Here we go again, this time in the form of a concern trolling op-ed that is very concerned that we are not torturing enough:
THE Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terror ist activities after claiming they weren’t terrorists.
Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure.
These dangerous prisoners should never have been cleared for release. Why did interrogators fail to find the cracks in their stories and alibis?
Why wasn’t more intelligence gathered to predict they’d rejoin al Qaeda or the Taliban?
In a word, politics. Gitmo interrogations have been emasculated to placate critics of waterboarding and other “torture,” say two senior officials there.
This has to be the most repeated study since Masters and Johnson, and every time it is repeated, it is done so incorrectly. You can read the report here via ABC News- Guantanamo Recidivism (.pdf). For those of you who do not have .pdf, here is an important snippet which is never mentioned:
So depending on how you define “suspected” and “terrorist activity,” this rapidly becomes a lot less sensational. But here is the most important part, and the part that is almost never discussed. Every single Gitmo detainee who was released and appears on this list, starting with Sabi Jahn Abdul Ghafour and going all the way to Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, happened during the Bush administration. Every single one was released between 2003 and 2008, with the bulk being released before 2005 and then another burst of releases in 2007.
In other words, all those harsh interrogation techniques presumably were used on these individuals, and the Bush administration let them go anyway. The NY Post author has no idea what he is talking about.
I’m sure you are shocked.
Bill E Pilgrim
Yes because the surest way to be sure that someone doesn’t turn to anti-US activities afterwards is for the US to torture them as much as possible.
So wait, now it’s a deterrent?
Yes, AND a dessert topping!
[ logic chip explodes ]
Ash Can
“Emasculated”? Interesting word choice there.
JR
Paul Sperry: “author of the blockbuster new book, Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington” and a fellow at that bastion of successful thought, the Hoover Institute.
I’m really glad that the NY Post was brave enough to give such a rational mind the column space. Talk about editorial courage!
Dave L
We can’t justify holding innocent detainees.
But we can’t risk releasing detainees who may engage in future terrorist activities against us.
The only way to be certain about detainees’ future intentions is to torture the truth out of them.
But you can be damn sure that the worst of the lot will lie through their teeth — so the more a detainee insists that he won’t go back to terrorism, the more he needs to be tortured.
Eventually, even the hardest cases will crack. And eventually even the most innocent detainee will be given ample reason to seek violent revenge against us.
Keep them all, forever.
JR
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Kind of like chocolate Cool Whip.
JR
@Dave L: Remember, the innocent ones drown and enjoy a good Christian death. Only the guilty concubines of Satan will be retrieved and burned at the stake.
What’s so hard to understand about that?
Da Bomb
Not to generalize, but The New York Post is not really a bastion of intellectual journalism.
So it’s not shocking that the reporter took a lackadaisical approach to writing and researching this story.
SGEW
Headline: Torture Victims Radicalized Into Violence Against Torturers
The Chinese sure were lucky they picked Buddhists as the religious group to torture systematically, huh? I don’t think there’s very much doctrinal support for having Compassion for your torturers in the Koran.
The Grand Panjandrum
It looks like the liberal media is at it again. This author intentionally ignored the part where we gave each one of these guys a pony and taught them the lyrics to Kumbayah. (Hey! It’s true I read it on the internets.)
gocart mozart
What else would you expect from The New York comPost.
El Cid
@SGEW: Didn’t seem to hold the Tamil Tigers back too much.
Stu
You wouldn’t think that the Pentagon would be so proud of the fact that they can’t tell the difference between terrorists and non-terrorists.
SGEW
@El Cid: The Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers are (were?) mostly Orthodox Hindu, not Buddhist.
[Not that being Buddhist necessarily correlates with non-violent resistance, but there ya go.]
Comrade Dread
Of course, I’m guessing if a foreign government were to arrest the Post writer on hearsay, ship him halfway across the globe from his family and friends, strip him naked, keep him up for days at a time, and have no day in court to hear or answer the charges made against him, and that upon getting out with no explanation, no apology, and no reparations, he hears that his home country, the United States, might not let him back into the country because they were told he’s a dangerous criminal, that he would immediately forgive his arresting nation and happily rebuild his life in another country and find another job to post his daily hackery.
