Cover-up? Were Guantánamo “Asymmetrical Warfare” Suicides Murder?

[JihadJane]

'The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle'

http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368


“taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good P.R. move.” - Colleen Graffy, a deputy assistant secretary of state.


“They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own.” - Admiral Harris (on whose watch the men died)


“These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg.” - Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, the Pentagon’s chief press officer

 

[Caustic Logic]

No JJ there is no cover-up. It's clear these three prisoners stuffed rags into their own mouths, before tying themselves up of course, but after putting the nooses on. They coordinated this "assymmetrical warfare" due to the lax civil liberties afforded at such facilities. Measure were surely tightened. Terrorists are known to launch coordinated attacks like this. Don't tell me some terrorists in a cave in Pakistan don't know how to tie a noose. Before hoog tying themselves.

And the Pentagon was quite open about these details at the time as you recall. No cover up. It's such a boring CT I couldn't even bring myself to keep reading. Harper's gone woo!


That fine General now in charge of the Sixth Fleet. I foresee an unfortunate but politically useful naval mishap under his guidance and swift advancement to the JCS.

 

[Infoexcavator]

Olbermann ran a piece on this, he is a hatemongering douchebag but this video gives some info on this story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHupKGP3iX8

 

[JihadJane]

No JJ there is no cover-up ...

... Harper's gone woo!


That fine General now in charge of the Sixth Fleet. I foresee an unfortunate but politically useful naval mishap under his guidance and swift advancement to the JCS.

Olbermann ran a piece on this, he is a hatemongering douchebag but this video gives some info on this story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHupKGP3iX8

Thanks for the link.

Assuming you are seriously calling Olbermann "a hatemongering douchebag", can explain why you do so?

 

[Infoexcavator]

Assuming you are seriously calling Olbermann "a hatemongering douchebag", can explain why you do so?

Because of the attacks on Scott Brown, they were complete hatred and smearing.

 

[Praktik]

already a thread on this...

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165116

 

[JihadJane]

Oh, thanks. I wondered where the crowds were...

 

[Rolfe]

The crowds won't be here. If you can persuade the forum that discussion of a false conviction or similar establishment error is politics, or social affairs, the threads will grow. If it's classified as a conspiracy theory, any thread discussing it will be moved here, and ignored.

Enjoy it while you can.

Rolfe.

 

[JihadJane]

The crowds won't be here. If you can persuade the forum that discussion of a false conviction or similar establishment error is politics, or social affairs, the threads will grow. If it's classified as a conspiracy theory, any thread discussing it will be moved here, and ignored.

What!? Are you implying that the label "conspiracy theory" is more propagandistic than scientific?

 

[Horatius]

What!? Are you implying that the label "conspiracy theory" is more propagandistic than scientific?

Okay, I'll take a stab at explaining the problem with discussing this in the CT forum.

In that other thread, you posted:

The problem may be that almost every branch of the government appears to be implicated in the cover-up that followed the deaths.

That article starts off: "It’s hard to know where to begin with this profoundly important story by Scott Horton, for next month's Harper’s Magazine..."

Well, it's not hard to know where to start off when discussing this as an example of a Conspiracy Theory. First and foremost is to ask, have any of the "alternative theorists" who always strut about bragging about how they're so much more knowledgeable than us about how the world works ever suggested, prior to this article, that such a conspiracy to cover up murder existed in this case?

If these allegations are true, and that's still not proven, then this would have been an example of a conspiracy. But once again it would seem the CTists missed it completely.

However, it does act as yet another example of how conspiracies work in the real world: Fairly small, rather sordid, and exposed by people involved who could not accept the guilt by association of staying quiet when they believed they had information that could expose the conspiracy.

It also shows that, if real, "they" could not cover up a few murders, even when they took place in a facility over which they had almost perfect control. How much less likely is it they could cover up other murders in less controlled situations?

If this is true, it's a pretty messed up situation, but it won't be the CT boys who will clear it up. It will be cleared up by the very people the CT boys are always accusing of being "In on it".

