Mohamedou Ould Slahi completed a 466-page draft about his experiences in American and Jordanian detention in 2006. He had been rendered from his home country of Mauritania to Jordan, then transferred to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and finally moved to Guantanamo Bay prison, where he remains today despite being cleared for release by a judge in 2010.
He fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and formally joined al-Qaeda long before the organization turned its eyes on America. He belonged to the same Montreal mosque as the Millennium bomber, Ahmed Ressam, although he arrived there shortly after Ressam left. The most damning evidence against him tied him to the 9/11 plot itself.
In Germany, in 1999, Slahi had met Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who now stands accused of facilitating the 9/11 hijackings, and two men the U.S. government alleges were among the hijackers, and housed the men for a night; under torture in a CIA black site, Bin al-Shibh claimed Slahi had directed the men to Afghanistan for training.
Slate is publishing a declassified and redacted version of Slahi’s memoir and it makes for some severely depressing and interesting reading. What I don’t understand is why the government is allowing any of it to be published. What kind of government tortures a man and then lets him write a memoir about it while in prison and then allows the publication of this memoir with only the names of the torturers redacted but not the torture itself? Is the Obama administration readying us to come to our milk? Will we also see the declassified version of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture? Will we ever hold people accountable?
Personally, I am all for truth and transparency, but only if it comes with accountability. Without accountability, this memoir is just a giant stain on our nation’s reputation and an incitement for payback. It’s like our country is schizophrenic. We set aside all our principles and keep this man in indefinite detention after having tortured him severely, and yet we allow him to publish his version of events with only slight redactions?
Isn’t that insane?
But, once again, it’s our cowardly Congress, led by Republicans and abetted by Democratic bedwetters, that refuses to allow us to close Guantanamo Bay. Maybe the Obama administration is beginning a campaign to humiliate Congress in the hope that they will relent on these injustices. But I just don’t know.
“What kind of government tortures a man and then let’s him write a memoir about it while in prison and then allows the publication of this memoir with only the names of the torturers redacted but not the torture itself?”
One with a (thankfully still in evidence – though well-earned) guilty conscience?
“Maybe the Obama administration is beginning a campaign to humiliate Congress…”
My advice is, if that’s the case, then just stand the hell out of their way, since they’ve doing a pretty damn good job of it all by their lonesomes.
If they wanted to really do that, they’d let Maher Arar come to the U.S. Also #FreeShakerAamer
What I don’t understand is why the government is allowing any of it to be published. What kind of government tortures a man and then lets him write a memoir about it while in prison and then allows the publication of this memoir with only the names of the torturers redacted but not the torture itself?
The government that tortured him is not the same government that allowed the release of the book.
The simplest explanation is that the Bush administration broke the law (torturing him), and the Obama administration is following it (ending torture, allowing the release of the book, allowing the CIA to black out the names of its personnel).
I don’t think the Obama administration has an agenda on this issue beyond ending the torture.
Obama is setting the GOP up for 2016. I cannot wait for Bush 111, Cruz, Paul, and teabaggers in congress to put on video their opinions on torture.
I wish I had your optimism, but I don’t think Obama is deliberately trying to get the Republicans to speak out in favor of torture, because I don’t think his side wins that debate in the court of public opinion.
.
“Without accountability, this memoir is just a giant stain on our nation’s reputation and an incitement for payback.”
Like saying if I close my eyes I can’t see and by shutting my ears I won’t hear what exists in the real world. The memoir is a repeat over and over what has been written, what has been spoken and what persons endured from US agents, hired mercenaries, prison guards, US soldiers scared or bold to revenge buddies killed in action. When you start a war of choice because one stupid president and his cabinet ministers decide to wage a pre-emptive war on an imaginery enemy, your nation creates havoc, slaughter innocents, maim tens of thousands and leave an indelible mark on the whole population and strangers throughout the world who grow angry by all the suffering seen over and over on their tv screens or watched on the Internet. In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, Bosnia and Chechnya, Gaza and Palestine, Tunisia, Libya or Egypt, Yemen, Somalia or Syria; the Muslim preachers across the globe will denounce the killing by the christians of their Muslim brothers. It’s not difficult, the US, Israel and Europe have managed to manifest themselves as crusaders as Bush mentioned in a raw and livid way.
