They're really lying about Guantanamo

Now, I know I shouldn't be surprised by the breadth of the Bush Administration's lies and deception...I know...yet, still, I am. All the speechifying about the bad asses at Guantanamo has been pretty much false. National Journal has a major expose on the subject. Stuart Taylor's column provides key facts you won't hear from the Bush Administration:

A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).

Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.

Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.

The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.

This is almost unbelievable. The article and the column combine to tell a story that is completely un-American, yet completely believable in the Bush world. It's been almost five years that the U.S. has operated this despicable prison camp. And, now, we are learning that Guantanamo -- like so many other of the schemes proferred by Bush -- has been based on lies. Taylor provides a powerful conclusion:

Last July, the Pentagon elaborated in a report of an investigation into complaints by FBI agents of abusive interrogation methods. Many of these methods -- such as shackling detainees to the floor for hours in painful positions, keeping them shivering cold during interrogations, grilling them for 16 hours nonstop, waking them up by moving them every few hours, using loud music and strobe lights -- had been officially approved as "humane," the Pentagon report explained.

Bush has also pledged that the Guantanamo detainees are treated "humanely." At the same time, he has stressed, "I know for certain ... that these are bad people" -- all of them, he has implied.

If the president believes either of these assertions, he is a fool. If he does not, choose your own word for him.

I'm sure many of you have your own word for him. I am thinking "depraved" for starters.

These people just can't be trusted. You think the domestic spying program is running more effectively?