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I am sympathetic your outrage — but I think you're insufficiently cynical if you can't figure out why he's stuck in that concentration camp despite everyone agr

I am sympathetic your outrage — but I think you're insufficiently cynical if you can't figure out why he's stuck in that concentration camp despite everyone agreeing he's innocent. To release him now would be an admission of comprehensive institutional failure at every level -- from his initial capture, through mis-identification, rendition, torture and ongoing imprisonment. The longer the error persists, the worse it gets, and the harder it becomes to admit it's all a horrible mistake. Nobody in the US government institutions that maintain his imprisonment will benefit from admitting it was all a mistake: to the military he's an embarrassment, and to the politicians, releasing him would be handing ammunition to their electoral rivals. (Democracy has failure modes: this is one of them.) So it'd be far better for everyone concerned if he'd quietly die of natural causes so they could bury him and the controversy at the same time. (Finally, a really cynical part of me thinks that maybe keeping an innocent bloke in jail for 17 years is expedient to a certain part of the US foreign affairs establishment because it sends a message to everyone outside the USA, world-wide: "we can fsck you up on a whim and there is nothing anybody can do about it." In other words, it's dominance signaling. See also the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, imprisoned in Iran, for example.)

franga2000 7y ago
I try to give the US the benefit of the doubt occasionally to keep myself from forming a bias against them as my list of reasons to despise the country (NOT the people) seems to just keep growing. And I do understand why the government won't just release him, but if everyone in the world knew about this, releasing him wouldn't do that much harm (everyone would have already seen the failure) and would actually be brilliant PR for whoever does it. But then again, that would require people and especially media that actually care and have a longer attention span than 30 seconds, which seems rather far from achievable right now.
- cstross 7y ago
  It's almost a textbook case of institutional failure -- multiple interlocking institutions took a remediable mistake (the first arrest) and doubled-down on it. Almost as if the failures are an emergent property of the institutional architecture. (This being HN, we see this sort of thing discussed wrt. failing startups or larger corporations, but seldom so brutally and clearly with governments -- although the moderators' policy on political discussions is necessary if only to prevent HN turning into a permanent floating firestorm of flame wars.)
deleted 7y ago
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commandlinefan 7y ago
> an admission of comprehensive institutional failure Not only that, but as soon as you release somebody who was wrongfully imprisoned, they can sue in civil courts, and they often win.
- BuildTheRobots 7y ago
  This is probably a silly question, but why can't they sue in civil court _whilst_ being imprisoned?
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    I'm sure they can, but their case is strengthened quite a bit if they've already been released due to improper procedures in the first place.
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    I think that's the whole point about Guantanamo - the local court is on the other side of a razor wire fence - in Cuba - by claiming that it's not US soil the US government avoids its own laws
    - animal531 7y ago
      Can't a US citizen be prosecuted by the US for a crime in a foreign country?
      - Taniwha 7y ago
        This is rather more about not letting these prisoners get access to to the inalienable rights that people in the US have ie the US constitution does not apply there, even though they convene US courts and try people - it's all rather 1984ish
        Gibbon1 7y ago
        Got to ask if our leaders believe in human rights and the rule of law, why do they pull shit like this?
bloody-crow 7y ago
Not to mention that keeping an innocent man in prison and torturing him for 17 years is a pretty good way to turn him into an actual terrorist. It'd be understandable if the guy would hate the system that wronged him so much, that he'd attempt to attack it if released. I'm absolutely not trying to advocate for them to continue keeping the guy there, but at least it's an argument.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
  You know what is actual terrorism? Abducting random people and torturing them.
bb88 7y ago
> "we can fsck you up on a whim and there is nothing anybody can do about it." There are 71 men in Guantanamo that are "too innocent to charge, too dangerous to release." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ahmad_Ghulam_Rabbani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ahmad_Ghulam_Rabbani What's sad is that in 2008, the US supreme court issued it's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush: "The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say 'what the law is'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush

franga2000 7y ago

I try to give the US the benefit of the doubt occasionally to keep myself from forming a bias against them as my list of reasons to despise the country (NOT the people) seems to just keep growing. And I do understand why the government won't just release him, but if everyone in the world knew about this, releasing him wouldn't do that much harm (everyone would have already seen the failure) and would actually be brilliant PR for whoever does it. But then again, that would require people and especially media that actually care and have a longer attention span than 30 seconds, which seems rather far from achievable right now.

cstross 7y ago
It's almost a textbook case of institutional failure -- multiple interlocking institutions took a remediable mistake (the first arrest) and doubled-down on it. Almost as if the failures are an emergent property of the institutional architecture. (This being HN, we see this sort of thing discussed wrt. failing startups or larger corporations, but seldom so brutally and clearly with governments -- although the moderators' policy on political discussions is necessary if only to prevent HN turning into a permanent floating firestorm of flame wars.)

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commandlinefan 7y ago

> an admission of comprehensive institutional failure Not only that, but as soon as you release somebody who was wrongfully imprisoned, they can sue in civil courts, and they often win.

BuildTheRobots 7y ago
This is probably a silly question, but why can't they sue in civil court _whilst_ being imprisoned?
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  I'm sure they can, but their case is strengthened quite a bit if they've already been released due to improper procedures in the first place.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  I think that's the whole point about Guantanamo - the local court is on the other side of a razor wire fence - in Cuba - by claiming that it's not US soil the US government avoids its own laws
  - animal531 7y ago
    Can't a US citizen be prosecuted by the US for a crime in a foreign country?
    - Taniwha 7y ago
      This is rather more about not letting these prisoners get access to to the inalienable rights that people in the US have ie the US constitution does not apply there, even though they convene US courts and try people - it's all rather 1984ish
      - Gibbon1 7y ago
        Got to ask if our leaders believe in human rights and the rule of law, why do they pull shit like this?

bloody-crow 7y ago

Not to mention that keeping an innocent man in prison and torturing him for 17 years is a pretty good way to turn him into an actual terrorist. It'd be understandable if the guy would hate the system that wronged him so much, that he'd attempt to attack it if released. I'm absolutely not trying to advocate for them to continue keeping the guy there, but at least it's an argument.

gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
You know what is actual terrorism? Abducting random people and torturing them.

bb88 7y ago

> "we can fsck you up on a whim and there is nothing anybody can do about it." There are 71 men in Guantanamo that are "too innocent to charge, too dangerous to release." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ahmad_Ghulam_Rabbani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ahmad_Ghulam_Rabbani What's sad is that in 2008, the US supreme court issued it's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush: "The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say 'what the law is'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush