Yesterday I wrote that even if the letter to Obama about Binyam Mohamed's treatment had been redacted, it didn't matter. Via Hilzoy, CAP's Ken Gude writes that it probably didn't happen.
Whatever the motivations of the DOD official that blacked out the material attached to Clive’s letter, it was certainly not to prevent President Obama from seeing it. In order for that to be true, we would have to construct a scenario in which a presidential aide brings to Obama this letter asking that specific information be de-classified, but when Obama asked what information, he was handed two completely blacked out pages and that’s the end of the story. Seriously, does that sound plausible?
Gude also adds that Mohamed will likely be released, and gives more benefit of the doubt to the Obama administration than I did.
But again, we need to pause and ask ourselves why they are doing this. The Obama administration has absolutely no interest in “covering up” the torture and abuse associated with the Bush administration’s policies. In fact, it has already shut down the extraordinary rendition program and rejected its disgraceful interrogation practices, and in any event, there is little or nothing to cover up because we already know so much about the treatment Mohamed received. There has to be something else going on, and because those officials in the Obama administration making these decisions were fierce critics of the Bush administration, and the early actions of Obama and his team on Guantanamo, torture, and extraordinary rendition, they deserve the benefit of the doubt as they work through the mess they have inherited at Guantanamo.
I don't know what else is going on, but as I've said before, I suspect that it has something to do with the involvement of other countries in Mohamed's treatment, and our interest in maintaining good relations with them. If that's the case, won't this happen again?
-- A. Serwer
