U.S. forces have held 35,000 detainees in Iraq since the onset of war. Of those, only 1,300 have been tried, and only half of those tried have been convicted, averaging roughly two percent of the detainee population. The combined figures of those detainee in both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 is upwards of 70,000.
According to CENTCOM sources, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq has so far held 684 ‘Coalition trials’ involving 1,259 security detainees, in which a total of only 636 detainees were convicted. Sources say that in total more than 21,000 detainees have been released from Iraq internment facilities. The CENTCOM slide contains a graphical breakdown of each camp and its detainee population. Included in this count are Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, Camp Cropper, Fort Suse and Camp Ashraf. Other, less known camps are not included in this count, including Al-Kazimiyah and Al-Nasiriyah. Sources familiar with US detention camps also point to an alleged facility at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, as well as an installation on the USS Baton.
Again, look at the CENTCOM numbers and explain to me how it is possible that we captured this many "terrorists" when there are not this many terrorists [at least prior to Bush’s 8 year crime spree] in the world to begin with? If only 2% were tried and convicted, what happened to the rest? Let us even assume that only a few thousand were detained for a longer period of time, tortured, and then released, why so many? It does not require that many people to be tortured into a false confession. A handful is enough. So if we have a faux "war on terror" does it not follow that such a war should have a faux "terrorist" army we are at war with? I think you can see where I am going with this and this idea has haunted me. To make the question very clear, let me restate it more simply:Did we torture and release prisoners in order to radicalize them and create the enemy army we needed to justify an endless "war on terror?"
To consider this possibility even in passing is like experiencing a slow mental bleed, but now considering that this set of crimes could in fact be likely is the loss of hope and faith in everything that I thought this country stood for. I think you can understand why I have been so reluctant to publicly discuss this theory. I have had trouble just considering it because of my strong faith in the good of my country. I don’t know if and how this could be proved, but the circumstantial evidence is starting to point in this unavoidably horrific direction.
I can’t yet allow myself to go in that direction. I’ll leave that one for her. But I have to admit that it wasn’t so long ago that I would’ve dismissed the idea that we would torture prisoners in order to create a "faux-link" between al Qaeda and Iraq to justify the invasion of Iraq. I would’ve called such an idea an apocalyptic conspiracy theory. But I now believe that’s exactly what we did. So it’s getting hard to rule out anything.
I was so tangled up in the outrage at those awful pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib five years ago that it never occurred to me to ask, "Who were those prisoners?" In light of what we’ve learned about Gitmo recently, it’s a really obvious question. Recently, we’ve focused our attention on the "high value" detainees and their treatment, but we also know that a lot of those people at Gitmo were innocents swept up and held for no real reason. The number of people in the Cuban facility was small, "Since October 7, 2001, when the current war in Afghanistan began, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. Of these, approximately 420 have been released without charge. As of January 2009, approximately 245 detainees remain" compared to these numbers from CENTCOM of the prisoners held in Iraq.
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