Who Exactly Are The Gitmo 'Killers'?

Andrew Cohen Wonders If The Detainees In U.S. Custody Are The 'Worst Of The Worst'

(CBS) 
Military officials on their forms "described each prisoner’s nexus to" Al Qaeda and /or the Taliban. According to the Seton Hall report, sixty percent of the men were only "associated with" a terror group. Thirty percent of the men were deemed to be "members of" a terror group. Only eight percent of the detainees were deemed as "fighters for" a terror group. The report notes that even the definitions of "associated with" and "members of" are ambiguous. This statistic also refutes the Attorney General’s lamentable label for the men. Being "associated with" the Taliban might be a bad career move but it doesn’t necessary make a person a "killer" or a threat to our national security.

And, finally, there is this. According to the report, to support conclusions that some of the men are "enemy combatants," military interrogators "cited as proof" evidence such as the fact that the men possessed Casio watches and wore "olive drab clothing." One man was classified as "an enemy combatant" because he "traveled with and shared hotel rooms with" a member of the Taliban government. The point is not to dispute the classifications. They speak for themselves. The point is to highlight the vast gulf between what kind of men we are holding in Cuba and what kind of men our government wants us to believe that they are.

Does the Seton Hall Report dismiss completely the evidence compiled by military officials? Absolutely not. "The evidence satisfactory to the Government for some of the detainees is formidable," the lawyers state. "For this group, the Government’s evidence portrays a detainee as a powerful, dangerous and knowledgeable man who enjoyed positions of considerable power within the prohibited organizations. The evidence against them is concrete and plausible." However, the Report concludes "there are only a very few individuals who [were] actively engaged in any activities for al Qaeda. For example, 11 percent of detainees allegedly met with Bin Laden. Eleven detainees (out of more than 500, remember) "swore an oath" to him.

Are these detainees the "killers" that the Attorney General is talking about? If so, the government ought to say so, and prove it, and then stop referring to all of the detainees in that manner. If not, then the Attorney General should be required to explain just which detainees he is talking about when he talks about the "killers" the feds want to dispatch so economically that they are willing to violate the Constitution to do so. And if the Seton Hall report is wrong, in whole or in part, the government should say so too, and explain how those "Combatant Status Review Letters" really say something other than what the lawyers say it does. Amidst all this Washington talk about "deferring" to the "expertise" of the military it’s time the politicians put their money where their mouths have been.

To correct the record in this fashion—to give lie to the lie, if you will— is not to condone the action of the detainees or to suggest that those who have committed crimes or engaged in terrorism shouldn’t be punished. Of course they should be. But that is a far cry from calling a group of men "killers" when the vast majority of them clearly aren’t. The great national debate over the fate of the men—and the fate of our nation’s laws in a time of war-- demands far more candor and precision, and far less cheap rhetoric, than what the Attorney General offered the other day.