George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent' - Times Online

George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent' - Times Online

According to the Times newspaper of London, leaders in the Bush Administration, including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, knew the vast majority of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay detention center were innocent, but estimated that it was "politically impossible" to release them. If hundreds of innocent people were swept up and detained in the effort to capture a few hard-core terrorists, then the effort was worth it. One of the justifications for the detention operations, according to the Times, was to obtain intelligence on a potential al-Qaeda link to Saddam Hussein in order to justify the impending American invasion. In the Guantanamo detention center, hundreds of prisoners have been held without legal recourse to challenging their detention. Many were subject to various forms of "enhanced interrogation" in an effort to extract "actionable intelligence" from them (whether or not they actually knew useful information or not).

Together with today's revelation that President Obama's nominee to the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department withdrew from consideration because of Republican objections to her strong criticism of Bush Administration torture policies, it is apparent that American public opinion and political power is turning away from traditional concerns for human rights and justice. A jingoistic rhetoric unconcerned with the rights of others now dominates the political landscape.

When our highest officials demonstrate a lack of concern about the rights of the innocent, it is time to re-examine the direction of American public policy.