Just Think - News Archive

Despite a major international outcry and expert condemnation of US government policy, hundreds of people of around 40 different nationalities remain held without charge or trial at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, without access to any court, legal counsel or family visits. Denied their rights under international law and held in conditions which may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the detainees face severe psychological distress. There have been numerous suicide attempts.

Many of those held were captured during the international conflict in Afghanistan, from where transfers to the Naval Base began in January 2002 under harsh conditions of transportation. Others were arrested elsewhere and handed over to the US authorities. Sporadic transfers to, and releases from, the base continue, but the precise numbers, identities and nationalities of those held has never been made.

Presumption of guilt

None of the detainees have been granted prisoner of war status or brought before a "competent tribunal" to determine his status, as required by Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention. The US government refuses to clarify their legal status, despite calls from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to do so. Instead, the US government labels them "enemy combatants" or "terrorists", flouting their right to be presumed innocent and illegally presuming justification for the denial of many of their most basic human rights.

US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, has repeatedly referred to those held at Guantánamo as "hard core, well-trained terrorists", and "among the most dangerous, best-trained vicious killers on the face of the earth" and has linked them directly to the attacks of 11 September 2001.Vice President Dick Cheney has also labelled the detainees as "the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans." Despite these blanket allegations, several detainees have been released from the base without charge. No compensation has been offered for the many months they were illegally detained at Guantánamo.

Inhuman and illegal detention

In April 2002 the detainees were transferred from the small wire-mesh cages at the temporary Camp X-Ray to the confines of Camp Delta where the majority are held in maximum security blocks in cells even smaller than before, sometimes for up to 24 hours a day and with very little out-of-cell exercise time. The detainees are also subjected to repeated interrogations sometimes for hours at a time and without the presence of a lawyer, raising fears that statements may be extracted under coercion. The ICRC is the only non-governmental organization allowed access to the detainees.

With no opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of their detention and the prospect of indefinite detention without trial in such conditions, the potential psychological impact upon those held is a major concern. The ICRC delegation has stated that it has observed a "worrying deterioration" in the mental health of a large number of the detainees, and that their psychological condition has become a "major problem". Efforts to obtain justice in the US courts have so far been unsuccessful, with the courts holding that they do not have jurisdiction over the detainees, because they are foreign nationals held outside US sovereign territory.

Military commissions – A stain on US justice

In November 2001, President Bush signed a Military Order establishing trials by military commission which have the power to hand down death sentences and against whose decisions there will be no right of appeal to any court.

Six foreign nationals held at Guantánamo have since been named as the first to be tried under the Military Order, amid mounting international concern that any trial before the military commissions would be intrinsically unfair. In addition to the lack of right to appeal, the commissions will lack independence and will restrict the right of defendants to choose their own counsel and to an effective defence. The commissions will also accept a lower standard of evidence than in ordinary courts. This could include evidence extracted under torture or coercion. Lord Steyn, a judge from the UK's highest court had said that such trials would be "a stain on United States justice".

Releases with protection

Whilst Amnesty International has been calling for, and would welcome, releases of detainees from the base, there are also serious concerns that some may face serious human rights violations, including torture and execution, if returned to their countries. Such countries include China, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Amnesty International has called for the voluntary repatriation of all those detained as combatants during the international armed conflict in Afghanistan, as required under the Geneva Conventions, unless they are to be charged with criminal offences or would face serious human rights abuses if returned to their country. Any other of the Guantánamo detainees should be charged with recognizably criminal offences and tried within a reasonable time, or released, but not returned to any country where they would be at risk of torture, execution or other serious human rights abuses.

Bush calls for ban on same-sex marriages
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 Posted: 5:05 AM EST (1005 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment Tuesday that would restrict marriage to two people of the opposite sex but leave open the possibility that states could allow civil unions.

The president said he decided to endorse an amendment because of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's recent decision granting marriage rights to same-sex couples, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision two weeks ago to begin giving marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

CIA Chief: No 'Imminent Threat'

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2004

(CBS/AP) Intelligence analysts did not deem Iraq an "imminent threat" before the United States invaded last year, the head of the CIA said Thursday in a speech defending his agency's estimates of Saddam Hussein's military capabilities.

Amid growing controversy over the failure of U.S. teams to find any of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, George Tenet told an audience at Georgetown University that the weapons search in Iraq was far from over, and denied allegations that political pressure skewed the CIA's assessments of Iraq.

