Half-Head Bob is locked up! Are you sleeping better?

[deep]

One prisoner was transferred because he was Arab by birth and had once fought for the Taliban, thereby meeting two key screening criteria. But before the war he had sustained such a massive head injury that he could utter little more than his name and was known by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as "half-head Bob."

"He had basically had a combat lobotomy," the interrogator said. "Every [intelligence report] on him from Afghanistan said, 'No value, no value, don't send him.' "

THE WORLD

Many Held at Guantanamo Not Likely Terrorists

Dozens of detainees pose no real threat, but U.S. policies make it nearly impossible to get names off lists. There's also fear of freeing '21st hijacker.'

By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer

December 22 2002

WASHINGTON -- The United States is holding dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have no meaningful connection to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them for release, according to military sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

At least 59 detainees -- nearly 10% of the prison population at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- were deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan. All were placed on "recommended for repatriation" lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, a facility intended to hold the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects.

Dozens of the detainees are Afghan and Pakistani nationals described in classified intelligence reports as farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers. Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the collapse of the ruling Afghan regime.

None of the 59 met U.S. screening criteria for determining which prisoners should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, military sources said. But all were transferred anyway, sources said, for reasons that continue to baffle and frustrate intelligence officers nearly a year after the first group of detainees arrived at the facility.

"There are a lot of guilty [people] in there," said one officer, "but there's a lot of farmers in there too."

The sources' accounts point to a previously undisclosed struggle within the military over the handling of the detainees. Even senior commanders were said to be troubled by the problems.

Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, the operational commander at Guantanamo Bay until October, traveled to Afghanistan in the spring to complain that too many "Mickey Mouse" detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility, sources said.

One senior Army officer described Dunlavey's visit as a "fact-finding" mission. But another who met with Dunlavey said the general's purpose was more direct: "He came over to chew us out," the officer said. Dunlavey, an Army reservist, declined to comment.

The sources blamed a host of problems, including flawed screening guidelines, policies that made it almost impossible to take prisoners off Guantanamo flight manifests and a pervasive fear of letting a valuable prisoner go free by mistake.

"No one wanted to be the guy who released the 21st hijacker," one officer said.

While that concern remains a legitimate one, the fact that dozens of the detainees are still in custody a year or more after their capture has become a source of deep concern to military officers engaged in the war on terrorism around the globe.

Many fear that detaining innocents, and providing no legal mechanism for appeal, can only breed distrust and animosity toward the U.S. -- not only in the home countries and governments of the prisoners but also among the inmates.

"We're basically condemning these guys to long-term imprisonment," said a military official who was a senior interrogator at Guantanamo Bay.

"If they weren't terrorists before, they certainly could be now."

Moreover, he said, even amid the tight security there is significant indoctrination of prisoners by radical Islamists among them.

The Afghan and Pakistani governments have raised the issue with Washington. A Pakistani embassy official, who declined to be identified, said his government is convinced that many of the 58 Pakistanis known to be in custody "probably joined the Taliban but didn't know how to spell Al Qaeda."

Even some prisoners red-flagged by the screening guidelines were clearly of no intelligence value and should not have been sent, military intelligence sources said.

One prisoner was transferred because he was Arab by birth and had once fought for the Taliban, thereby meeting two key screening criteria. But before the war he had sustained such a massive head injury that he could utter little more than his name and was known by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as "half-head Bob."

"He had basically had a combat lobotomy," the interrogator said. "Every [intelligence report] on him from Afghanistan said, 'No value, no value, don't send him.' "

Others were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who collected bounties for prisoners, sources said. One such prisoner was captured at a restaurant near the border where he claimed to have lived and worked for 20 years.

"He had the mental capacity to put flatbread in an oven and that was the extent of his intellect," the interrogator said. "He never got trained on a rifle, never got pressed into service. But he was Arab by birth so he was picked up and sent away."

Pentagon officials declined to discuss individual cases, but insist that the U.S. has reasonable grounds for holding all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

"All are considered enemy combatants lawfully detained in accordance with the law of armed conflict," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations at Guantanamo Bay.

Several senior military officers responsible for transfers of prisoners also defended their decisions.

"Everybody that was sent met the conditions that were sent down from our higher headquarters," said Army Col. Michael T. Flynn, the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan when many of the detainees were transferred. "We were sending the right folks."

According to classified Pentagon guidelines, Guantanamo Bay was meant to be a long-term detention facility for Al Qaeda operatives, Taliban leaders, "foreign" fighters and "any others who may pose a threat to U.S. interests, may have intelligence value, or may be of interest for U.S. prosecution."

But from the beginning, prisoners who didn't meet those criteria were sent, sources said. In some cases, military police seemed to have more influence over flight lists than intelligence officers, lobbying commanders to ship out troublesome detainees.

