Where do the Apples Go?

One bete noire of war-on-terrorism critics has been the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. But Gitmo was created to reduce the likelihood of torture and killing of terrorist suspects, according to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, no friend of the Bush Administration.

Michael Scheuer described how the rules under the Clinton administration were crafted to ensure the US would never hold prisoners. This meant, as a practical matter, that terror suspects were always shipped offshore to a foreign government where they were either tortured, killed or both. Michael Scheuer described how bad that was, not only only from the moral point of view, but from the perspective of US intelligence. If US intel wanted to know something they had to submit any questions to their foreign counterparts in writing, with the near certain knowledge it would be asked under torture, and ineffectively at that. Guantanamo was established to create an environment where terrorists might be aggressively interrogated in a manner falling short of the tortures applied by foreign governments. In the aftermath of 9/11 it was deemed important to fix what was broke. It’s easy to forget that Guantanamo was conceived as the solution to a Clinton era problem. But don’t worry the problem is back in full force.

If an unpleasant condition persists over years, we convince ourselves that our situation is untenable and upend the applecart. Sometimes it works, other times we look back with regret and call those the good old days. © 2009 Stephen Yuen