"No one told us what to say or how to say it," Tenet said. Warning that uncertainty was a regular risk of the intelligence business, Tenet said, "When the facts of Iraq are all in, we will neither be completely right nor completely wrong."

Tenet's speech came one year to the day after he sat behind Secretary of State Colin Powell, as Powell laid out the U.S. case for war to the United Nations — a case that is now under scrutiny.

The former head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, told Congress that prewar assessments on Iraq appeared flawed. At least five inquiries into the U.S. intelligence on Iraq are under way, and President Bush was expected to announce another commission this week to review the intelligence community.

Appearing later Thursday morning in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Bush defended the war.

"Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq," Mr. Bush said.

The CIA director, who began in that post under President Clinton 1997, said the current debate over apparent intelligence shortfalls lacked context, and warned that, "politicized, haphazard evaluation without the benefit of time may result in an intelligence community that is damaged and a country that is at risk."

Referring to the key October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, Tenet said intelligence analysts had concluded that in some cases Iraq had illegal weapons, and in others it was trying to build them. He said analysts differed on important aspects of these programs, but that disagreement was reported in the estimate.

"They never said there was an imminent threat," Tenet said. "Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policy makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests.''

Tenet claimed that the weapons search so far has substantiated U.S. charges that Iraq was bolstering its missile program in violation of United Nations restrictions.

Tenet said "the jury was still out" on whether Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle to conduct surveillance or to deliver weapons of mass destruction. On nuclear weapons, Tenet said, "we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making."

While there were signs Iraq illegally maintained a capacity for biological weapons work, there was no clear evidence Iraq had begun producing biological weapons or possessed stockpiles, Tenet said. On chemical weapons, Tenet said Saddam had built dual use capabilities and had "the intent and capacity to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production."

"However, we have not found the weapons," Tenet said.

At the outset of his speech, repeating a standard Bush administration argument, Tenet said the search for weapons was still under way and "nowhere near 85 percent finished."

“I think he was attacking back," says CBS News Analyst Col. Mitch Mitchell (Ret.) "He had heard there was a failure of intelligence, he didn’t believe it, his people didn’t believe it, so he decided to set the record straight. I think he made a very strong case for that by telling those who have already challenged his authority, ‘don’t tell me how to do my business if you don’t understand by business,’ so he went about the business of explaining it to Congress.”

As to why the weapons have not been found, Tenet cited "systematic" destruction of Iraqi files and intimidation of scientists. Tenet said the weapons hunt required patience because in the aftermath of the Gulf War, it took years to uncover Iraq's WMD programs.

That history of Iraqi deception was a major factor in the CIA's prewar assessment, Tenet said. So was Iraq's failure to account for potential weapons material.

Human sources became important to CIA estimates after U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998. In the fall of 2002, Tenet said, a human source close to Saddam told the agency that Iraq was actively working on weapons, was ready to use some banned arms it already possessed and was confident of fooling U.N. inspectors who reentered Iraq in late 2002.

That source "solidified and reinforced the judgments we had reached," Tenet said. Given all the signals from Iraq, "it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions" than the ones reported.

Nonetheless, Tenet said the CIA was reviewing its procedures and had already made changes. He said that while there were "multiple strands of reporting" on Iraq, "We did not have enough of our own human intelligence."

"We should move all the assets we can toward getting better human intelligence," agrees Col. Mitchell. "Because there’s no time like the present to get the process started. The longer you wait, the worse it’s going to be for us."

Saying he welcomed the proposed presidential commission on intelligence, Tenet pointed to several recent intelligence successes: the captures of al Qaeda operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Asian terrorist Hambali, using spy data to pressure Libya to give up its weapons of mass destruction, and helping to identify a top Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology to enemy states.

It is unclear whether the presidential commission will focus solely on the way intelligence was collected, or also look at how that data was presented by the Bush administration to lawmakers and the public.

Comparisons of CIA reporting to administration officials' statements reveal differences between the two.

For example, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq reveals doubts by some intelligence agencies about the extent of its nuclear program, the purpose of work its on unmanned aircraft, its doctrine for using WMD and the circumstances under which Saddam Hussein might partner with al Qaeda. Administration officials rarely, if ever, hinted at those doubts.

