Facts About Guantanamo Bay that the White House Don't Want You to Know

I've just finished reading an article about Guantanamo Bay and it leaves me with absolutely no confidence in the US Governments handling of this farcical (fantasy?) "War on Terror".
The US Government, more specifically the Neo-cons and in particular Shrub and his close buddies have no intention whatsoever in "defeating" or ending terrorism, they want it to continue to fuel their economy. The Bush cabal has made a lot of money from War profiteering. In fact George Bush is the 3rd generation to make money out of war.

National Journal

National Journal undertook a detailed review of the unclassified files to develop profiles of the 132 men. NJ separately reviewed transcripts for 314 prisoners who pleaded their cases before Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantanamo.
Taken together, the information provides a picture of who, exactly, has been taken prisoner in the war on terror and is being held in an anomalous U.S. military prison on an island belonging to one of America's bitterest enemies.
Reporter Corine Hegland's exhaustively researched cover story in this issue -- studded with probative details and human stories that every serious student of the war against terror should read -- provides powerful evidence confirming what many of us have suspected for years;

That a very high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).

Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.

Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.

The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.
These locals had strong incentives to tar as terrorists any and all Arabs they could get their hands on as the Arabs fled war-torn Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002 -- including noncombatant teachers and humanitarian workers. And the Bush administration has apparently made very little effort to corroborate the plausible claims of innocence detailed by many of the men who were handed over.
Only 35 percent of them (more precisely, of the 115 whose court files specify the locus of capture) were seized in Afghanistan; 55 percent were picked up by Pakistanis in Pakistan.

The 314 transcripts released to the Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit give similar results. The 314 men described there included 97 Afghans who were arrested in Afghanistan. But they also included 211 foreigners, 152 of whom -- or more than 70 percent -- were arrested outside of Afghanistan. And 145 of those men were captured in Pakistan.

The administration has also disclosed very little about who the Guantanamo detainees are, excepting 1) redacted transcripts of 314 detainees' hearings before Guantanamo's nonjudicial "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" or CSRTs; and 2) somewhat more-detailed responses to the federal court petitions filed by lawyers for 132 of these 314 men.

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This is after the the American, British and Australian Governments have all peddled Lie after Lie in trying to defend their actions. Everything about Guantanamo Bay is wrong, the fact it tortures prisoners, gets coerced statements and confessions from the Illegally held prisoners (which mean nothing because the prisoners would have written and signed anything at all at the time), no access to the Red Cross or any other Humane Society (normal POW's are allowed this) The illegally held prisoners are not given POW status nor are they given Criminal status therefore denying them every single right and protection normally associated with POW's or prisoners. The illegally held prisoners are not even allowed protection under the Geneva Convention.
If the US Government ever wants to take the high ground in regard to any future or present hostilities then it has lost all credibility. They have no right to treat people in such a manner.

These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms ... but they were there to kill."
-- President Bush, June 20, 2005
"These detainees are dangerous enemy combatants....They were picked up on the battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces."
-- White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 21, 2005
"The people that are there are people we picked up on the battlefield, primarily in Afghanistan. They're terrorists. They're bomb makers. They're facilitators of terror. They're members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban....We've let go those that we've deemed not to be a continuing threat. But the 520-some that are there now are serious, deadly threats to the United States."
-- Vice President Cheney, June 23, 2005
"These are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, June 27, 2005