{"id":825,"date":"2009-04-24T09:41:52","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T09:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/04\/is-torturing-al-qaeda-really-t.html"},"modified":"2009-04-24T09:41:52","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T09:41:52","slug":"is-torturing-al-qaeda-really-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/04\/is-torturing-al-qaeda-really-t.html","title":{"rendered":"Torturing The Guilty vs. Abusing the Innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most attention these days has focused on revelations that administration officials sanctioned torture for “high value” Al Qaeda operatives.
\nThat’s important but another moral issue is as crucial, and in some ways more morally clear-cut: As part of the war on terror, the U.S. government routinely detained people for years without knowing if they were guilty of anything.
\nLawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, explained <\/a>that American officials embraced a view that if they gathered up enough people, and kept them around long enough, some were bound to have some useful information: “as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees’ innocence was inconsequential.”
\nPlease ponder that line from a very high level Bush administration insider: “the detainees’ innocence was inconsequential.”<\/strong>
\nAccording to a report by several human rights groups<\/a>, “of the more than 770 individuals known to
\nhave been incarcerated for some period at Guant\u00e1namo, the U.S. government has charged only 23 with war crimes as of October 2008.”
\nIn other words, 97% of people detained — sometimes for years, sometimes under cruel conditions — were not deemed to have done anything wrong.
\nIf there’s going to be an investigation, it should be as much about figuring out how someone’s innocence became “inconsequential.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most attention these days has focused on revelations that administration officials sanctioned torture for “high value” Al Qaeda operatives. That’s important but another moral issue is as crucial, and in some ways more morally clear-cut: As part of the war on terror, the U.S. government routinely detained people for years without knowing if they were…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nTorturing The Guilty vs. Abusing the Innocent - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/04\/is-torturing-al-qaeda-really-t.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Torturing The Guilty vs. Abusing the Innocent - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most attention these days has focused on revelations that administration officials sanctioned torture for “high value” Al Qaeda operatives. That’s important but another moral issue is as crucial, and in some ways more morally clear-cut: As part of the war on terror, the U.S. government routinely detained people for years without knowing if they were…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/04\/is-torturing-al-qaeda-really-t.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-24T09:41:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Torturing The Guilty vs. Abusing the Innocent - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/04\/is-torturing-al-qaeda-really-t.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Torturing The Guilty vs. Abusing the Innocent - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Most attention these days has focused on revelations that administration officials sanctioned torture for “high value” Al Qaeda operatives. 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