Other detainees seemed to get caught up in the military's bureaucratic machinery. In many cases, low-value prisoners caught early in the war were placed at the bottom of prioritized lists. But as planeloads of prisoners were sent to Cuba, names at the bottoms of the lists drifted to the top, and some started showing up on flight manifests.

Once they appeared on the manifests, sources said, removing them proved almost impossible. Doing so required senior intelligence officers in Kuwait or Afghanistan to work through thickets of military red tape. It also required them to trust the judgment of junior intelligence officers, something they were loath to do given the stakes.

Through much of the war, the decisions were made far from the battlefield, by commanders in Kuwait or back in the United States. Intelligence officers in Afghanistan became increasingly dismayed at the number of low-level detainees on the manifests.

"We saw it as having huge potential for eroding public trust," one officer said. In a conflict dependent on the cooperation of local Afghans, he said, "winning the hearts and minds was our greater concern."

To call attention to the problem, some began circulating lists of prisoners they believed were being improperly placed on Guantanamo Bay flight manifests. The lists were seen by senior intelligence officers in Afghanistan, Kuwait and the United States.

One of the lists covers 49 Afghans and 10 Pakistanis who were held at Kandahar air base until the Afghan facility was shut down in June, prompting their transfer to Guantanamo Bay, sources said.

The list describes detainees' occupations, the circumstances of their captures, summaries of interrogations and alibis they provided. The prisoners range in age from 16 to 50, most with little or no education. None was deemed to have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

A typical entry describes a 30-year-old Afghan farmer captured by Afghan forces who "seemed most interested in stealing his car and money."

Another describes a 22-year-old Afghan who sold firewood at a bus station in the city of Kunduz and was picked up by Northern Alliance forces while he and six others were traveling to Kabul, the Afghan capital.

"He answers all questions quickly and fully," interrogators concluded. "His story is plausible and consistent, and there is no evidence that he has ever worked for or had any knowledge of the Taliban or Al Qaeda."

Not all of the detainees' stories are so tidy. Many admitted to being fighters for the Taliban, although often as low-level soldiers conscripted when they couldn't afford payments required by the Taliban to avoid service -- often amounting to six months' wages.

Among the Pakistanis on the list was a 16-year-old who traveled to Afghanistan at the start of the war to help the Taliban, but quickly had second thoughts and was captured by the Northern Alliance while trying to flee. "He showed no signs of deception," interrogators noted. "He never fought for the Taliban."

Another Pakistani, a 33-year-old taxi driver, was captured near the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

"The fact that the detainee's taxi car broke down was a deciding factor for him to leave home and fight the Jihad," according to his file.

"Detainee is a low-level fighter with no tactical intelligence. Recommend repatriation."

These detainees would almost certainly have been repatriated had they not been captured early in the war, before screening systems were overhauled to make releasing low-level prisoners easier, sources said.

By midsummer, military officials took to withholding the names of new inmates from prison rosters until they could be evaluated. That way, they didn't officially exist and, if deemed harmless, could be released before their names got caught up in the system.

"The same people who created this huge bureaucratic monster came up with a way to thwart it," one Army interrogator said, "which is never enter people into the system."

At Guantanamo Bay, the presence of dozens of low-value prisoners drained resources. The facility, known as Camp Delta, was also plagued by other problems.

A chronic shortage of military police meant interrogations were shut down at 9 p.m., sources said, denying interrogators the often effective tactic of subjecting detainees to marathon interview sessions.

There was also a confusing command structure that hampered information sharing. Guantanamo Bay was controlled by the Southern Command -- whose territory includes South America -- even though the war on Al Qaeda was principally the purview of the U.S. Central Command.

Intelligence reports often got tied up in transit between the two commands, sources said, sometimes delaying delivery for days. And intelligence officers at Southern Command who edited reports out of Guantanamo Bay knew far more about Colombian rebels than Al Qaeda terrorists.

The White House has classified prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as "enemy combatants," a murky status in which detainees are not allowed hearings or legal representation.

In July, a federal judge considering a lawsuit filed on behalf of 14 Kuwaiti detainees ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have no right to appear in U.S. courts and can be held indefinitely.

In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the prison population at Guantanamo Bay went beyond the "hard-core" cases for which it was constructed.

"The first people who were brought down were the hardest of the hard-core," Rumsfeld said. "Now it is a mix. They run pretty much across the spectrum.... Some may be transferred to other countries, some may be released, some may be held for the duration, some may be tried in one or more of the various mechanisms that are available."

But nine months after Rumsfeld's comments, only five prisoners have been released from a population that totals about 625 and represents 43 nations.

The first prisoner released, in April, was so mentally unstable he was known by interrogators as "Wild Bill."

