Bush, Cheney, & Rumsfeld “Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent”

The Times of London reports on allegations of additional  war crimes committed by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Lawrence Wilkerson alleges that the three knew that hundreds of prisoners at Gitmo were innocent but covered this up because it would impeded their push to go to war:

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.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

Jon Stewart Explains The Big Bang Treaty

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Big Bang Treaty
www.thedailyshow.com
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Jon Stewart provides a much more accurate report on Barack Obama’s policy on nuclear weapons than Fox, which is hardly a surprise. As Stewart pointed out:

We’re at the point now that the by far No. 1-ranked news network in this country no longer feels the need to accurately report what a policy document says in black and white. And once you free yourself from the fetters of fact shackles — or fackles — in the present day, you’d be amazed at what you can do to the facts from the past.

Or, as Crooks and Liars puts it:

He then goes on an extended riff pointing out that what Obama’s trying to achieve is precisely in line with what Ronald Reagan said he hoped to achieve as well — while the Foxheads trot out Reagan as proof of Obama’s weakness.