Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And now joining us on the line, I do believe, is Andy Worthington.
From England, welcome to the show.
Hi Scott, can you hear me okay?
Yeah, thanks very much for calling in.
Alright, so for those not familiar, Andy Worthington keeps the website AndyWorthington.co.uk He's the author of the book, The Guantanamo Files, which was the most complete at the time, anyway, profiles of well, and still is, probably although more has come out since then profiles of all 759, I think it is people who were ever held, that we know of that were ever held by our government at the gulag down in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and he also made the movie Outside the Law about that same topic and he's really the United States' number one expert on the Guantanamo prison from over there in England and so now I've got to say in your face, Andy, because everything you ever said about torture is wrong because I heard that they tortured the truth about the courier in order to get Osama Bin Laden, which made the last 10 years of everything worth it and so what have you got to say to that?
Probably nothing.
If only.
Well, no, I mean, it's all just been distorted horribly, hasn't it?
As I feared you know, we've really, I think it seems to be now permanently somewhere where the truth is turned into its opposite so, you know, here we have nearly 10 years after the war on terror started with the deaths of over 6,000 American service people with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan with the cost of this somewhere beyond anyone's comprehension we finally end up with this, you know this mission to kill the primary bogeyman the number one enemy Osama Bin Laden game over, Osama Bin Laden killed time to get out of Afghanistan time to declare the war on terror over time to close Guantanamo, time to start again time to have a peace dividend and apparently not apparently no apparently this is time to start the war on terror again is to make things bigger and better than they were before is to keep Guantanamo open is to lie when given the opportunity in the media and say that it was torture and Guantanamo that led to Bin Laden when neither of those things is true Alright, well then, if you can refute specifically the allegation that it was the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that led to the information of the name of the courier who was tracked to the house where Bin Laden was staying Well my understanding and you know I read something yesterday and I'm not even sure who it was now going through Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story about how although a courier was mentioned he actually sent them in the wrong direction about saying this guy had retired and all kinds of stuff so no, he only, obviously Bin Laden had couriers and they were trying to get the information about who these people might be and so some information emerged from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but not when he was being tortured similarly with a man called Abu Faraj al-Libi another high value detainee that most people haven't heard of who's at Guantanamo no information from him when he was being tortured but when he was also held in a black site and somebody else held in a secret prison a man called Hassan Gul the main thing about him is that we don't actually know where the hell he is he disappeared and his whereabouts have never been explained and I think if people are going to be bandying his name around as a source of information it might be nice if somebody at some point said what did you do with this man?did you kill him?is he still in a prison somewhere?what happened?but anyway, these are the people torture was not used in extracting any of this information that's the bottom line so people who are trying to defend that are just completely wrong that isn't the way that you get reliable information it's that you build a rapport with your prisoner so when this information did arise then it arose under those circumstances now, anybody who tries to then say that Guantanamo was useful to this is completely missing the point the information came specifically from a number of people regarded as significant and it came through specifically tailored hands-free interrogation of these people now this would have taken place not in a place like Guantanamo in fact, particularly Guantanamo is a bad example of the kind of detention facilities that are required and I would say that what this proves is exactly the opposite of what people are trying to claim Scott, which is that Guantanamo is exactly the wrong sort of place to obtain the kind of reliable information that led to tracking down Osama Bin Laden because what Guantanamo is is a place where people were largely rounded up randomly and as we have seen were then either had pressure put on them themselves or their fellow prisoners had pressure put on them to start telling stories about everybody else who was there you know, in a way that is completely unreliable it's a fiction it's a house of cards the WikiLeaks recent revelations actually show this the number of tortured prisoners and well known informants within Guantanamo who told lies about their fellow prisoners so for me we got to hold it there Andy, I'm sorry, we got to hold it there and take this break we'll be right back let's finish that point and some more it's Andy Worthington on Anti-War Radio alright y'all, it's Anti-War