Wikileaks has now released about 700 documents on what is going on in the Guantánamo Bay gulag, and the picture is one of a completely incompetent and immoral process.
Cases in point:
- Wearing a cheap Casio watch was considered conclusive evidence that the wearer was a terrorist.
- 255 Inmates were “incriminated” on the basis of the testimony of just 8 inmates, basically whatever they could get out of jailhouse snitches and torture victims.
- Doctors actively concealed signed of torture.
Given the totality it’s not the documentation, it’s not surprising that the New York Times strongly condemned the whole process:
The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration’s system for deciding detainees’ guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released.
(emphasis mine)
It is refreshing to see the editorial page of the “paper of record” excoriate our gulag in the Caribbean, but unfortunately, they don’t go further, and ask why there have been no prosecutions of the lawless incompetent torturers.
The NYT editorial is preposterous. Besides consistently minimizing the seriousness of the situation, they ignore their own culpability: their history of supporting the global war of terror, whitewashing the policy of murder and torture, and channeling government propaganda. It is very late in the game to make a half-hearted acknowledgment of the atrocities. Of course, prosecutions are unimaginable for these apologists.