Gitmo Creeps

Information on Guantanamo detainees released yesterday by court order are offering slim pickings for MSM looking to substantiate long-held lib claims that for some reason the US is spending vast sums of money and international prestige to hold average joes in the prison.

The LATimes front-paged the story today and led off its Web page with the headline, "Documents Tell Stories of Guantanamo's Prisoners." Paragraph two is interesting:

The records provide the most comprehensive view to date of the Guantanamo prison population, as well as an exhaustive catalog of the U.S. government's charges against detainees who — in page after page of tribunal proceeding transcripts — protest their treatment and proclaim their innocence.

The Left will see that as confirmation that their allegations about Gitmo are right, but any sane person will read the paragraph and say, "Yep, they're just like prisoners everywhere." Routine prisoners' claims are not to be believed without substantiation, and war prisoners' claims demand proof in spades.

One story proves the point:

One detainee, Haji Ghalib, said he did not understand why he had been detained, because he had risked his life fighting against Al Qaeda and the Taliban and had captured many of them before he was captured himself.

He was accused in one proceeding of having been a Taliban commander in Shinwar, Afghanistan, and of having run a bomb-making facility. He described himself as a police chief and a staunch ally of the United States.

"For the last eight years I have fought the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and I also fought them at Tora Bora. It was a shock to me" to be accused of being an enemy of the United States, he said.

"I captured a lot of Al Qaeda and Arabs that were turned over to the Americans. I even went with U.S. forces to destroy the house of Osama bin Laden. All you have to do is check the record."

The tribunal allowed a villager who had worked as a police officer for Ghalib to appear briefly as a witness for him at the proceeding. But the tribunal president said the Afghan government had not responded to Ghalib's request that it provide two witnesses and documentary evidence that he said would exonerate him.

"We have allowed adequate time," the unidentified tribunal official said.

In March 2003, the Daily Times of Pakistan reported on Ghalib's arrest, saying authorities had received intelligence that he had "links" to Al Qaeda.

If Ghalib was who he says he is, he would have been exonerated by Afghanistan's government by now. He is someone else, so in Gitmo he stays, with 328 fellow liars and losers who are a threat to our security and world peace.

Related Tags: Guantanamo, Gitmo, LA Times, Taliban, Islam, War on Terror