Bush Knowingly Imprisoned Innocents

Many of us on the left have been calling for Bush, Cheney and others in that administration to be held accountable for the crimes they committed. They started and waged an illegal war with a country that posed us no danger, resulting in the deaths of millions of people. They trashed the Constitution by spying on American citizens and others without a search warrant. And they made a mockery of the rule of law by keeping people in prison for years without charges or a trial.

Now we learn of another crime they committed -- putting people in prison and keeping them there for years even though they knew those people were innocent. This is inexcusable behavior for any government, and what makes it worse is that they did it for political reasons. Justifying their own atrocious behavior was more important than the lives of hundreds of innocent people.

This is not just my view. It is the view and sworn testimony of a high-ranking official in the Bush administration -- Lawrence Wilkerson. Colonel Wilkerson, a 31 year U.S. Army veteran, was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the Bush presidency. His accusations were made in a signed and sworn declaration in support of an innocent former Guantanamo detainee.

Wilkerson said hundreds of prisoners were turned over to U.S. officials by Afghans and Pakistanis for cash payments of up to $5000, and there was little or no evidence that these men (and children as young as 12) were terrorists or ever had any kind of connection to terrorism. In other words, they were innocent victims. But that did not stop the Bush administration from sending them to Guantanamo, torturing them and using them as public relations pawns to justify the Iraqi invasion and occupation.

Wilkerson said Cheney and Rumsfeld refused to release the detainees known to be innocent because "the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were", and that was "not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD."

He went on to say that Cheney "had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent. . .if hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it."

Wilkerson said that according to Cheney and Rumsfeld "innocent people languishing in Guantanamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks."

But it gets even worse. Wilkerson said, "I discussed the issue of the Guantanamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantanamo decision making."

This is deplorable behavior for a government official of any rank. There is no justification, and never will be any justification for putting an innocent person in prison, or keeping a person in prison after determining the person's innocence. This goes against not only the rule of law, but the very foundations of a free country.

Isn't it time we gave Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld a fair trial and some prison jumpsuits? Isn't it time for these guilty men to experience what they put hundreds of innocent persons through?