"He would eat his own feces, dump fresh water from his canteen and urinate in it and drink it," the senior interrogator said. CIA, FBI and psychiatric experts "concluded he was insane."

Four others were released at the end of October, including three Afghans and one Pakistani. Among them were one low-level Taliban conscript and two men who appeared to be in their 70s and said they had never served the Taliban.

[Sparkysgrrrl]

Why dosen't this surprise me?

"If they weren't terrorists before, they certainly could be now."

[CannibalisticArtist]

when will people learn, violence only leads to more violence. it's a vicious circle that just won't break.

[nbcrusader]

I thought our guests at Gitmo were being held for information purposes, not that they were likely terrorists. Given the post 9/11 climate for information gathering, its better to be over-inclusive, rather that under-inclusive.

[sharky]

Yes we should be cautious but at what price? The US government is holding 1,182 Americans for "information purposes" but only 4 have actually been charged with crimes. The others are imprisoned because they are "suspicious" a.k.a. they're Arab. John Ashcroft is a dangerous guy who has been given way too much power by attaching the word "terrorism" to things.

This whole thing reminds me of a poem by a priest during the Holocaust about how the Nazis came for the Jews and he didn't say anything, they came for the Poles and he didn't say anything and when they came for him, there was no one to speak up.

We should be cautious, we should potect this country, but we should not have the sacrifice our own freedom to do so.

[STING2]

Without security, one can never be free. My freedom is compromised when my government does not do what is necessary to provide for the security of the nation. The detentions and interrogations have the potential to prevent all kinds of terrorist attacks there by saving thousands of lives. Why some people here are more concerned about returning to the unnecessary free wheeling days before 9/11 than what actually happened on 9/11 is strange. Are military, and government are working hard every day to prevent the next terrorist attack. Terrorist attempt to hide in the civilian world to better conceal their efforts to kill others. In order to catch them, it is necessary to cast are nets far and wide. It must be done to help prevent another 9/11 or event 10 times worse than 9/11. The fact that mistakes will happen is a given, but the current course of action is clearly justified given the magnitude and potential of the problem.

[melon]

Wasn't it the Bible that stated that it was better to have ten guilty people go free than have one innocent person pay for a crime? Or is that book only for reactionary, bigoted intolerance?

Melon

[diamond]

u know what?
weve been drunk on our civil rights for a too long .

Apparently we needed a Homeland Security Office before 9-11 and better communication between differnt agencies.
This woulda averted a terrorist attack.

For now were winning the War On Terror.
I think it a victory everyday we wake up and that we havnt had a major attack on our country since since 9-11.
So please shut up.

that said-

For us to throw up are arms like little girls everytime there is a percieved misstep and claim were marching towards a totalitarian govt is qwite lame.

Grow up.
Get ready for the long haul ppl.
We still are the freeist country in the world that offers the most goodness.
We will continue to be so, as we proceed forward stomping out these maggots and cowards and placating our own naysayers as we do so...

thank u-

Diamond


Godspeed.

[pax]

Originally posted by diamond
u know what?
weve been drunk on our civil rights for a too long .

Over two hundred years of inebriation on freedom and justice for all! End the madness!

[Dreadsox]

Originally posted by melon
Wasn't it the Bible that stated that it was better to have ten guilty people go free than have one innocent person pay for a crime? Or is that book only for reactionary, bigoted intolerance?

Melon

Does the Bible tell us when to set them free? Seriously, it could be that they are set free at the end of the War on Terror. Hopefully for the innocent, it will be sooner rather than later.

As for all of the people in who fought for the Taliban, the Bush Doctrine of you are either with us, or you are against us in the war on terror is in full application here. They were clearly against us.


Peace

[diamond]

Originally posted by paxetaurora


justice :

keyword here=justice

not-"hidebehindaloophole"

thank u-

DB9

[STING2]

Melon,

Most people have so far just been detained, not convicted of a crime. Many of them may very well be released in the future. Again you have to look at the cost. Who ever wrote that passage of the bible might have a different view in light of the context in which the release of those that may be guilty could lead to thousands of INNOCENT dead people. Take the number of innocent people that may have been detained and compare that to the number of people that could be killed in a 9/11 attack or something much worse, if the government is not aggressive in detaining and catching terrorist. Current government action means that some innocent people may have been detained. IF the government does not do what it is doing now, thousands of innocent people could be killed. Which government action harms innocent people more?

[bonoman]

Originally posted by diamond
We still are the freeist country in the world that offers the most goodness.

Sure you are!!!
Shut up man you say such crap sometimes. The most goodness i love it!!!

[diamond]

Originally posted by bonoman



Sure you are!!!
Shut up man you say such crap sometimes. The most goodness i love it!!!

ok fine
sexygoodness

canucks do not understand sexiness.
good ppl..? yes.
sexy, i dont think so..

thank u-

DB9

[bonoman]

Pam anderson???

