Countdown: Innocents Lanquished at Gitmo, Cheney - 'So Be It'

Run time: 06:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-mwbQicdLo   Posted on YouTube: April 10, 2010 By YouTube Member: MoxNewsDotCom Views on YouTube: 1   Posted on DU: April 10, 2010 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 944

 
MSNBC Countdown w/ KEITH OLBERMANN - 9 April 2010: Interview with Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift on former Secretary of State Powell chief Col. Larry Wilkerson's revelation that Cheney and Rumsfeld knew Gitmo inmates were innocent and deliberately did nothing about it.

OLBERMANN: "The allegation of the ultimate cynicism is not unusual, but it's source, a senior member of the Bush administration is extraordinary. In our fourth story on the Countdown, Sec. of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, says Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld KNEW the majority of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, but fearing it would derail their push for war on Iraq, fearing it would harm what they called 'the war on terror,' they did nothing about it.

Wilkerson, signing a declaration in support of a lawsuit filed by a former detainee at Gitmo against the U.S., that document obtained by the Times of London, that detainee Adel Hassan Hamad, held from March 2003 to December 2007, does not know why he was seized, claims he was tortured by U.S. agents while he was in custody.

Col. Wilkerson says Mr. Rumsfed and Mr. Cheney believed it was 'political impossible to release the innocents, in part because the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were.' This was 'not acceptable to the administration and would have been severley detrimental to the leadership at DoD.' According to Wilkerson, the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President also believed that 'innocent people languishing in Guantanamo for year was justified by the broader war on terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the Sep. 11 attacks.' Concerning Mr. Cheney in particular, 'He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent ... if hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.'

Wilkerson says he also discussed the detainee issue with Secretary Powell: 'I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice President Cheney and Sec. Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantanamo decision-making.'

- snip -

Joining me now, one of the attorneys in the milestone detainee case known for his client, Salim Hamdan, current criminal defense attorney, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift.

- snip -


Does Col. Wilkerson's involvement increase the likelihood of forcing Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, somebody, to testify anywhere, or can this too, like everything else be ignored?"

SWIFT: "It gets over one of the two major obstacles to bringing suit, and that's the state secrets doctrine. Basically, the administration has defended a great many of these, both the Bush and the Obama administration, under the state secrets doctrine, saying that if we have to defend ourselves, we'll give away state secrets. Sometimes that's just we'll be embarrassed, but they've used that doctrine. Col. Wilkerson's declaration makes that much difficult to apply that doctrine because it gives the plaintiff enough to go forward.

The real difficulty for this plaintiff, though, is something called the Detainee Treatment Act of 2006. The Detainee Treatment Act stripped all Guantanamo detainees of the right to sue. Now, you might remember that part of that was overturned in Boumediene in 2008 by the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens and Justice Kennedy leading the way in that one. But, the real concern is that was only in habeas, and habeas is a Constitutionally guaranteed right and this is a civil suit, and as a civil suit, it would come under statutory - the Foreign Torts Claims Act - and I'm not sure that he will have standing.

Another military declaration may help them a great deal though. And that was a military officer that revealed that the CSRTs were basically frauds. And, again, the administration said basically the same thing: 'we can't be embarrassed, therefore you must return the result and we'll send it back to you until we get the result we want.'

So it will be interesting to see if the court says 'Well, he was found to be a combatant by a CSRT. Never mind that a federal judge later overturned that, he still doesn't have standing or not.' So we got to see."

- snip -

OLBERMANN: "Does any of this put any additional pressure on this president to close and fulfill his promise to close Gitmo?"

SWIFT: "Ultimately, I think that, as Guantanamo goes forward, one of the real questions, and it's a difficulty, is that these habeas that keep getting decided are being decided at an incredible rate for the detainees. And that puts pressure on the President, because more and more people who are currently held in Guantanamo, are being found to have ... there being no basis for them to be detained in the first place. He can't say 'Well, we're really not having no harm done, other than our image.' Actually we're harming people who are innocent, and that should put pressure on."