Thus a dozen years after 9/11, the blow-back has gained in numbers and a ferocity of a massive tidal wave that will be with us for decades. Indeed the world has changed, but not by the event of 9/11 itself. It took the Bushies, Chenies, Sharons, Netanyahus, Aznar, Blairs, Rasmussens and the islamophobic groups in these nations headed by Spencer, Geller, Wilders and Daniel Pipes. Every European nation has its Islamophobic national party and its own Geert Wilders as a leader. No surprise it’s a small step to become radicalised as seen by the Canadian William Plotnikov or American Tsarnaev brothers. We see the same with over 100 Dutch citizens traveling to Northern Syria to join the “protests” against infidel president Assad. All dogs should be killed by the hand of Allah, fighting amongst comrades of the Al Nusra Front, one can experience the presence of paradise nearby. To return to The Netherlands would be seen as a defeat, in Al Sham one has only Allah to answer to and live by the laws of the Sharia.
At last, the media are once again shilling for the US right-wing crooks like Graham and McCain, who want US intervention in Syria even if it takes 75,000 boots on the ground. Insanity spreads on that shining hill in Washington DC.
Sometimes I have difficulty discerning your meaning. What is amazing about my statement? That I think it is bizarre and dangerous for our country to simultaneously detain people indefinitely whom a judge has ordered released, and whom we tortured, and to publish their memoirs?
That makes sense to you?
It’s not the memoir but the criminal acts themselves, carried out in our name, that puts a stain on our nation’s reputation and an incitement for payback.
To let the memoir be published is a deed of wisdom by the Obama administration. The information is already out this past decade about the abuse, torture, rendition and harsh treatment. As you have stated before, the majority prisoners left over in Guantanamo Bay should be freed as the men are not charged. The shame extends to how the men are treated while on a hunger strike. Shameful! HRW and indefinite detention at Gitmo.
The US has no friend left in the Muslim world, not under Bush and not under Obama.
Well, there’s Libya: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/libyans-now-like-america-slightly-more-than
-do-canadians/261078/
Oddly enough, the Libyan people don’t agree that we should have let them be slaughtered by their dictator. Those imperialist fellow-travellers actually think that supporting their revolution was a good idea.
Good thing we ignored Booman there.
In BooMan’s defense, he was a hell of a lot less wrong than most of the intervention’s opponents. Instead of cutting and pasting boilerplate that dates back to 1971, or shouting about BOOTS ONNA GROUND!, he raised important issues about outcomes and possibilities that absolutely needed to be taken into account in the weighing of a legitimately close call. Meanwhile, he also acknowledged the considerations on the other side in a responsible manner, and gave them a responsible amount of weight.
Many of the things he worried about are problems we’re dealing with now. I certainly agree with the Libyan public that the intervention was the right thing, but was close to a 51/49 question, and while I certainly think the results have proven the case, we’re not talking about an unmitigated story of happy endings, either.
Also, almost all of my objections were prior to the actual plan’s announcement, which relied heavily on European partners and had almost no people on the ground. A lot of what I was arguing against was never attempted.
Nice, poll taken in August 2012 as the first elections were taking place. The elected government failed, attacks increased in Benghazi and recently the French embassy bombing in Tripoli. See Pew research with a downward trend sinds 2008! Only Nigeria sees a much better opinion of the US.
Gallup: U.S. Leadership Earning Lower Marks Worldwide
Interesting, American’s view of other nations.
The elected government failed
I’m sorry, Dr. Kissinger, the what government?
Well Joe, at least you are close!
The answer was “the elected government.” The elected, parliamentary government.
Which “failed,” defined here to mean, “didn’t like the performance of the Priime Minister, and scheduled new elections to choose another one.”
That’s right, folks: Oui’s case here against the Libyan government is that it is operating along parliamentary lines. If only Gadhaffi had been allowed to go house by house and get the rats in Benghazi, the poor Libyan people could be living under their insane dictator, instead of having to suffer through parliamentary politics.
A-Team: “I love it when a plan comes together.” Libya is not fictional, look at the realities in the region of arms caches, Algeria hostagetaking, militants returning to Mali, arms shipments to Boko Haram in Nigeria. The French suffer from their own shortsightedness, western powers had all fallen in love with Gaddafi[‘s oil].
After the Benghazi attack last September, the French embassy in Tripoli has been targeted by a (Salafist) strike. The Gaddafi mercenaries and heavy arms are finding its way throughout North Africa. Anyone follow this news item from Baga, Nigeria on Lake Chad? So it goes. The GCC countries and Saudi Arabia will continue to fund their allies, local militant groups. Quite irritating for the old colonial powers.
You really don’t get to complain about ‘short-sightedness’ if you believe that the transfer of arms and militants from Libya to its southern neighbors began in 2012.