Radio I'm Scott Horton I'm talking with Andy Worthington his website is andyworthington.co.uk he also writes for Truthout for the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org and all kinds of things let's see, I got one here that's in the public interest all over the place and Andy, you were wrapping up the point there debunking the torturers now vindicated because somebody shot Osama Bin Laden in the head yeah, well you know I just think black is white really when it comes to how things should go on Scott I don't know what to do about it really, I mean it's so absurd it's really, you know, everything all the words that spring to mind are Alice in Wonderland and Kafka and Orwellian and you know, why are we in a place where the opposite conclusion is taken when something has happened you know, I have my problems with this whole in the way that it was executed if this really was the man I wanted to see him on trial it would have been a fitting end to this 10 years, but okay well they blew him away we have the false narrative, he wasn't using his wife as a human shield, he wasn't armed, that goes around the world and everybody believes it, and then afterwards it's like well no, actually he wasn't, he was in his pajamas and he wasn't armed, and he didn't use his wife as a human shield, and what are we to think this guy doesn't seem to be much of the operator of anything by the time he was killed but that's happened but to have it used as something that isn't a conclusion, that is the start of something new it sickens me to be honest the fun part to me is watching all the reaction in the street the USA we're number one and yellow ribbons and all this chanting and cheering as the last 10 years never happened, as though there's not a million dead Iraqis way on the other side of Persia from where any of this took place it's just amazing it's not really the appropriate response is it when you think of the loss of life let's take this even from a very narrow patriotic point of view of the number of American service people who died to be leaping up and down and shouting USA USA, what does that really say for all those people who've died I would have thought that something rather more somber would have been a justifiable response to this so that was really rather unedifying to be watching that to be comparing it to US flag burning crowds around the world it's been very much two sides of the same coin if you like but if we don't move beyond where we've been and I know obviously the anti-war movement in the states is really hoping to push on this one but let's face it, they are still up against the famous military-industrial complex that America now seems to be a country that too many people in power wanted to be in a state of perpetual war so is there any way to bring this to an end?
I'm not sure but I'm certainly, I would hope that it will provide a trigger for a significant number of people in the United States to try and push the government to say, you know, this has got to mean something, this has got to mean a reduction in what we're doing, this has got to mean a change to what's happening I'm afraid your appeal to reason is not going to be what gets it done here my appeal to reason has been falling on deaf ears for years I mean, you know we have to keep trying well, you know let's talk about how, you know, what you'd like to see is just a trial for this guy they say he did it, let's put him on trial and then we'll convict the hell out of him turn him over to 12 American jurors and see how well he does at the end of his prosecution we've got a 99% conviction rate over here for a reason and it's not because everybody's guilty, it's because the courts might as well be Guantanamo military commissions at this point anyway and then we'd have the whole PR thing on our side, like, see, this is how a republic with a bill of rights does it and all that, and yet Ron Paul basically stated that position on the radio a couple of days ago and everybody is just absolutely shocked to hear him say, yeah, why not go in there with the Pakistani cops and arrest the guy and put him on trial it worked for Ramzi Youssef, it worked for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at least having the cops arrest him did and, you know, that's what we're supposed to do why assassinations and secret prisons and torture, I don't get it, and people are just absolutely taken aback by the idea that you would capture someone guilty of a heinous crime, and then, or accused of one, and then you would prosecute him to make sure of it, and then punish him based on that, you know?
Well, you know, I mean mentioning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is interesting in this context, you know and Ramzi Youssef, because you know, back in 1993 when Ramzi Youssef tried to blow up the World Trade Center and was then captured, and was then taken to the United States and put on trial federal court trial, life sentence it was understood that terrorism was a crime, and by the time it came to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his uncle, and his involvement in the 9-11 attacks suddenly it's completely unacceptable to regard terrorism as a crime, because of the war on terror, and so the huge uproar about, we can't put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in the federal court because Al-Qaeda will send airplanes raining down from the skies, and all this nonsense.
Why can we not have a trial for this?
