Politicizing The Intelligence

In preparation for Obama's big "I Am Too Tough On Terror" speech due later today, the Times is leaked a copy of a long-awaited Pentagon report on recidivism among Gitmo detainees:

1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January. Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail.

Let's hear from the critics of the last report.  And what is going on in the Pentagon now?

Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo.

...Pentagon officials said there had been no pressure from the Obama White House to suppress the report about the Guantánamo detainees who had been transferred abroad under the Bush administration. The officials said they believed that Defense Department employees, some of them holdovers from the Bush administration, were acting to protect their jobs.

No pressure - some DoD BushMen simply want to delay their transition to the private sector that would be hastened by releasing this troublesome report.

The report was made available by an official who said the delay in releasing it was creating unnecessary “conspiracy theories” about the holdup.

A Defense Department official said there was little will at the Pentagon to release the report because it had become politically radioactive under Mr. Obama.

“If we hold it, then everybody claims it’s political and you’re protecting the Obama administration,” said the official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “And if we let it go, then everybody says you’re undermining Obama.”

Where's the trust?

MORE:  This soundbite didn't quite work (my emphasis):

“It’s part of a campaign to win the hearts and minds of history for Guantánamo,” said Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who has represented Guantánamo detainees and co-written three studies highly critical of the Pentagon’s previous recidivism reports. “They want to be able to claim there really were bad people there.”

Ahh, I get that Guantanamo critics want to convince us that some people have been wrongfully detained there but seriously - are we arguing over whether any of the Gitmo detainees are "bad people"?

Mr. Denbeaux acknowledged that some of the named detainees had engaged in verifiable terrorist acts since their release, but he said his research showed that their numbers were small.

“We’ve never said there weren’t some people who would return to the fight,” Mr. Denbeaux said. “It seems to be unavoidable. Nothing is perfect.”

"Nothing is perfect".  Well, there are problems with keeping these people locked up forever, too, but nothing is perfect.

Comments

[bad]

That article blames the Defense Department, former Bushies, fear-mongers, scaredy cats, and everybody...but the WH.

The administration must be soooo proud of the NYT. Such good little soldiers....

[Captain Hate]

Pinch is counting on a bailout because he's demonstrably proven he can't compete in the information world where Walter Durantys get exposed.

[bad]

A different NYT article via Hot Air: LUN

[[[President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a �preventive detention� system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.]]]

Preventive detention sounds soooo....Cheney...yet Cheney and Bush didn't do it.

Oh My!! What kind of monster has Cheney created? Is this turning into a pi**ing contest...

[narciso]

Look at the Wikipedia page, for this guy, Denbeaux, he has been flagged by the Courts twice for his flawed expertise in document analysis, He has no expertise in Islam, Salafism, probably has never read Doughty on the Quahtanis. He's been the source of possibly two dozen articles in the McClatchy
press.

[hit and run]

[[a �preventive detention� system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried]]

Cheney, Rove, Rush, Santelli, AIG executives, Chrysler senior bondholders, Carrie Prejean, federal lobbyists (not granted a waiver to work in the Obama administration)...and eventually, Jake Tapper.

[narciso]

Look at this cloying, self-indulgent
statement that DenBeaux, made in some hearing, back in 2007:

When I -- this is a personal beginning. After Rasul, my co- counsel, my co-author and my eldest son asked me what I thought about Guantanamo, and I'm ashamed to say that I said I hadn't thought much about it at all. He asked if I thought we had the right people there. And I replied we probably did. Then he asked whether my father, his grandfather, who was a chaplain with General Patton, would have believed that the United States Army, marching across Germany during World War II, could have accurately selected the 500 bad German civilians from all the rest. And I said, I'm sure he would not have believed that the Third Army could have made those distinctions in combat as it was moving along, and it wouldn't have bothered. But I said, my father also wouldn't have cared, because my father didn't believe that there were any good Germans during that period of time. And my son, Joshua, said, isn't that the whole point.
It goes downhill from there. In the LUN here's the rest of the folderall

[bad]

And all of JOM, Hit.....

[narciso]

Here's his profile from the Wooster alumni letter;

Selma, Alabama, 1965. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 2006. Different centuries, different countries—but the link between the two is significant for attorney Mark Denbeaux '65. He says he will never forget the 54-mile civil rights march that he and two other Wooster students joined. "Selma was an ugly and scary place. But it was also one of the most moving experiences in my life."

How do you get from civil rightsprotesters, which no one can object to, no Sharpton or
Mason comparisons here, to defending AQ. I guess it's time for another attempt at an AT submission

[narciso]

Here's a piece referencing one of the cases,
his testimony was excluded from U.S. v. Paul;

[narciso]

It's a rhetorical question, but why is it almost all these brave speaker 'of truth to power' like Krugman, Marshall, (Dowd is really too ridiculous to consider)now Denbeaux, as well as officials like
Armitage, Wilkerson, Scowcroft, Freeman, Wilson, have little truth to offer, and are more often than not, retainers to powerful
forces like the Saud family or their rivals in the Ilkwan tribes.

[daddy]

Just heard ABC's Ann Compton on the top of the hour radio news doing breathless compassion for Obama. Don't know what she said, as I immediately try to mentally tune her out, but she is the master at the breathless impassioned sentence. You've probably all heard her a Million times also but can't place her name or face. If she is that way in real life and not just when she is on the air, then if she was to simply say that she needed to go to the toilet, she would enunciate it with such poignant pathos that you'd feel a UN Human Rights Commission should be immediately convened just to investigate the urgency of the matter.

I suppose my question for Clarice or any of you guys who might know her is if she as full of S@#t in real life as she is on the radio?