Orwell at Guantánamo

By Scott Horton

Eugene Robinson writes in the Washington Post about the Guantánamo status proceedings involving the alleged conspirator in the East African embassy and USS Cole bombings, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri:

Only George Orwell could have written what comes next in the transcript. The following is what we are allowed to know of Nashiri's response when asked how he was tortured:

“What else do I want to say? [REDACTED]. Many things happened. There were doing so many things. What else did they did? [REDACTED]. They do so many things. So so many things. What else did they did? [REDACTED]. After that another method of torture began. [REDACTED]. They used to ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that I knew. And, if I didn't reply what I heard, he used to [REDACTED]. So many things happened. I don't in summary, that's basically what happened.”

I guess that's how the U.S. government extracts information from detainees: [REDACTED].

The Pentagon told reporters that Nashiri's claims were censored because of “national security concerns” about disclosing where detainees were held and how they were treated. But that would be unnecessary if Nashiri were lying, since no harm could come from disclosing a bunch of made-up stories. The censorship makes sense only if some or all of what Nashiri alleges is true.

But we're not permitted to know what he alleges.

Orwell had it figured out: "Ignorance is Strength."

I have previously noted that the suggestion of national security concerns is bogus since the Gitmo techniques used on al-Nashiri have been reported in tremendous detail in papers around the world. But Robinson makes another key point: the redaction would only be justified if the allegations were true. Maybe we should, once the redacted passages are revealed, as they inevitably will be, simply read the “REDACTED” stamp differently: “Established as true.”