Guardian Unlimited
There was no failure of intelligence
US spies were ignored, or worse, if they failed to make the case for war

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday February 5, 2004
The Guardian

Before he departed on his quest for Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction last June, David Kay, chief of the Iraq Survey Group, told friends that he expected promptly to locate the cause of the pre-emptive war. On January 28, Kay appeared before the Senate to testify that there were no WMDs. "It turns out that we were all wrong," he said. President Bush, he added helpfully, was misinformed by the whole intelligence community which, like Kay, made assumptions that turned out to be false.
Within days, Bush declared that he would, after all, appoint a commission to investigate; significantly, it would report its findings only after the presidential election.

Kay's testimony was the catalyst for this u-turn, but only one of his claims is correct: that he was wrong. The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail, but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden and suppressed. On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president.

At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance. In one case, a senior intelligence officer who refused to buckle under was removed.

Bruce Hardcastle was a senior officer for the Middle East for the Defence Intelligence Agency. When Bush insisted that Saddam was actively and urgently engaged in a nuclear weapons programme and had renewed production of chemical weapons, the DIA reported otherwise. According to Patrick Lang, the former head of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told [the Bush administration] that the way they were handling evidence was wrong." The response was not simply to remove Hardcastle from his post: "They did away with his job," Lang says. "They wanted only liaison officers ... not a senior intelligence person who argued with them."

When the state department's bureau of intelligence and research (INR) submitted reports which did not support the administration's case - saying, for example, that the aluminum tubes Saddam possessed were for conventional rocketry, not nuclear weapons (a report corroborated by department of energy analysts), or that mobile laboratories were not for WMDs, or that the story about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger was bogus, or that there was no link between Saddam and al-Qaida (a report backed by the CIA) - its analyses were shunted aside. Greg Thielman, chief of the INR at the time, told me: "Everyone in the intelligence community knew that the White House couldn't care less about any information suggesting that there were no WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."

When the CIA debunked the tales about Niger uranium and the Saddam/al-Qaida connection, its reports were ignored and direct pressure applied. In October 2002, the White House inserted mention of the uranium into a speech Bush was to deliver, but the CIA objected and it was excised. Three months later, it reappeared in his state of the union address. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed never to have seen the original CIA memo and deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said he had forgotten about it.

Never before had any senior White House official physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to argue with mid-level managers and analysts about unfinished work. But twice vice president Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, came to offer their opinions. According to Patrick Lang: "They looked disapproving, questioned the reports and left an impression of what you're supposed to do. They would say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to contradict them."

The CIA had visitors too, according to Ray McGovern, former CIA chief for the Middle East. Newt Gingrich came, and Condi Rice, and as for Cheney, "he likes the soup in the CIA cafeteria," McGovern jokes.

Meanwhile, senior intelligence officers were kept in the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent."

CIA director George Tenet, for his part, opted to become a political advocate for Bush's brief rather than a protector of the intelligence community. On the eve of the congressional debate, in a crammed three-week period, the agency wrote a 90-page national intelligence estimate justifying the administration's position on WMDs and scrubbed of all dissent. Once the document was declassifed after the war it became known that it contained 40 caveats - including 15 uses of "probably", all of which had been removed from the previously published version. Tenet further ingratiated himself by remaining silent about the OSP. "That's totally unacceptable for a CIA director," said Thielman.

On February 5 2003, Colin Powell presented evidence of WMDs before the UN. Cheney and Libby had tried to inject material from Iraqi exiles and the OSP into his presentation, but Powell rejected most of it. Yet, for the most important speech of his career, he refused to allow the presence of any analysts from his own intelligence agency. "He didn't have anyone from INR near him," said Thielman. "Powell wanted to sell a rotten fish. He had decided there was no way to avoid war. His job was to go to war with as much legitimacy as we could scrape up."

Powell ignored INR analysts' comments on his speech. Almost every piece of evidence he unveiled turned out later to be false.

This week, when Bush announced he would appoint an investigative commission, Powell offered a limited mea culpa at a meeting at the Washington Post. He said that if only he had known the intelligence, he might not have supported an invasion. Thus he began to show carefully calibrated remorse, to distance himself from other members of the administration and especially Cheney. Powell also defended his UN speech, claiming "it reflected the best judgments of all of the intelligence agencies".

Powell is sensitive to the slightest political winds, especially if they might affect his reputation. If he is a bellwether, will it soon be that every man must save himself?