In the non-fictional world, Gadhaffi had long been the major supplier of weaponry to people like Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh. This latest chapter of Gadhaffi’s weapons migrating south and west isn’t anywhere near the first time that’s happened – but, inshallah, now that he’s out of power, it will be the last.
And also Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi. The problem with your reasoning, Dr. Kissinger, is that the dictators you have such a fondness for don’t deliver the peaceful order you wish. They are always ticking timebombs in their own country, and exporters of that strife – as Gadhaffi was, which you would know, if you had any interest in this subject beyond declaring the actions of the United States to be always and everywhere wrong.
In Libya, the best is yet to come …
After setbacks, Libya’s Islamists trade doctrine for pragmatism
The Justice and Reconstruction Party (JRP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is now focusing on reconstruction (“bina'”) of a different kind: building a formidable party for the future.
The JRP has now committed itself to dialogue with all, including Salafists – namely Ansar Al-Shariah – blamed for the killing of the American ambassador. It is this dialogue that is recruiting elected members to the JRP’s caucus. The JRP’s move to shift emphasis towards gradual self-reconstruction draws lessons from failed attempts by other Islamists to take over the state in haste.
Wow, regional politics.
Clearly, no nation that has a dispute about the correct level of representation for different regions, and the correct way to divide power between the central and regional governments, is going to be able to succeed, or govern itself as a democratic republic.
Why, that’s almost as bad a sign as the religious extremists having to enter a coalition after having gotten their asses kicked in the elections.
Seriously, Dr. Kissinger, do you have any democratic leanings at all?
You write comment after comment about how terrible it is that the Libyans overthrew their dictator to install a democracy, and you cite the existence of democratic, pluralist politics and their expression as parliamentary votes and a peaceful transition from one chief executive to another as evidence against the new government’s decency, competence, and ability to sustain itself.
Libyans generally are appreciative of the intervention that freed them of Gadhafi. The shifting around of essentially multinational insurgents from one country to another in a whack-a-mole operation doesn’t change that fact.
On the other side of the equation, US failure to politically undercut these guy’s transnational vision by pushing Israel hard on ending its violations of the Geneva Conventions in the Occupied Territories keeps the wind in their sails enough that there are some receptive Libyans.
This same failure to exert influence that our $3 billion a year should have on Israel has now driven Egypt out of negotiations for a nuclear-free Middle East. In five years are John McCain and Lindsay Graham going to be beating the war drums for us to occupy Egypt because of their “nuclear program”?
Is the term “nuclear-free Middle East” really being used? We won’t have a rational foreign policy in the Middle East until the US formally acknowledges that Israel has nuclear weapons. Lifting that insanely pretended blindness would be a campaign worth waging.
I want so badly to believe. Certainly Biden initiated the marriage equality evolution process in which the entire nation evolved (highly punctuated equilibrium) in about two weeks. Could it be happening again?
Why would Obama have been waiting all these years to do something? Oui’s comment reminds us how vast and powerful the pro-war, pro-torture forces are. It’s Obama’s incredible message discipline never to say something even a moment earlier than he judges right, no matter how foolish or morally compromised it makes him look to keep silent.
I don’t think it’s all that important for the criminals to be punished. What’s important is that the country as a whole should make its way through that evolution, including those Villagers. I’m imagining a change like that of the civil rights era, when practical change was agonizingly slow but the revolution in the Conventional Mind, its idea of what was right and wrong, took place overnight, and people began to feel obliged to hide their racism.
From today’s press conference:
I wonder how many Congressional Republicans there are who genuinely agree with closing Guantanamo, but who will continue to block its closure just so they can deny Obama something else he wants. Har har har, he said he would close it and it’s still open. Another promise broken, har had!
Remember, McCain won the 2008 nomination while supporting its closure, and he won the nomination based on his national security cred.
It is impossible to humiliate Congress. You can defund them or vote them out or kill their prospect of future post-political largesse, but you cannot humiliate them.
It is impossible to humiliate Congress.
Exactly!! How can you shame a group that over all can not feel embarrassment in any way, shape or form?
Better a little right than no right.
Thank your lucky stars that there are a few worker bees who will follow the letter of the FOIA legislation and release even redacted statements.
There are multiple levels of wrong in this situation.
John McCain knows the truth. Lindsay Graham knows the truth. But neither of them lack the courage to oppose their own party’s nitwit leadership and do the right thing. And the GOP leadership’s sole mission with Guantanamo has been to tar Obama with the same misdeeds so that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney can be let totally off the hook.
Schizophrenia (or actually multiple personality disorder-one personality not acting in consonance with the other personality) is the least of our problems here. We have a huge failure of moral courage among leaders who are always yammering about values.