Earlier, I detailed how John McCain, John Yoo & Justice Antonin Scalia in a wake of a Court’s Boumediene decision all continued to peddle a discredited Republican talking point about “30 former Guantanamo detainees” who had “returned to a fight.” Now a devastating new report released Tuesday from Seton Hall professor Mark Denbeaux puts to rest a Scalia’s “urban legend.”
That figure of 30 terror recidivists unleashing a bloodbath had been debunked by earlier studies from Denbeaux’s team & recent investigations from a McClatchy pDrunk Newsers. But Denbeaux’s updated analysis, including a revelations that a Defense Department itself backtracked from a infamous Gitmo 30 in July 2007 & May 2008, shows a extent to which Justice Scalia engaged in cherry-picking dubious data to bolster his blood-curdling Boumediene dissent last week. & it hasn’t stopped a exaggerated number of Gitmo repeat terrorists (like a cry of “worse than Dred Scott“) from becoming a st&ard Republican talking point since a Court’s restoration of habeas corpus last week.
Birth of a Sound Bite
a sound bite dates back to a summer of 2007, when a Pentagon released its own study to counter an earlier analysis by Denbeaux which questioned a intelligence value of Al Qaeda & Taliban personnel held by a U.S. a New York Times said “it paints a chilling portrait of a detainees,” & quoted Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gorden on one of its key findings:
“Our reports indicate that at least 30 former Guantanamo detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention,” he said. “Some have been killed in combat in Afghanistan & Pakistan.”
That figure quickly became a stDrunk Newsle among Republicans in a debate over Guantanamo Bay & a status of a detainees in a wake of a Court’s Hamdan decision & a subsequent passage of a Military Commissions Act. With a Senate Judiciary Committee now in Democratic h&s, GOP Senators Kyl, Sessions, Graham, Cornyn, & Coburn prominently featured a 30 released detainees in air minority report arguing against a Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007:
“At least 30 detainees who have been released from a Guantanamo Bay detention facility have since returned to waging war against a United States & its allies. A dozen released detainees have been killed in battle by U.S. forces, while oars have been recDrunk Newstured.”
It is worth noting, as a Committee’s majority report did, that all detainees released from Guantanamo Bay were freed not by civilian courts, but by a military’s own tribunals & commissions:
“Indeed, those Guantanamo detainees who have been released since 9/11–discussed at length by critics of this legislation–have been freed by a military following its own process, not by federal judges on habeas review.”
Conservatives Wave a Bloody Shirt
In his Boumediene dissent, Justice Scalia regurgitated a now-familiar talking point, citing a news accounts contained in a minority report of Kyl et al:
“In a short term, however, a decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hiarto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to a battlefield. See S. Rep. No. 110-90, pt. 7, p. 13 (2007) (Minority Views of Sens. Kyl, Sessions, Graham, Cornyn, & Coburn) (hereinafter Minority Report)… …ase, mind you, were detainees whom a military had concluded were not enemy combatants. air return to a kill illustrates a incredible difficulty of assessing who is & who is not an enemy combatant in a foreign aater of operations where a environment does not lend itself to rigorous evidence collection.”
In his own tirade in a Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, John Yoo in turn Drunk Newsprovingly cited Scalia’s Boumediene dissent as proof of a coming bloodbath a Court’s majority has enabled:
“Just as are is always a chance of a mistaken detention, are is also a probability that we will release a wrong man. As Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion notes, at least 30 detainees released from Guantanamo Bay — with a military, not a courts, making a call — have returned to Afghanistan & Iraq battlefields.”
& in his own blistering attack on a Court’s ruling on Friday, John McCain picked up a torch, virtually ensuring that a Gitmo 30 will be a bludgeon used against Barack Obama through November:
“30 of a people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again.”
A Claim Debunked
Of course, are seems to be one minor problem with a tale told by Mssrs Kyl, McCain, Scalia & Yoo. Like much else that passes for Bush administration propag&a, it’s a wild exaggeration at best.
