Joe Carter won't let go. And look: no one is stating for certain in every respect what happened to three Gitmo prisoners allegedly found hanging in their cells in 2006 in a bizarre triple simultaneous suicide. I find the Seton Hall study credible in exposing what appears to be a bizarre and hole-ridden "investigation" and the evidence that Scott Horton has compiled from eye-witnesses requires specific answers. The Justice Department and the Pentagon have offered no specific answers to these valid questions. They just pivot back to the report that makes no sense. The report is also full of blacked out passages, rendering it impossible to know the full details. From this, Carter assumes the censored parts back up the government! Let's just say that after Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Camp Cropper and Camp Nama and the ICRC reports, I think skepticism is in order. As one commenter on Carter's blog writes:
In this case, it’s the much more extraordinary claim to suggest that three men, at least one of whom was looking forward to release because he had no discernible ties to terrorism whatsoever, all committed simultaneous suicide at the behest of terror organizations they had never in their lives communicated with, as opposed to the much more prosaic claim that these men were being interrogated (as we know they did at Gitmo) under circumstances of “enhanced interrogation” (torture, which we know they were doing at Gitmo) at a CIA black site (which we know exists at Gitmo) and then died (which we know has happened during these investigations in more than one hundred other cases.)
But to see this, you have to break down the denial that simply cannot believe that the US government could be engaged in this kind of evil. I used to believe that.
When the first reports of torture at Gitmo leaked out, I dismissed them as enemy propaganda. I had no idea of the depths to which Cheney had already sunk. I now have no option but profound skepticism toward any assertion by the government that they have not tortured prisoners to death. They have. Why not another case? A reader counters Carter's credulity:
What is the evidence for these people dying as a result of torture at Camp No? First, according to Horton and unrebutted by the Pentagon, there was eyewitness testimony that they were taken there and then delivered back to the clinic, dead. Second, there was observation of the bodies by pathologists and a police officer, noting signs of torture and mistreatment, and the Swiss pathologists' conclusions that the bodies bore signs of death inconsistent with the US theory of death by hanging.
To this must be added the fact that contrary to law and ethics, the US pathologists removed the throat tissue essential to a verdict and refused to provide it to independent pathologists conducting examinations at the families' request. Third, the statement by the camp commander to the assembled guards, confirmed in four independent accounts, that the prisoners died from swallowing cloth and that the hanging story would be disseminated in the media instead.
Fourth, the case of Shaker Aamer, that same night, describing techniques applied to him that perfectly match the condition of the bodies, including the stuffing of cloth into the mouth (obstruction of windpipe) and placing a mask over the face to hold it in place--the likely cause of death. Fifth, the conclusion of Gen Al-Zahrani that the "suicide note" was a forgery (and NCIS's own admission that all of the suicide notes were suspiciously similar and possibly shaped by the same person). All of this is solid, well documented evidence--not a concoction.
As for Camp No, Carter's view is that it doesn't exist. The Obama Administration, even when pressed, declines to make any such statement. Now isn't that strange? The CIA actually acknowledged it was running a operations at Gitmo and said it closed it down after these events, in September 2006. JSOC's operations at Gitmo also are the subject of lengthy, still-classified passages of the SASC report. The CIA never acknowledged where its facility was located. But prisoners were taken to Camp No, and one guard recalls hearing screams come out of it. The accounts of mistreatment at the hands of CIA interrogators are very numerous and are documented in US government accounts, including FBI reports. These reports do not discuss the exact locus, as they could not if it was classified. Neither would the prisoners know since they were transported hooded and shackled so they could not observe where they were being taken. But of course the very idea of the CIA torturing prisoners is absurd... even though a CIA IG report documents in terrific detail that such things occurred, at CIA black sites around the world. Carter is engaged in laughable denial here.
Why doesn't Carter also take a look at the NCIS's own account of how they died? Does he think this is even marginally credible? It's an exercise in the absurd, which explains why 3-1/2 years after the fact they keep their file classified, refuse to give an interview to discuss it, and attempt to withhold every bit of information and evidence they have.
And if the explanation is correct, why did Bush Administration spokesmen make so many demonstrably false statements about the prisoners at the time their deaths were announced? Was that just innocent error, to say they were "front line soldiers" for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, when in fact the Administration had concluded just the opposite and had determined to set them free? Carter doesn't want to cope with these facts, nor the looming prospect that they had a very real reason to lie--the conventional one--to mask the truth.
For all these reasons, I believe we need an independent investigation, either by the Red Cross or a truly independent prosecutor or an international body. And I do not believe journalism should consist in justifying blanket statements by the powerful as opposed to demanding evidence that their stories are true.
And yes, that still applies to Mrs Palin.