SGEW
More, re: Torture Victims Radicalized Into Violence Against Torturers
Marc “Obsessive Parser” Ambinder’s take: “if some folks like Boumediene had any respect for the U.S. before their detentions, they’re probably angrier after… which may be one reason why so many ex-detainees seem to return to — or being to engage in — activities post-release which aren’t salutary.”
“Activities post-release which aren’t salutary”! And replacing the word “being tortured” with “…” is simply priceless. Groundbreaking, even.
btw, I sure hope everyone checks out ABC’s new interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, the Gitmo detainee who’s been released (and was the plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush). Essential.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Comrade Dread:
Spot on. Even the right wing deniers who try it in a controlled, user-friendly mockup, after six seconds are ready to throw the safety cow and start appearing on Keith Olbermann. After six months of it in real time they’d be fomenting revolution, and I don’t mean the Gingrich kind.
J
These points may already have been made elsewhere, but does the report assume, as it appears to do from the reports I’ve seen, that every prisoner who has been released was, prior to incarceration, engaged in terrorist activity? This is implied by talk of ‘recidivism’. May not some of the ‘guests’ at ‘Club Gitmo’ have unaccountably developed jihadist sympathies they didn’t have before or come to feel more strongly about acting on them after their ‘stay’?
Does the very large proportion of released prisoners who have not ‘returned’ to terrorist activity show how effectively prisoners were ‘rehabilitated’ at Guantanamo, or tend rather to show how many of them had nothing to do with terrorism in the first place?
Like John, I also wonder exactly what is covered by ‘suspected’ and ‘terrorist activities’.
Bill E Pilgrim
@J:
That’s the problem with this whole setup: according to the way our system works, in the case of these people we’ll never know.
Those who put them there can say “Oh we caught this one red-handed, he’s guilty” but the only fitting response to any authority who claims that in our country is “Says you”. It’s not enough. That’s why we have law. And trials, and so on. As far as that’s concerned, almost no one’s been proven to have done anything. And surely some did, which makes the whole thing all the more the shame.
Tsulagi
The sound you hear is a giant whooshing noise as that fact flies through and exits the cranial cavities of wingnuts unfettered.
henqiguai
I’m personally mystified at the shock anyone claims over released prisoners turning to armed resistence to US interests after their stay at Club Gitmo. As others have pointed out, even if you weren’t predisposed to violence beforehand, you certainly might be after release. Certainly, I have always maintained that if I were being required to suffer harsh punishment for some heinous crime (e.g. murder) I didn’t commit, screw it ! gimme a gun…
Stefan
What also goes unmentioned is that the recidivism rate for violent felons in US prisons is about 70%. So even accepting the Pentagon’s extremely inflated and dubious 14% recidivism figure, it seems that violent jihadi terrorists had a five times lower rate than the average American carjacker, gangbanger or home invader.
Which would indicate either:
(i) these guys weren’t nearly as dangerous as was claimed, or, far more likely,
(ii) most of the Guantanamo prisoners were completely innocent, since you’d only get that low a recidivism rate with an inmate population of largely innocent men.
binzinerator
Have resumed terrorist activities? What, they had evidence that these people were engaged in terrorist activities before? Then why the hell haven’t they charged them and prosecuted them?
Where’s that evidence? If they don’t have any evidence these people were engaged in terrorist activities in the past they damn well can’t be ‘resuming terrorist activities’ now.
This is just more fear-mongering to get their extremist agenda enacted. Which is exactly what real terrorists do.
Blue Raven
@JR:
I grew up in MA. They were most explicit in my history classes that witches were hung. Catholics burned heretics at the stake, intending the fire to burn away their sins so they might be able to enter Paradise anyway.
asiangrrlMN
Seventy! Forty-two! Thirty-five! All of them! It was Clinton’s fault!
Seriously. Really. This is what they got?
Yutsano
Are we at Peak Wingnut yet?