
The Guantanamo Files - dsplittgerber
http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/
======
dpritchett
Don't miss the detainee population visualizations put together by the NYT with
help from CoffeeScript/Underscore/Backbone wizard Jeremy Ashkenas:

<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo>

~~~
oinksoft
How is he a "wizard"? His personal site seems to feature graphics libraries.

~~~
southpolesteve
He is the primary author of Coffeescript:
<https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script>

I am not sure, but I believe he also has authored or contributed to the
others.

~~~
ellisd
Author of backbone.js and underscore.js as well.

------
alexqgb
The New Yorker's Amy Davidson did a really good write-up on this.

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2011/04/wiki...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2011/04/wikileaks-
the-uses-of-guantanamo.html)

The Hindu takes the prize for the most blistering, incandescent (and richly
deserved) attack on the US Administration.

[http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article1767369.ec...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article1767369.ece)

And Al Jazeera hosts some especially pointed commentary about what's NOT
included in the leaks.

[http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/201142...](http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/2011425182559745235.html)

tl;dr: Between them, Clinton and Bush amassed an odious and vile legacy of
extrajudicial policy. Obama is too scared of House Republicans to say so, has
no way to deal with them effectively, and cannot counter their political
threats. Now that the story has gotten ahead of the Presidency, America is
(quite fairly) getting slapped around the world for being stupidly violent,
prone to extreme over-reaction, and disturbingly lawless.

------
ck2
_the document dump sheds light on cases of accidental detentions of innocent
or seemingly harmless men, including an Afghan shepherd who spent three years
at Gitmo after being arrested near the scene of a roadside explosion_

~~~
cookiecaper
This was the most surprising part to me. I've read through a handful of the
files and only a few of them seem to have any connection to anything useful;
most were just caught up in "wrong place, wrong time" happenstances, like
crossing the border into Pakistan on the heels of some "suspicious Arabs".

Most of these guys end up being recommended for release, but from my sample it
was at least the better part of a year and often ~2 years before that would
happen. Think of the wives and children left at home, almost definitely
without any means wherewith to support themselves, while their father was
black bagged for some frivolous reason.

------
blhack
Is this still part of the Bradley Manning leak?

~~~
burgerbrain
I was wondering that as well. They don't seem to mention, which could be a
protective measure in either case (if its not, don't draw attention to the
fact that there is another currently not detained leaker; if it is, limit the
scope of what we know he leaked (has wikileaks itself ever mentioned
Manning?)).

~~~
JeremyBanks
_has wikileaks itself ever mentioned Manning_

They have mentioned him, but they've said that due to the way their system
works it is impossible for them to know who their informants are. Therefore
their statements are always hedged with things like "the alleged source of
such and such".

------
mrcharles
I was hoping the data would be in a text format so that I could build a tree
of blame -- so basically you could see exactly how 'information' from someone
who may not be giving accurate information impacted future prisoners.

Sadly, it's all just embedded PDF files.

~~~
conesus
It's all part of DocumentCloud, which means API access to the text of all that
Guantanamo data. See how easy this can be:

    
    
        curl http://www.documentcloud.org/api/search.json?q=group:nytimes
    
        "total": 2821,
        "page": 1,
        "per_page": 10,
        "q": "group:nytimes",
        "documents": [{
            "id": "86275-isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo",
            "title": "ISN 10015 - Abd al Rahim al Nashiri - JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment",
            "access": "public",
            "pages": 15,
            "description": null,
            "source": null,
            "created_at": "Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:50:19 +0000",
            "updated_at": "Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:12:53 +0000",
            "canonical_url": "http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/86275-isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo.html",
            "resources": {
                "pdf": "http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo.pdf",
                "text": "http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo.txt",
                "thumbnail": "http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/pages/isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo-p1-thumbnail.gif",
                "search": "http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/search.json?q={query}",
                "page": {
                    "text": "http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/pages/isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo-p{page}.txt",
                    "image": "http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/pages/isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo-p{page}-{size}.gif"
                }
            }
        },
        ...
        ]}
    

Look at documents[0].resources.text:

    
    
        curl http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/86275/isn-10015-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri-jtf-gtmo.txt
    

There you go. Now go build that tree and report back. :-)

~~~
jashkenas
I'm afraid that only a handful (< 20, so far) of the newly released documents
have been redacted and published thus far. You won't get too far trying to
build that tree.

~~~
mrcharles
Sure but I can start writing code now, in anticipation of the full set.

------
earl
Congrats America. We officially torture randoms (some Afghans were given up to
the equivalent of a year's salary to turn folks in; quite a nice way of
getting rid of some SOB and getting paid). We also violate our laws and
constitution, then sit around and circle jerk over whether dunking someone's
head under water a couple hundred times until he's just this side of drowning
is torture or not. Then, because it's definitely not torture, the cia deletes
the videos. Oh, and apparently we now do indefinite detention as well, without
legal representation except in front of a kangaroo court, maybe, eventually.
Finally, now that we definitely know some people were innocent... we leave
them to rot in a cell in Guantanamo.

Good job.