 

[JihadJane]

Okay, I'll take a stab at explaining the problem with discussing this in the CT forum.

In that other thread, you posted:






That article starts off: "It’s hard to know where to begin with this profoundly important story by Scott Horton, for next month's Harper’s Magazine..."

Well, it's not hard to know where to start off when discussing this as an example of a Conspiracy Theory. First and foremost is to ask, have any of the "alternative theorists" who always strut about bragging about how they're so much more knowledgeable than us about how the world works ever suggested, prior to this article, that such a conspiracy to cover up murder existed in this case?

If these allegations are true, and that's still not proven, then this would have been an example of a conspiracy. But once again it would seem the CTists missed it completely.

However, it does act as yet another example of how conspiracies work in the real world: Fairly small, rather sordid, and exposed by people involved who could not accept the guilt by association of staying quiet when they believed they had information that could expose the conspiracy.

It also shows that, if real, "they" could not cover up a few murders, even when they took place in a facility over which they had almost perfect control. How much less likely is it they could cover up other murders in less controlled situations?

If this is true, it's a pretty messed up situation, but it won't be the CT boys who will clear it up. It will be cleared up by the very people the CT boys are always accusing of being "In on it".

Thanks for your response. It's interesting that you frame the problem as a gang issue ("CT boys").

In this case, the ludicrous conspiracy theory is one promulgated by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service, namely that three Gitmo detainees simultaneously hung themselves in separate, non-adjacent cells after binding their own hands and shoving rags down their own throats.

At the time, the US military outrageously described their "suicides" as "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

Why haven't debunkers (DB boys?) been busy debunking this transparently ridiculous conspiracy theory?

(BTW, gathering one's men together, telling them the official cover story and ordering them not to tell anyone else is hardly an example of "perfect control"!)

 

[Horatius]

Why haven't debunkers (DB boys?) been busy debunking this transparently ridiculous conspiracy theory?

Largely because there are already lots of people examining the Government's various claims, and doing the work needed to establish when and if they are lying.

Have you seen these links?

'The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle'

http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

Oh, yes, I guess you have.

(BTW, gathering one's men together, telling them the official cover story and ordering them not to tell anyone else is hardly an example of "perfect control"!)

Okay, I should have said "as close to perfect as is ever likely to happen", but that of course just re-emphasizes my point. CTists would have us believe that government employees of all types would just follow orders, no questions asked, and never look askance at any of the odd events they would witness in the process of "just doing their jobs" as a cog in the Conspiracy Machine. This is yet another real-world example that shows the CT version of how the government, and the military in particular, works is completely unrelated to reality.

 

[JihadJane]

Largely because there are already lots of people examining the Government's various claims, and doing the work needed to establish when and if they are lying.

Have you seen these links?





Oh, yes, I guess you have.

It happened in 2006. Why the lack of interest from JREF debunkers?

Okay, I should have said "as close to perfect as is ever likely to happen", but that of course just re-emphasizes my point. CTists would have us believe that government employees of all types would just follow orders, no questions asked, and never look askance at any of the odd events they would witness in the process of "just doing their jobs" as a cog in the Conspiracy Machine. This is yet another real-world example that shows the CT version of how the government, and the military in particular, works is completely unrelated to reality.

I don't care what "CTists" would have us believe.

A clandestine operation, such as Israel secretly planting bombs in Egypt to be blamed on someone else, for example, is completely different to an event which contains elements which were impossible to hide from ordinary soldiers on guard duty.

To attempt to conflate the two suggests the propagandistic charge of the all-encompassing "conspiracy theory" label has accomplished its politically useful, thought-stopping effect.

 

[Horatius]

It happened in 2006. Why the lack of interest from JREF debunkers?

I told you why. There are already people doing that job. Most of us here are amateur debunkers - we do it in our free time. There are already plenty of professional debunkers looking into such stories, and I have confidence that they will do a good job, even if they might not do it fast enough to suit you.


