Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
As my colleague Daphne Eviatar notes, yet another Gitmo detainee has been found innocent by a federal judge and ordered to be released. That brings the score to 31-8 in favor of detainees being innocent vs guilty. And not one of those cases has been based on any sort of technicality like Miranda rights, as the ridiculous right wing keeps screaming about in the KSM case.
Rather, they've been based on virtually non-existent evidence - the same thing that Col. Stephen Abraham resigned over when he was working for the Pentagon at Gitmo reviewing the evidence in the files on each detainee. As the New York Times said about him:
Most detainees, he said, have no realistic way to contest charges often based not on solid information, but on generalizations, incomplete intelligence reports and hints of terrorism ties."What disturbed me most was the willingness to use very small fragments of information," he said, recounting how, over his six-month tour, he grew increasingly uneasy at what he saw. In the interviews, he often spoke coolly, with the detachment of a lawyer, but as time wore on grew agitated as he described his experiences.
Often, he said, intelligence reports relied only on accusations that a detainee had been found in a suspect area or was associated with a suspect organization. Some, he said, described detainees as jihadist without detail.
Pentagon officials have dismissed his criticisms as biased and said he was not in the position to have seen the entire process work.
The problem is that when the Pentagon has the opportunity to present all the evidence they have, the courts -- including conservative Republican judges -- have concluded nearly 80% of the time that Abraham was right, that the evidence against many of the detainees is virtually non-existent.
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Does anyone know of a reporter keeping track of how many innocents were turned in for money and where there is a correlation between innocence and reward money?
When we were first exposed to the fact that the Bush II Executive Branch was violating both the Constitution and the our treaties regarding the processing and treatment of detainees, there was anecdotal evidence that a large motivation to turn detainees over to the U.S. and our allies was financially driven. We paid for detainees, big bucks from the point of view of the those turning in detainees, e.g., Afghanis.
Now that we're achieving a statistically significant number of determinations regarding innocence, it would be nice to pareto the root cause regarding why so many innocents were detained and how money played a role.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 27, 2009 9:28 AM
Make up your mind. First you say it's not a technicality, then you say it's due to "lack of evidence" -- which is a technicality. Can they, or can they not, prove that they're innocent? Baptism records, for instance?
We know they're guilty or they wouldn't be in Gitmo in the first place. Barring proof to the contrary, they should rot there.
Posted by: Yagotta B. Kidding | November 27, 2009 9:47 AM
I accuse Yagotta B. Kidding of child molestation, rape, torture and mass murder stretching back to 1990.
Evidence, presumption of innocence, due process? Pfft - mere technicalities, this is America, none of that applies!
Welcome to fascist Amerika - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | November 27, 2009 9:56 AM
Or should I say "welcome to this glimpse into the Republican Right-wing's vision of the future of Amerika!
One Leader, One Party, One People!" - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | November 27, 2009 10:02 AM
Gulag American style.
Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bush must have used the Gulag Archipelago as an operations manual. This should be required reading for anybody wishing to understand the Bush administration.
Posted by: Rodney | November 27, 2009 10:17 AM
And we know that the bible is the word of God because it says so in the bible.
Yes, I realize that Yagotta B. Kidding is a poe, but that's a fine example of circular argumentation, all the same.
Posted by: Damian | November 27, 2009 10:18 AM
There is plenty of evidence that all of the detainees are Muslims. What more do we need? They are evil, it says so right on the back of the t-shirts.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 27, 2009 10:30 AM
About a month ago, I wrapped up a unit on The Crucible with my junior American lit course, and at the end, I tried (and, I think, largely succeeded) to get my students to think about how we can learn lessons from the play and its historical backdrop of the red scare. One of the things that I explicitly drew from (because I thought students would relate best to it) was the post-9/11 reaction to specifically Arabs (but also anyone who could be perceived, for whatever reason, as a terrorist). We talked about a number of possible lessons to learn: We should learn from history; we should fairly evaluate the evidence; we should not make serious accusations lightly; and so forth.
And the more I read about things like this, the more I realize that these lessons need to be learned by so many more people than I could ever possibly hope to teach.
But on the bright side, if there are reasonable people who see through this nonsense, regardless of political stance (so that this isn't seen as a partisan issue), then maybe there is hope yet.
God, I hope so.
Posted by: Mr. B | November 27, 2009 11:08 AM
Fuck yeah liberalism!
Posted by: Katharine | November 27, 2009 11:43 AM
I'm not sure it's correct to say that he was found innocent. There's really nothing to find him innocent of since he was never charged with anything in the first place.
The score is 31-9. What happened with the nine? As a result of their hearings, were they charged? Or did the judge rule that they could continue to be held without being charged?
Posted by: maurile | November 27, 2009 3:02 PM
Oops. I meant 31-8, not 31-9.
Posted by: maurile | November 27, 2009 3:06 PM
That's an awful lot of people abducted, held indefinitely without charge, tortured, not provided adequate representation, denied visits if their families somehow had the resources to find them, etc. I fail to see how that was meant to protect my freedom, but I never did buy any of Dubbyah's lies. Some of my buddies in NY are sore because I still taunt them for falling for Dubbyah's "days, not weeks, months not years" propaganda and the fact that I could give such obvious yet correct generalizations of the abuses that would be uncovered over time with the kangaroo courts. It's all happened before and it always happens when the dogs aren't kept on short leashes - which is why I'm still very vocal about the costly despotic joke known as the Department of Homeland Security.
Posted by: MadScientist | November 28, 2009 1:39 AM