WikiLeaks Exposes Gitmo

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as perhaps never before, the truly oppressive nature of the detention system. the sheer
number of innocent men in prison, of the 779 men who have been detained, at least 150 were
determined to be innocent, sometimes, oftentimes after being locked up for years. foreign papers
like "the daily tell graph" in the uk led with that story, because it's obviously startling.
we were told that guantanamo had the most dangerous detainees, and it turns out 150
people we imprisoned this no years were innocent? look, that's why we have trials. that's why
we're not supposed to do lawless outposts. weerp supposed to be better than this. how
did the domestic press handle this? the "new york times" had an oblique reference in the
19th paragraph to 158 detainees who did not receive formal hearings, and they mention,
by the way, these people had, quote, no ties or significant knowledge about al qaeda or
the taliban. how about "the washington post"? they mentioned 150 innocent detainees in a
bullet point, but don't even write about them in the text of the article. then the case
of the innocent journalist we locked up, he was held for more than six years and never
charged with an act of terrorism. it was his work as an al jazeera cameraman. analysts
thought he would provide information about the news network's training programs, telecommunications
equipment, and operations in chimp aniy, kosovo and afghanistan. they knew he wasn't with
al qaeda all along. who cares? keep him locked up, because he might give us information.
are you kidding me? what happened to this country? the obama administration reversed
course on holding a civil trial for khalid shaikh mohamm mohammed, impeccable timing
as always.
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what happened?
>>
let's not treat this as some accident. this is a result of very specific policy decisions
by senior bush administration officials. typically when our military captures people, they hold
a hearing at or near the place of capture to determine whether the person is a civilian
or combatant. for guantanamo instead we used a dragnet. we'll figure it out later. we'll
call them the most vicious, best trained, the worst of the worst, and we'll sort it
out later. now it's 2011. we still don't know who everyone is who is being held. one of
these documents refers to someone and says we don't know his identity yet. this is after
eight years of detention. this is what happens when you abandon the rule of law and instead
literally open an island outside the law.
>> i'm asking the american people, what are we doing? i mean, that's the whole point.
to your point, ben, we've got a great video of dib cheney.
>> they did not fight in uniform, which is one of the requirements in complying with the
rules of war. they don't represent any state or any sovereign state that was a party to
the geneva convention.
>> yeah, all those people attacking us like the al jazeera cameraman, right? they kept
there for six years.
>> we should make another point about this, cenk. there are people at guantanamo who easily
could have been tried and convicted in legitimate federal courts many years ago. you refer for
the 9/11 case. it should be a national scandal we're coming up on the ten-year anniversary,
and we haven't even had a trial to bring the perpetrators to justice. the reason for that,
instead of following or values, traditions, following the rule of law, we create this
island prison, dump people in, create secret black site prisons, subject people to torture,
and it becomes that much more difficult to restore the rule of law.
>> see, ben, that's what i say all the time, we've got to bring these people to justice.
this happened right here, nearly 3,000 people killed, and yet we haven't brought them to
justice. they're like, why should we try them in new york? because the crime happened in
new york. that's my question to you. the people who say we should do this in guantanamo, ignore
or normal rule of law in america, we should do this in this lawless outpost, do they hate
the american justice system? are they un-american?
>> i think you need to call them what they are, i think they're cowards. i think people
who think we ought to change our entire justice system because of the perceived threat of
a handful of people whoever they are should be called cowards. the point of having a rule
of law is if we don't have evidence to support holding someone, we let that person go. if
we used guantanamo justice in our regular system, why would we have trials? the point
is acquitting people, letting them walk out, even if they are guilty, makes us stronger,
safer, gives us respect throughout the world and is the fundamental legitimacy of a legal
tim.
>> ben wizner, thank you for joining us.
>>> one more thing, if you believe in this guantanamo system, you're letting the terrorists
win. you're saying, you win, al qaeda, actual win ayman al zawahiri, you win bin laden.
we're going to trash the american justice system and do it your way. ben is right. that's
being a coward, being scared of the terrorists. these colors don't run. we've got to be better
than