MORE IN VIDEO

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece

From The Times
April 9, 2010
George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

MORE AT LINK

that an overwhelming majority of these people are innocent of any crime whatsoever.

And BushCo is still lying. There was no confusion. They BOUGHT these people from our thugs in the Northern Alliance.

kind of collateral damage from the Bush administration. While we preach to other nations about human rights . . .

in my lifetime.

that it's not about fixing things in our lifetime to benefit US. It's about what is right, and fighting the good fight. And I tend to be optimistic about the potential for real human progress (though nobody ever promised it would be easy). I'm confident that we will prevail, whether we live to see it or not.

One thing about the American people is, for all they are lied to constantly, they hate it.

So I expect enough of us not to let go of this one until it is sorted out.

He was in early charge of detainee affairs and what was devised to be the Obama Gitmo wind-down.

Mother Jones:

Phil Carter Leaves the Pentagon

— By Kevin Drum
| Wed Nov. 25, 2009 11:40 AM PST

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/11/phil-carter-leaves-pentagon

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125910765578263219.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Carter#cite_note-6

He just packs up, cleans out his desk, catches all his bosses flat-footed, says "see ya!", says he has no plans; the press barely takes note and he hasn't been heard from since.

Nobody in the press has wanted to interview him, since? Am I the only one who thinks the whole thing is really curious, bizarre even? Especially the lack of curiosity of the press?

down America's Shameful Gulag was about to be broken and he didn't want to have anything to do with it?

The Army Jag just said that in another recent ruling, another detainee was determined to be innocent. Imagine, he was held for nine years and brutally treated and he was innocent. How are we better than those countries we read about, or see in the movies where people are tortured and held for no reason? I am heart-broken over what has become of this country.

The army jag said that the opinion of the judge in this latest case, Judge Robertson, was one of the most intelligently written opinions on this issue that he has seen.

Then he said 'talking about SC nominees, THIS man, Justice Robertson, would be a great SC justice as he is very much like Justice Stephenson.

When will the Obama administration start demanding justice for these people? How much more evidence of criminality does there have to be? If he doesn't do it soon, and doesn't end torture with strong legislation pushed through Congress, he will be no better than they are. Disgusted by all of them. Those poor people, I only hope they live to see their oppressors brought to justice, but they'll have to wait a while. It won't be under this administration.

detained for four years without charges, to get justice, especially now with Bush gone?

I remember being told so often, that the torture of Hamdan was justified because he was a 'threat to the U.S.'. That was from Bush supporters.

Now, we are being told by the left, that it's okay to issue a Fatwa against a U.S. citizen, because some 'unnamed sources' in the CIA claim he has moved from just preaching to being an actual threat. Does anyone believe this after the eight years of gross violations of people's rights only to find that a vast majority of them were innocent?

Am I the only one who remembers being told that the detainees in Guantanamo were the 'worst of the worst' and could not be tried in this country or given access to any judicial process because they were in a new category of human being, they were 'enemy combatanst? I followed all the court cases for several years and saw the arguments, Hamdan being one of them, that we could not be 'soft on terror'.

I never believed them. I remember that several Military Prosecutors quit because they came to believe that all the charges against the suspects, were false.

Now we have Obama telling us the same kind of story. We are supposed to trust him that his order to kill a U.S. citizen is justified. I didn't believe it when Bush claimed the rights of a king, and I don't believe it now. I am simply horrified to see people on this board defending this now, because the 'trust' Obama.

I wonder how long it will be before someone like Col. Wilkerson is telling a similar story about this administration.

I cannot believe that we are still dealing with the same violations of human rights, of the Bill of Rights, hearing the same lame excuses for killing people without trial.

Btw, if Obama has no problem ordering the murder of a U.S. citizen, is he now in favor of torture? Is that why Guantanamo is still open with innocent people still there?