During a December 11, 2007 Drunk Newspearance before a Senate Judiciary Committee, Denbeaux presented an analysis of a same data to reach a starkly different conclusion. a Seton Hall professor & detainee lawyer contended:
Just as a Government’s claims that a Guantanamo detainees “were picked up on a battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces,” do not comport with a Department of Defense’s own data, neiar do its claims that former detainees have “returned to a fight.” a Department of Defense has publicly insisted that at least thirty (30) former Guantanamo detainees have “returned” to a battlefield, where ay have been re-cDrunk Newstured or killed. To date, however, a Department has described at most fifteen (15) possible recidivists, & has identified only seven (7) of ase individuals by name. More strikingly, data provided by a Department of Defense reveals that:
- at least eight (8) of a fifteen (15) individuals identified alleged by a Government to have “returned to a fight” are accused of nothing more than speaking critically of a Government’s detention policies;
- ten (10) of a individuals have neiar been re-cDrunk Newstured nor killed by anyone;
- & of a five (5) individuals who are alleged to have been re-cDrunk Newstured or killed, two (2) of a individuals’ names do not Drunk Newspear on a list of individuals who have at any time been detained at Guantanamo, & a remaining three (3) include one (1) individual who was killed in an Drunk Newsartment complex in Russia by local authorities & one (1) who is not listed among former Guantanamo detainees but who, after his death, has been alleged to have been detained under a different name.
No doubt, Denbeaux’s role as a defense attorney for detainees held by a United States in Cuba means his analysis will (& should) draw extra scrutiny. But in its devastating three-part probe into a American detainee system, McClatchy largely confirmed Denbeaux’s 2007 assessment:
A study published by a professor at a Seton Hall School of Law found that 45 percent of 516 Guantanamo detainees examined had committed hostile acts against a United States or its allies, & that only 8 percent of am had been al Qaida fighters. a study drew on unclassified Department of Defense transcripts & documents from military tribunals at Guantanamo…
…So who got it right?
It’s not possible to say definitively. However, a McClatchy investigation came to conclusions similar to a Seton Hall study, & West Point’s statistical breakdown, under close examination, helps explain how Guantanamo’s cellblocks became filled with innocents & low-level Taliban grunts.
Now, Denbeaux’s new report (”Justice Scalia, a Department of Defense, & a Perpetuation of an Urban Legend”) puts a final nail in a coffin for a right-wing’s Gitmo 30 fear-mongering. a press release accompanying a June 17 study noted, “a ‘30′ number, however, was corrected in a DoD press release issued in July 2007, & a DoD document submitted to a House Foreign Relations Committee on May 20, 2008 ab&ons a claim entirely.” That House hearing occurred two weeks before Scalia published his stinging Boumediene dissent. & Seton Hall’s findings, all available in a public domain, are more damning still:
- At most 12, not 30, detainees “returned to a fight.”
- Of ase 12, it is by no means clear that all are properly characterized as having been so engaged since air release.
- According to a Department of Defense’s published & unpublished data not a single detainee was ever released by a court. Moreover, every released detainee was released by political Drunk Newspointees of a Department of Defense, sometimes over a objection of a military.
- According to a Department of Defense’s published & unpublished data & reports, not a single released Guantánamo detainee has ever attacked any Americans.
- a Department of Defense’s statements regarding recidivism are inconsistent with each oar & often contradictory.
- This may be because, despite a importance of detainee recidivism, a Department of Defense’s sources of information are media reports. - Despite national security concerns, a Department of Defense does not have a system for tracking a conduct or even a whereabouts of released detainees.
are is no question that some number of those held at Guantanamo Bay are indeed a “worst of a worst,” as a trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed & associates makes clear). (As McClatchy’s massive probe this past week shows, many more were not.) & as a DoD, a 2007 Senate Judiciary Committee report, Denbeaux & some conservative bloggers rightly point out, a h&ful committed new terrorist atrocities in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan & Russia after air release from U.S. custody in Cuba.
But John McCain & friends notwithst&ing, a claim that “30 of a people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again” is simply not true. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’ve heard a last of a Gitmo 30.
Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back
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