George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'

[nancylebov]

I don't have a funny subject line for this one, so I'm just using the headline from the Timesonline article.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Please insert your own outrage-- it's appropriate, but I'm not up for it.

I'll just note that I've never seen anything like the amount of "my party has betrayed me" as there's been from Republicans, nor heard of anything like it in American history or anyone else's. Anyone have some examples?

Link from The Agitator.

Addendum:

If Hilary Clinton had been elected, what do you think she'd be doing about criminal offenses under the Bush administration?

Added Addendum:

dcseain pointed out that there haven't been prosecutions of previous administrations since Ford. This isn't specifically a problem with Obama.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

What I want to know is whether Obama intends to do anything about it besides telling us to put the past behind us.

[avram]

Has he even done that much?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about Obama authorizing the CIA to kill Anwar Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric, anywhere in the world, with no attempt to apprehend him for trial, as discussed for example in the http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/06/world/la-fg-yemen-cleric7-2010apr07? Of course, it does avoid either putting him in Guantanamo, or actually trying him in an American court. But it's hard to reconcile with Obama's statements during his campaign about the need for trials for accused terrorists.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'll just note that I've never seen anything like the amount of "my party has betrayed me" as there's been from Republicans, nor heard of anything like it in American history or anyone else's.

There was also a fair amount of outrage from bigoted Southern Democrats over Johnson's anti-segregation policies. Also, almost of the outrage I've seen have been from moderate Republicans, who (like seriously lefty Democrats) are in no way the core of the party, and from independents who often used to vote Republican. From what I've seen, the Republican base seems perfectly happy with their party, just as the Democrat base is mostly perfectly happy with Obama

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Addendum: If Hilary Clinton had been elected, what do you think she'd be doing about criminal offences under the Bush administration?

Nothing. The grass is no more green behind that fence.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My point was more that if there were no major candidates who are willing to prosecute crimes committed by past administrations, it says more about the whole culture than about individual candidates.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Sad but true. We do not have leaders, we have followers who have elbowed their way to the front of the line. Biblically, it is like Saul who told Samuel that he disobeyed God's command because he "feared the people."

As a result, we have declined. We are no longer a great people. I wonder if this is how Britons felt after the Boer War.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Of course this all depends on Wilkerson's credibility (http://patterico.com/2009/05/15/the-lefts-latest-conspiracy-theory/).

[madfilkentist]

I think of Rick Santorum as a strong conservative rather than a moderate.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

the news here is that Bush knew anything at all, right? Previously we'd been pretty sure there was simply no evidence, now we discover actual malfeasance and lying... and we're supposed to be surprised?

British Labour supporters from the pre-Blair era have felt pretty betrayed by Blair's Thatcherite party.

And no, I don't suppose Hilary would've done anything. I can even see how it's expedient not to do anything, between the US electorate's legendary amnesia and the need to spend all one's time fighting the next election. And the fact that many of one's friends will inevitably be implicated because, let's face it, the Bush administration never executed anything like an effective cover-up of anything they were doing, they just relied on complicity. If Bush achieved anything, I think it was to finally strip away the outer layer of pretense in US politics, that there are bad guys and good guys (personnel defined by one's perspective) and that they don't conduct business together. Now we can see the next couple of layers of pretense underneath.