The embarrassment of Gitmo

I don’t know about you, but I would be pretty pissed off if I was arrested, spent two years in prison (denied due process), and released after my captors realized they mistook me for someone else.

And just think: such has happened to two detainees mentioned in today’s NYT. Mistaken for someone else, or accused of being something they were not, they spent years in the prison at Guantánamo Bay before military analysts finally figured it out.

One Afghan, Mohammed Nasim, was sent to Guantánamo in May 2003 under the belief that he was a notorious Taliban military commander of the same last name. By March 2004, analysts had realized their error: “It is assessed that the detainee is a poor farmer and his arrest was due to mistaken identity.” Yet, a review tribunal considered the case later that year as if he were the Taliban commander, and he was not sent home until April 2005 — two years after he arrived in the prison.

In collaboration with NPR and The Guardian in the UK, the NYT published a summery and assessment of “The Guantánamo Files” today. (If you ask me, I think media monikers imitating the “Pentagon Papers” are a tad grandiose, but whatever. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.) Though the articles state none of the leaked information can be confirmed by officials given their sensitive nature and age, the outline they paint is embarrassing for me as an American. I was already embarrassed by the basic knowledge I had of Gitmo, but today’s stories push the blush factor to beet red.

I have read the articles but no analysis or commentary, so all I have are my undiluted opinions and cheek reddening emotions. Plus, tonight I also read about the special People’s Court established by the Nazis in 1934: “Its aim was to judge speedily and with a minimum of rules, which in this case meant a minimum of guarantees of the rights of the defendants.” Though anything but expeditious, the situation in Gitmo is startling in the way basic principles of justice have been thrown out the window. Though federal justices have given the operation a pass since it is seen as vital to national security, I cannot help thinking it has done nothing but further enrage and embolden terrorists. Does anyone think we can do any good by capturing suspects, holding them indefinitely without trial and with sketchy evidence (if any at all), and then perhaps releasing them when analysts feel they pose a low threat or a deal has been struck with the detainee’s country of origin? Apparently so, and I am not sure why.

A little understanding of karma would go a long way. Stuff like this, I feel, only fosters strong anti-American sentiments.

The articles make it self-evident why Guantánamo detainees will be tried in military and not civilian courts: it exposes a humiliating incompetence in the military and government’s ability to ensure national security. Not only have they imprisoned innocent men, they have released at least one high-risk terrorist after analysts claimed he “does not pose a future threat to the U.S. or U.S. interests.” After being released, he “promptly revealed himself to be Abdullah Mehsud, a Pakistan-born militant, and began plotting mayhem.”

He recorded jihadist videos, organized a Taliban force to fight American troops, planned an attack on Pakistan’s interior minister that killed 31 people, oversaw the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers, and finally detonated a suicide bomb in 2007 as the Pakistani Army closed in. His martyrdom was hailed in an audio message by none other than Osama bin Laden.

And then there is Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamud bin Qumu. (Yes, a seriously long name.) After being imprisoned at Gitmo for five years, he is now the leader of a rag-tag band of Libyan rebels fighting Qaddafi and receiving NATO air support. He had been sent to Guantánamo with the help of information provided by Qaddafi.

Politics and war make strange bedfellows, eh? One year a man is a terrorist, and the next he could be in line to receive training and weapons from NATO. One year a dictator’s information is welcomed and used, and the next he is a scourge and the target of international efforts to depose him. This obviously paints the US as being extremely opportunistic, which is how we got into this jihadist mess in the first place.

Though the revelations in “The Guantánamo Files” are unsurprising, they do add another level to our national embarrassment.