4 Characters in Search of a Prosecutor: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith

Four Characters in Search of a Prosecutor: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith

The Gitmo Documents

By LILA RAJIVA

A year of stonewalling a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Associated Press and now the Pentagon releases documents (Friday, March 3, 2006) with the names of hundreds of detainees held at Guantanamo.
The more than five thousand pages give us a flavor of the eclectic--ragtag, might be a better word--mix of prisoners in the Cuban camp and the equally varied treatment they received. The British Guardian-- from a keen sense of fair play, one supposes--devotes a column to telling us that after all, yes, there were two young boys who actually had a good time of it-- said good time running to movies, books, and soccer games. That wipes the slate clean on Abu Ghraib, see?

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The hitherto nameless three hundred turn into recognizable characters in these new documents. There are goat herds and shopkeepers; there is the Taliban cook carrying a radio and hand grenades, the Iraqi millionaire who worked for MI5--only they deny it--and the Afghan farmer clinging to his rifle and his frontier freedom like a Montana militiaman cornered by the Feds. There are the metals cages made from discarded shipping containers --six by six, exposed to sun and rain--in which the prisoners were caged 24/7 and let out, shackled, only to use the toilet. There were the regular and severe punishments doled out for infractions as senseless as having an extra cup in the cage. But--except for one--the most important characters in this squalid drama are a no-show in the press. And that exception--Major Geoffrey Miller--doesn't get the star billing he deserves, either.

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One: Miller

It was Miller who was behind the aggressive psychological tactics used at Gitmo between 2002 and 2004--where military interrogators posing as FBI agents, gift-wrapped suspects in the Israeli flag and forced others to watch homosexual porn under strobe lights in 18 hour interrogation sessions (Feb. 23, 2006).

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Four: Feith

Nor has there been a solitary twitter about the role of the enigmatic Douglas Feith, though he deserves it as much as Cambone. Until he left in early 2005, Feith was Cambone's opposite number at Defense as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD-P), a post Cambone himself held earlier.If Cambone had the means to tamper with intelligence-gathering and interrogation, Feith had the motive. A vocal advocate of regime change in the Middle East long before 9-11, a hard-line Zionist hawk and member of ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), Feith's publicly expressed views are incendiary. He has stated that Oslo should be repudiated and the West Bank and Gaza reoccupied even if "the price in blood would be high" as "a necessary form of detoxification."

http://www.counterpunch.com/rajiva03102006.html