[Popmartijn]

Originally posted by STING2
Most people have so far just been detained, not convicted of a crime.

True, but they also haven't been charged with a crime. In fact, they're not allowed to have any legal representation at all. They're held captive, without any reason. You can argue that there is a reason, information gathering. But why are they then denied legal representation, or even constant care by the Red Cross? And why does this already occur for over a year?

Many of them may very well be released in the future.

When? In a year, 2 years, 15 years? Fact is, almost nobody is looking after them. Nobody knows their name. I assume their families think they're dead or something like that. They don't exist anymore for a large part of the world. If nobody is paying attention, they might sit the rest of their lives in captivity.

Again you have to look at the cost. Who ever wrote that passage of the bible might have a different view in light of the context in which the release of those that may be guilty could lead to thousands of INNOCENT dead people. Take the number of innocent people that may have been detained and compare that to the number of people that could be killed in a 9/11 attack or something much worse, if the government is not aggressive in detaining and catching terrorist. Current government action means that some innocent people may have been detained. IF the government does not do what it is doing now, thousands of innocent people could be killed. Which government action harms innocent people more?

Could you please explain what your government is doing now? You mean willfully detaining innocent people? Because that's what the article is about, they are still holding people captive that they know are innocent and they know who those people are. It's not just some statistics or probability game ("if we detain 600 people then 20% of them will be innocent, but we don't know which one"), but here is a situation where they have individual cases where they know the person is innocent. And still they will not let them go.

More and more I consider myself lucky not to live in the USA, but in a country with more freedom. Some reason from the thought "what if a guilty terrorist comes free and start attacking us?" I reason from the thought "what if the government does this to me?" You might say, "hey, you don't have to fear if you've got nothing to hide," but that currently doesn't matter as even innocent people are detained so it could happen to you or me. And if it does, nobody will know or even care about it.

Marty

[melon]

Originally posted by STING2
Who ever wrote that passage of the bible might have a different view in light of the context in which the release of those that may be guilty could lead to thousands of INNOCENT dead people. Take the number of innocent people that may have been

Ah yes..."context." Although I usually get derided when I start applying context...

If this is a war on "potentials"--which, so far, with the exception of 9/11/2001 is all that this "war" has been--we're in for a long ride. I think we've all seen science fiction films--"potential" is infinite. Our smallpox fears, for instance, have been invented by us; there is no evidence, nor has there ever been any talk of smallpox even being considered as a biological weapon. But it is the "potential." In essence, people keep on talking about us being the "freest" nation in the world; I guess if you say it enough, you'll learn to believe it yourself, right?

We've become prisoners of our own fear, and this is the legacy our descendents will inherit from us--the war on "potentials" that will never end, not even when bin Laden is ancient history. Not even when Al-Qaeda is nothing more than disparate rubble. There will always be that proverbial "Other" and all the imprisonment in the world will not eliminate the "Other."

But we're supposedly the "freest" nation in the world. Keep on telling yourself that.

Melon

[pax]

Originally posted by diamond

canucks do not understand sexiness.
good ppl..? yes.
sexy, i dont think so..

Canadians unsexy? Hell-looooo? There are few men on Earth who are even remotely as sexy as Curtis Joseph.

[STING2]

Popmartian,

How many innocent people has the US government targeted and murdered since 9/11? How many innocent people did terrorist target and kill on 9/11? If you can't see the difference there then it will be rather difficult to discuss this.

Why do you scrutinize security measures that save peoples lives? Why are you so concerned about the living conditions of people that are committed to killing you and everyone in the western world? Most of those detained in Afghanistan have better living conditions here in captivity then they did when they were Al Quada or Taliban soldiers back in Afghanistan!

3,025 people were murdered on 9/11. Its amazing to see people here giving lip service to that fact and expending their time and energy on the living conditions for terrorist most of whom have it better than they ever did in Afghanistan. How about preventing the next terrorist attack. You don't like what the government is doing. Its changed its policy since 9/11 in order to catch terrorist who are hiding within civilian society. Obviously you don't think thats a good idea. Instead of critizesing the government and worrying about the living standard of terrorist, how about coming up with your own alternative solutions that would catch terrorist that are out and prevent thousands or millions of people from being murdered in the next attack.

The Criminal Justice system of every country makes mistakes. The fact that a few innocent people have been detained is a tiny concern compared to a potential terrorist attack killing millions of people. Far better to have to experience the detention of some innocent people than to have a catastrophic event in which millions of people are killed. Or would you prefer to have things the other way around? I don't think you would.

[Dreadsox]

Well said Sting!

I am thoroughly dismayed at the number of people who would see us do nothing! Eventually all of the "detainees" in Guantanamo will be freed.


Peace