Who were the prisoners of Guantanamo?

Who were the prisoners of Guantanamo? Andy Worthington has compiled a four-part series telling us their stories. Here's the disturbing bottom line:

[A]t least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism.

I don't pretend to know enough to know whether these accounts are totally accurate, but they are filled with details, personal anecdotes, statistics and reports regarding individual court cases. It has a strong ring of authenticity. Further, these individual accounts corroborate general accounts produced elsewhere. I have no reason to disbelieve any part of Andy Worthington's work. He is a well-reputed journalist who has published elsewhere, such as this post at Huffington Post. I am proud to be an American. America does much right in the world and has the potential to do much more that is admirable. This account by Andy Worthington, however, describes America at its shameful worst.

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Obama bludgeons Al-Qaeda without any physical weapons

It was entirely predictable, of course. By undoing many of the Bush Administration policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of the so-called "War on Terror" and reducing the war rhetoric aimed at residents of the Middle East, Obama has done some significant damage to Al-Qaeda without the use of any physical weapons The Washington Post reports that Al-Qaeda is reeling these days, because it has lost its best recruiting tool: George W. Bush. Barack Obama's election has resulting in a strong barrage of words by Al-Qaeda, claiming that Obama has killed innocent Muslims and that he is even responsible for the violence in Gaza.

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The enemy of my enemy

I see lots of upside to Al-Qaeda's use of a racial slur to demean President-elect Barack Obama.  Perhaps these racial slurs will wake up some of those rabid Palinites who thought that Barack Obama was doing the bidding of Al-Qaeda all along. Consider, also, that many conservatives are xenophobically patriotic.  …

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What did Barack Obama say about invading Iraq in 2002?

Obama's full speech is here.    What follows is a long excerpt from this October 2, 2002 speech: Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and…

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A drinking game about the President’s al Qaeda obsessions

Chris Kelly writes about that "thing" on the President's mind during today's 45 minute trip to Rhode Island. Bush dropped in, to see what condition his condition was in, and to address the Naval War College. For the audience members playing the drinking game, the 9/11 references were: 1) "This…

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