Abu Ghraib and Pat Tillman are other such examples. I'm sure we could find more. When the real work is already being done, and done well, why should we get all in a bother every time anything happens that might be a cover up?

 

[JihadJane]

I told you why. There are already people doing that job. Most of us here are amateur debunkers - we do it in our free time. There are already plenty of professional debunkers looking into such stories, and I have confidence that they will do a good job, even if they might not do it fast enough to suit you.

Was the 9/11 Commission Report an amateur effort, the NIST "investigations"? If not, why do amateur debunkers still bother with all that 9/11 conspiracy stuff?

Abu Ghraib and Pat Tillman are other such examples. I'm sure we could find more. When the real work is already being done, and done well, why should we get all in a bother every time anything happens that might be a cover up?

Covering up the killing of prisoners in an overseas concentration camp, containing the world's "worst of the worst" terrorists, by claiming that they were suicidal acts of "asymmetrical warfare' is somewhat out of the ordinary.

Neither Abu Ghraib nor the Pat Tillman scandals are comparable to the clandestine intelligence operation example I gave, above.

I've never understood the logic of :"These secrets were uncovered; that proves there aren't any more secrets that we don't know about".


(BTW, The Pat Tillman story was broken by people you would label "CTists". I assume, without 100% confidence, however, that you would spare Seymour Hersh the label.)

 

[Horatius]

Was the 9/11 Commission Report an amateur effort, the NIST "investigations"? If not, why do amateur debunkers still bother with all that 9/11 conspiracy stuff?

Maybe because there are a lot of weirdos going out of their way to bring those topics up in all sorts of different fora? Might that have had something to do with attracting our attention?

I suspect if you had a large group of people continually trying to use this cover-up to somehow support their misguided beliefs about how the world works, you'd see more of us looking into it.

But turn it around, Jane: You're the one who sees cover-ups every time the government does anything. Where were you in 2006? Why did you wait until this Harper's article to suddenly get all worked up over this issue? I've explained why I don't start jumping up and down shouting "Cover-up!" every time I hear about someone dying in prison. Why is it that you didn't start shouting about a cover-up in this case, which might actually be a cover-up?

Just think of the "I told you so!" sniping you could be doing now, if only you actually knew what you were talking about. Too bad you'd rather spend time playing gotcha with debunkers, instead of actually trying to expose these events. You know, like the Harper's people do.

 

[Horatius]

(BTW, The Pat Tillman story was broken by people you would label "CTists". I assume, without 100% confidence, however, that you would spare Seymour Hersh the label.)

29 May 2004 - Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. made the first public announcement that Tillman had probably been killed by friendly fire; announcement made at at Fort Bragg, NC.

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/wariniraq/a/pat_tillman.htm

PRESS STATEMENT BY LT. GEN. PHILIP R. KENSINGER JR.
DELIVERED AT 9:15 A.M., MAY 29 AT STRYKER GOLF COURSE, FORT BRAGG, N.C.

KENSINGER: Good morning. I would like to make a brief statement on the events surrounding the death of Corporal Pat Tillman April 22 in Afghanistan. I will not be taking questions.

A military investigation by U.S. Central Command into the circumstances of the 22 April death of Corporal Patrick Tillman is complete.

While there was no one specific finding of fault, the investigation results indicate that Corporal Tillman probably died as a result of friendly fire while his unit was engaged in combat with enemy forces.

http://news.soc.mil/releases/News Archive/2004/04MAY/040529-01.htm



So, were you referring to Gen. Kensinger as a person I would "label "CTists"", or do you have some evidence of someone else posting a theory like this earlier? Because I haven't been able to find it.

 

[INRM]

I would not be surprised if a number of them were tortured to death...

INRM

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

That fine General now in charge of the Sixth Fleet.

It's funny watching conspiracy quacks trying to act as if they know something about the military.

 

[dudalb]

It's funny watching conspiracy quacks trying to act as if they know something about the military.

And, sadly, the Tinfoilers are not the only ones who discourse about the Military while knowing nothing about it.