~~~
hugh3
This is why I'm going to vote for Obama in 2008!

~~~
jbooth
In fairness, his justice department made a serious effort to transfer some
gitmo people to the US justice system, but there was an opportunist shitstorm
over it, and close to no principled liberals/libertarians who stood up and
called out the shitstormers.

~~~
burgerbrain
Screw the judicial system, in one act of exercising his power as commander and
chief he could order all these military personel to release those prisoners
and go home. This is what any sane man who actually cared about human rights
would do.

This will of course never been done. Not by this president, nor by any future
ones.

I'd love to be proven wrong.

~~~
jbooth
He has sent a bunch of them home. The number is down significantly from when
he took office, and most of the remaining prisoners have no country willing to
offer them asylum. I have a big problem with gitmo but the Obama admin did try
to push on it for quite a while before apparently concluding they'd dumped
enough time and capital into it.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _...they'd dumped enough time and capital into it._

Then I fundamentally disagree with what constitutes "enough time and capital"
when it comes to ending endable human rights abuses.

~~~
jbooth
Ok, well, I hear you but there's actually more to the job of President than
this one issue.. his justice dept got way out in front on it, gave it an
honest shot, fought in court, got hammered in public and got no support and
he's got a country to run at the end of the day. Unemployment, 3 wars, etc.

Organize some protests and get some visibility if you feel that strongly about
it.. being sanctimonious about human rights on a blog impresses nobody.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I wanted to take some time to give a more carefully thought-out reply to this,
because your accusation (implied in "being sanctimonious") is totally fair,
and one that I level at others sometimes.

I don't think it's wrong to express strong disapproval of political issues
even if I'm not currently politically involved, because the fact is, I spent
most of my twenties thinking about how to effect (big) change in the world,
and the answer I came up with was that, first, I had to become wealthy. I
concluded that the political process itself was badly broken, that there were
serious social issues stretching back many decades, and that while working as
a teacher or a politician might have some impact, it would ultimately almost
certainly be less effective than accumulating a huge amount of resources and
then putting those resources into play in ways that I think would be
beneficial to the world. That doesn't mean that I don't spend any time at all
on other endeavors -- one of the first things I hope to do after opening up a
local shop is host mechatronics classes for kids, because I think it's
important for technologists and others to teach their craft to the young.
However, politics in general -- whether at the local, state, or national level
-- requires disproportionate amounts of attention, with few benefits. It is a
huge distraction from my primary goals, so I'm not inclined to get involved
with it. Not _completely_ disinclined though: I did apply and interview for a
local planning commission position, I have attended city council meetings in
two local towns, I have been the tech guy for a California wanna-be governor's
campaign a couple of years ago.

But in the end, spending much effort on organizing rallies or protesting with
signs, _for me_ , is self-defeating ... at least to some extent.

I also don't think that the President is above reproach just because the job
is difficult. I have a tremendous amount of respect for just how difficult the
job is; it's obvious to anyone that watches how quickly various Presidents age
while in office. _It is a physically debilitating position to have._ That
said, the President is (supposed to be) elected to deal with issues like this.
I do not think that "they gave it an honest shot" is a reasonable way to
accept failure on certain issues. I also think that, as a candidate who ran on
platform issues like transparency in government and workers' rights, the
President has disenchanted many of his most ardent supporters, which is really
a rather big problem because many of these people became politically active
for the first time in nearly a decade in order to get him into office. His
supporters did not want to elect a "lesser evil", they wanted to elect
_change_. To what degree any change has occurred is a matter of perspective,
but I think it's hard to argue that it has fallen far short of expectations
and promises.

So, yes, I speak out on political issues that I think are important. I hold
the President of the United States -- whoever he is -- to a very high
standard, because I believe that it is necessary for the health of our country
to do so. However, I don't do any of that to impress anyone, because
impressing people won't help change anything.

I do it because people having more conversations like this one is, I think,
the first step towards fixing some of the social and political problems in our
country.

~~~
jbooth
Thanks for the thought-out response. I'd only counter that a president alone
can't change everything when we have a congress, lobbying and media
environment like we have now. "Trying to change things" vs "Trying to make
sure they don't change" is a bigger difference than simply "lesser evil", even
if the daily frustrations sometimes get to you.

