Recently, The Washington Post decided to give torture apologist and former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen a permanent platform to exonerate the Bush administration's lawlessness after the fact. Today, he cherry picks information from the recently released Task Force report on Guantanamo Bay detainees to conclude that "95 percent of those held at Guantanamo are confirmed terrorists."
Here's the preceding paragraph:
On Friday, while most Americans headed to the beach, the Obama administration unceremoniously released the Final Report of its Guantanamo Review Task Force. The task force found that of the 240 detainees at Guantanamo when Obama took office, roughly 10 percent "played a direct role in plotting, executing, or facilitating" terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. Another 20 percent had "significant organizational roles within al-Qaeda or associated terrorist groups" including "individuals responsible for overseeing or providing logistical support to al-Qaeda's training operations in Afghanistan; facilitators who helped move money and personnel for al-Qaeda ... and well trained operatives who were being groomed by al-Qaeda leaders for future terrorist operations." Another nearly 10 percent "occupied significant positions within the Taliban regime" or insurgent networks "implicated in attacks on Coalition forces." About 55 percent were rank and file "foreign fighters with varying degrees of connection to al-Qaeda , but who lacked a significant leadership or other specialized role." Only 5 percent did not "fit into any of the above categories."
As is typical, Thiessen leaves out the part of the report that he doesn't like. Of that 55 percent Thiessen mentions, that the report concludes that they “do not appear to have been selected” for “training geared towards terrorist operations abroad.” The report adds that while al-Qaeda used the training camps to vet potential recruits, “only a small percentage of camp detainees were eligible for these operations,” meaning "terrorist operations against civilian targets." In other words, they aren't "confirmed terrorists," even if one concluded that an internal executive branch review of the evidence against these men could be viewed a substitute for a jury trial of any sort. Indeed, the report, despite its certainty about its own statistics, notes that at least 48 detainees will be held indefinitely, because "there is presently insufficient evidence to establish the detainees' guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in either a federal court or military commission, or the detainees conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense in either a federal court or military commission.” Convincing! And I haven't even mentioned those the report states must be held indefinitely because of their "strong family ties" to "extremist organizations."
Thiessen trots out the straw man that "The Left" sees all the detainees as "really innocent goatherds," but that's never been the argument. The argument has been that the burden should be on the government to prove these people are dangerous, and in a number of cases, the government has avoided doing so. When it has been forced to, it has lost about three-quarters of the time. Thiessen thinks the government should be able to imprison any Muslim suspected of being a terrorist indefinitely without court review and is then obligated to torture them because they are Muslim.
Thiessen would like to think that the Task Force report proves that anyone ever held at Guantanamo is guilty of being a terrorist. Sadly, that would mean that his former boss was criminally irresponsible -- as the report notes, 70 percent of detainees who had been held at the prison were transferred before 2009. Thiessen forgot to talk about that part, since it either undermines his argument that anyone ever held at Gitmo is a terrorist, or it proves that his boss was actively releasing terrorists from Gitmo. Thiessen also glosses over the mismanagement of Gitmo detainee cases that made the Task Force necessary. "The government did not have a preexisting, consolidated repository of such information," rather "each federal agency stored information concerning Guantanamo detainees in its own systems, consistent with its particular mission and operating protocols." The Bush administration's tough rhetoric on terror was undermined by a staggering lack of organizational competence.
Thiessen, not content merely to cherry-pick the report, concludes that "the folks [Liz Cheney] dubbed as al-Qaeda lawyers really are al-Qaeda lawyers." This is incredibly stupid -- Thiessen himself notes in the very same column that most of the detainees are not actually al-Qaeda, and the view that everyone should get a fair trial and a decent lawyer is hardly indicative of terrorist sympathies; it's indicative of belief in the American system of justice, which Thiessen obviously lacks.
-- A. Serwer