This was a crime, the same as the crime was that his nephew tried in 1993, but it's part of how the narrative has changed, and that, you know, you're not allowed to put these people on trial you're not allowed to talk about putting people on trial if you use two magic words and there are just two magic words you use the word Guantanamo, and you use the word 9-11, and if you put those together all the normal rules don't apply, I mean all through President Bush's two terms of his presidency while all this nonsense was going on in Guantanamo in the secret prisons with the torture, with the extraordinary rendition criminal trials were taking place for people accused of involvement with terrorism so long as it didn't involve Guantanamo or 9-11, that was fine, and you know, and one man is now serving a life sentence, who was in Guantanamo, which is Ahmed Kalfan Gailani, the Tanzanian accused of involvement in the 1998 bombings who was successfully prosecuted and is now serving a life sentence, and yet he is the one who slipped through the net he is the exception to the rule and it's just ridiculous really and I mean, to be honest Scott, you know what this does outside the United States, and I know that the kind of people who are pushing for these things in the United States the last thing they care about is what anybody in the rest of the world thinks of them but they do look ridiculous they look like people whose sense of reality is distorted, they look like people who are panicked, who are cowards who pretend to be tough but are actually really weak you know, what happened to the institution of law, why can that not be put in the centre again when it comes to issues involving terrorism and for the American people to be proud of being able to do something like that yeah, well and you know, as you say it's just like with getting good intelligence, it's not just that they're wrong it's that the truth is the exact opposite of what they say, they torture and they get a bunch of really bad intelligence they say, you know, all of this is about keeping us safe when being a country of torturers you think like, you know, when Michael Shoyer first left the CIA and wrote his book and said here are the six reasons they attack us occupying Saudi Arabia bombing Iraq and blockading Iraq from it support for Israel support for torture dictatorships and control over the price of oil and all these things, well adding to that list, they're a bunch of torturers is the best propaganda that the enemy could possibly have on their side and there's, you know, it's not just speculation or whatever, you look at it's a pseudonym, but so-called Matthew Alexander, the guy who got the information that led to the location of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq he said, you know, he really challenged his superior officers and said, look, let me just try it my way, and that is instead of beating everything out of them, I'll make them small promises and build trust and get them to tell me things and what he says, they all say, yeah, as soon as we saw the pictures of Abu Ghraib in Guantanamo we knew that you guys were the evil empire you were saying you weren't, and that's when we went to join up, and of course these are a lot of the same people who are now our friends in Libya but that's a different story forget appealing to reason appeal to fear, you know, being a torture state is what causes people to want to do terrorist attacks against us and our forces around the world yeah, yeah, yeah, well, you know I mean, the fact is, Scott, that Matthew Alexander has had media coverage I mean, the fact is that I think that in the United States, every time that somebody tries to interview Dick Cheney Matthew Alexander should be, you know should be able to jam the recording and put him on instead or every time that Dick Cheney or one of the other torture apologists speaks the least allow Matthew Alexander to respond you know, because this is a man illustrating the best of America you know, that we can do things lawfully not only because it's right to do that because it's the only intelligent way to behave and, you know and otherwise we end up in a very dangerous place where people are driven by fear where people are indulging in violent fantasies as though they're somehow useful when they're actually counterproductive that's a really dangerous place to be for any amount of time and essentially, I think the outline of that is where the United States has been for nearly ten years and it explains why those advocates of torture, when they get the opportunity are so bullish about it and it's why and I understand political reasoning but it's why President Obama has absolutely failed in his responsibility to hold accountable the people who authorized torture in the previous regime well, and you know, we've talked about this for years but I just read it somewhere the other day where I was surprised to see it, I forget it was some major paper where someone was picking up on the comparison to when Ike Eisenhower, after stealing the nomination from Robert Taft and became president he basically, by refusing to repeal any of the New Deal in the 20 years of Roosevelt and Truman was putting his stamp on this is the permanent American way from now on, kind of thing the precedent was set and ratified by his refusal to undo any of it, and that's exactly what we have with what was even compared to Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush and them you know, an aberrational rebellion against the theory of law at all during the Bush years with Obama refusing to hold anyone accountable and refusing to change any of these policies, really all he's doing is making it permanent, it's not just that Bush had a torture program, it's that this is a permanent part of the American way of life now, because of Obama's refusal to live up to his promises on this issue well yeah, exactly, you know, and the problem and the problem with somewhere like Guantanamo where he's ground to a halt with being able to close it and release anyone from there, you know, because of his own failures and because of the way that his opponents have seized on it as a win-win situation for scaremongering for passing outrageous laws unconstitutionally tying his hands on what the President is allowed to do in these cases you know, all of this is happening, you know, if he leaves office without having addressed it you know, how is Guantanamo ever going to close?
