A Deliberate Mess or More Incompetence?
How is this possible?
President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.
Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.
Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.
But other former officials took issue with the criticism and suggested that the new team has begun to appreciate the complexity and dangers of the issue and is looking for excuses.
No comprehensive case files? New team doesn’t understand the complexity and dangers of the issue? Obviously not that dangerous since files are scattered willy-nilly across various agencies. Was anyone in charge of this situation? Is there any rational explanation for why these files weren’t housed in one place? And if we believe the claim that these prisoners are a direct threat to our safety then why such sloppy record keeping?
Again and again, we are told that Guantanamo is necessary, important, vital. Keeping track of who’s detained there? Not so much.
Tags: BushCo Legacy, Gitmo
Words fail.
Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner.
You mean an agency like the Department of Homeland Security? Jeez. What imbeciles.
It probably would have been easier to develop and keep orderly files than to maintain their non-stop marketing campaign on how vicious these people (that they’ve been letting go) how. No wonder they didn’t want to prosecute anybody — they weren’t even interested in doing that.
They need to be hauled off to The Hague, seriously.
Jesus F’n Christ. I thought that all of this was supposed to be pulled into the DNI (or whatever the title is) so that we had a single go to person for this sort of info.
This is the reason that we had 9/11, because the information was spread all over the friggin government. This makes me so goddamned mad.
So the reason that we have not been attacked since 9/11 has absolutely nothing to do with Bush, it is entirely a lucky stroke. If he couldn’t pull together information on people that we were detaining illegally and were off the streets, than how would they be able to coordinate data on moving and evolving targets?
Assholes.
I think the reason the files are in such bad shape is because they never planned to put these people on trial. They just planned to hold them indefinitely while they waged war on an emotion. This situation is completely FUBARed. We have let guilty people go and kept innocent people in prison (Chinese Uighrs).
But their data warehouse of all domestic phone calls and your credit card records is immaculately indexed.
It was never intended to be easy for Obama to come in and undo what they have done. They don’t want it undone. I’m sure this was deliberate. Evil.
Hopefully the military learned a valuable lesson……kill them on the battlefield and you won’t need to take them prisoner.
…kill them on the battlefield
Genius,
A great many of these guys were turned in by corrupt informants. Should they just have been summarily executed?
In h.’s world, yes. No sense in taking chances. Kill ’em all and let Allah sort ’em out.
Funny thing is that AQ had the same idea, but they are evil, h. is just considered a run-of-the-mill conservative.
Center for Constitutional Rights….Mavish Khan an attorney who had three of the cases found one was a peditrician who fought the commies, another was an 80year old quadraplegic.
When are we going to be told by MSM that the US had a bounty program in Afganistan and Iraq. In a country where 88cents a day is normal, the Bush regime offered $25,000 in bounty if you turned in a “taliban or a AlCIAEDA”. Many had never been near a battlefield, everyone was turning in their personal enemies. Since there was no trial or fact finding, they just tortured the hell out of them. War Crimes. If Obama doesnt go after BushInc, he can not “go forward”, he must go backward…as Jonathan Turley GW Law Professor stated tonight, if Obama doesnt prosecute, he is guilty of accessory after the fact.
Now lets see what the blue dogs will do? Cover it up or open it up.