On the one hand, I must steadfastly maintain that I don't really know what's going on in Gitmo and, frankly, I'm still not at all sure I should know, being neither a) in the military or b) an inmate. The Woodsteinian ideal of total transparency may not be something that ought to be unconditionally applied to the military in time of war (and if you're one of those folks who thinks that if enough people just grasped the horror we'd never have any war anymore ever, you'll disagree. So embrace that. We'll have coffee).
On the other, I'd like this to be the basic truth of it.
Maybe after we've won the war we can have a PBS Frontline special with a bunch of redacted documents and smuggled video, narrated by That Guy Who Does Frontline... you know, the one they occasionally hire to do fictional documentaries, to lend them that extra bit of realism. Yeah, that guy. You know who I mean.
What I appreciate about Lileks' latest that he takes the "horrors" described as fact by Time and holds them up to what is, basically, an adult standard. Unless the dead - tree version of this cover story ends with "... and then, after eight months of captivity, Detainee 063 was hog - tied, wrapped in prosciutto, and had his head sawn off by a Rabbi," I quite simply could care less.
Similarly, over at boingboing (which used to actually be a "directory of wonderful things," but is now more of a "directory of random tech and arty stuff, interspersed with advertisements for Cory Doctorow's latest book and hefty amounts of insufficiently skeptical political babble"), Xeni Jardin wants us to know that some lawyers say that "Some Gitmo detainees are minors." Just out enjoying their youth, and then they got swept up by the American war machine.
Actually, according to the NYT article, six minors - - six! - - were swept up by the Pakistani military machine.
In addition to being hung by his wrists for hours and possibly having a burning cigarette applied to his arm (I saw The Breakfast Club so I know that's abuse), detainee M.C. describes
... being shackled close to the floor in an interrogation room for hours with music blaring and lights in his face. He also said he was shown a room with pictures of naked women and adult videos and told he could have access if he cooperated. His description fits the account of former guards who described such a room and said it was nicknamed "the love shack."
Given the egregious quality of some of the gonzo porn America produces these days, I can see how this could be abusive.
Now, the problem here seems to be not only that M.C. was tortured, but that he was underage. However,
The dispute is clouded by two issues: military authorities define a juvenile as someone younger than 16 years of age, not 18, as do most human rights groups. Further, the ages of the detainees brought to Guantánamo as enemy combatants cannot be determined with certainty, leaving officials to make estimates."They don't come with birth certificates," said Col. Brad K. Blackner, the chief public affairs officer at the detention camp. Col. David McWilliams, the chief spokesman for the United States Southern Command in Miami, which runs the prison operation, said that the authorities were fairly confident of their estimates. "We used bone scans in some cases and age was determined by medical evidence as best we could," he said.
Minority, it seems to me, is more a function of what you do and where you live than chronological age. Frankly, I have much more of a problem with this:
The lawyer, Clive A. Stafford Smith, of London, said in an interview that the prisoner, who is now 18 and is identified by the initials M.C. in public documents, told him in a recent interview at Guantánamo that he was seized by local authorities in Pakistan about Oct. 21, 2001, a few months shy of his 15th birthday, and taken to Guantánamo at the beginning of 2002.
Why are we keeping folks locked up in an American military installation based on the say - so of Pakistani beat police? For all we know, the kid got caught alone with his well - connected neighbor's daughter.
How many Gitmo inmates are there solely because they were sent to us by other countries? This doesn't strike me as even slightly worth the political and public relations fallout.
[Ten Fingers 6 Strings gives this more thought than I did.]
