However, the Pentagon had declared Utaybi a, "safe person," and had scheduled him for release. Tragically, Utaybi had no knowledge of his impending freedom and killed himself in despair. Even the Pentagon is finally acknowledging that plenty of the detainees never should have been sent to Guantanamo, but, as evidenced by Utaybi's suicide, even the innocent have suffered torture at Guantanamo.

This insanity demands some sort of action or change. President Bush made headlines in May and June by saying Guantanamo should be closed. That may be the solution, but the location is not nearly as important as the conditions and oversight. That is to say, we could continue to hold prisoners at Guantanamo so long as the international community could be assured no abuse occurred there. Still, it doesn't seem that President Bush is blowing anything other than hot air. How can he call for the facility's closure at the same time a $30 million dollar addition to it nears completion? The Administration's claim that it would like to close Guantanamo looks an awful lot like a rhetorical strategy of political convenience. The calls to close Guantanamo by President Bush and Condoleezza Rice are always packaged in the same speech as lies about how the facility is stocked with powerful terrorists.

Some changes, however, already have occurred. On September 6th 2006, the Pentagon released a new Army Field Manual specifically banning many of the techniques used at Guantanamo, such as water boarding, wherein the victim is made to believe he or she is drowning. This positive change came on the same day as Bush's call for military commissions virtually identical to those struck down by the Supreme Court in June. So while it may be true that conditions have improved at gitmo, but if I were a betting man, I'd say the interrogators and the Administration will casually discard the new rules and proceed with the same reckless disregard for the law that has so far been intimately intertwined with the history of Guantanamo.

Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Much as I'm doing regarding this week's email.