I wonder, Scott, because let's say he gets in again, or let's say some other Democrat gets in, why are they going to change it?
And if a Republican gets in well, you know, most of the stuff that Bush set up is still in place Yeah, Romney said double Guantanamo, triple it!
Right, yeah.
And that's the kind of stuff that's being talked about, you know, at the moment you know that there are two bills that have been proposed this week in the House and the Senate by some of the usual suspects you know, of exactly the people wanting to capitalize the wrong way on the death of Osama bin Laden and the false narrative of torture in Guantanamo to say, see, we need Guantanamo, see, we need to be able to send new people to Guantanamo, you know, and all of this stuff.
To basically cancel the original authorization to use military force after September 11th and redefine in a way to make the worst of these power grabs officially acts of Congress now.
Right, exactly.
Well, to update the authorization I mean, the authorization for use of military force which, you know, a shockingly small number of people in the United States seem to know or understand is a founding document for capturing anyone that the President thinks is connected with Al-Qaeda the Taliban responsible for 9-11.
It's a foundational document for Guantanamo.
It's the basis for holding people in Guantanamo once you've stripped away what President Bush asserted, which was what went hand-in-hand with this under Bush was he said my close buddies have told me that I'm the Commander-in-Chief in wartime and I can do what the hell I want.
And President Obama came in and said, I don't accept that but what I do accept is that I have the right to do these things because of this legislation.
They were both taking advantage of that very loose language there you're right, Bush, more the loose language of Article 2 than of just that authorization but what this new bill does it takes every one of these power grabs and basically goes ahead and encodes them.
So instead of it really even being challengeable anymore that like, hey, the authorization to use military force doesn't say that you can do this that or the other thing and it's going too far to claim that it does, would then become moot, completely.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely I mean, you know that's exactly what we've been talking about today, isn't it?
It's like, how wrong how terrifying can it be that, you know, I've referred to it as a peace dividend.
I think the death of Osama bin Laden ought to lead to some kind of peace dividend some kind of scaling down of operations in the sense of getting out of places where this is not working after nearly 10 years this must mean some part of the mission must have been accomplished this is the number one guy in what sense is this not mission accomplished you know, can we stop losing lives and spending money and killing people for no reason the common sense answer has got to be yes, doesn't it, Scott?
But, you know, where has common sense gone?
It has blown away from the modern day United States, it seems to me Well, I mean, the thing is, too is don't believe the empire's propaganda about what a democracy America is the fact of the matter is, most Americans in general on these things agree with us but we don't have any control whatsoever over the political government, especially at the national level in this country whatsoever it's in the hands of the war party it's not up to us anymore than you know, Robert Mugabe is up to the people Right, yeah, yeah Well, I think we all have those problems, Scott I think we have the same problem in this country of a minority of people claiming to have a mandate from the people to do what is not popular Exactly, alright, well, we've got to leave it there we're way over time, but I really appreciate your time as always, Andy, it's been great Yeah, well, it was always a pleasure to talk to you as well, Scott, and yeah until the next time Alright, everybody, that's the great Andy Worthington dot C-O dot U-K the book is The Guantanamo Files the movie is Outside the Law and he writes all over the place online for example, The Public Record at pubrecord.org The Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org Truthout at truthout.org and more than that too go look him up, we'll be back
