One interesting aspect of Ron Suskind's revelations about former Iraq Intelligence Chief Tahir Jalil Habbush was the urgent need on the part of the Busheviks to keep Habbush quiet so no one would know that he told us before the invasion that Saddam had no WMD's.
Habbush did nothing wrong, and in fact cooperated completely with the U.S. But Bush kept him hidden in Jordan (even though the only person he had to fear, Saddam Hussein, was also in U.S. hands) and paid him $5 million in "hush money."
This week we also learned of another prisoner who cooperated fully with the U.S., but was also locked away - apparently for the sole purpose of keeping his story out of the media. His name is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, better known as Osama Bin Laden's driver.
Hamdan was acquitted on charges of actual terrorism (despite John McCain's lie) and convicted only on "material support" for terrorism. And even though he could have been sentenced to life in prison, a military jury gave him a light sentence of 6 years with credit for the 5.5 years he already served. Why such a light sentence?
sources familiar with secret testimony for the defense given July 31 said the information revealed in that testimony likely angered the jurors.
Two senior Army Special Forces officers told a closed session of the trial of an "opportunity" that Hamdan had offered them in Afghanistan in the first weeks after his Nov. 24, 2001, capture. That chance was "squandered" by the government, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, a defense lawyer, said in his closing argument before Wednesday's verdict.
Speculation has focused on a blown opportunity to capture bin Laden, as Hamdan might have known his whereabouts.
Holy crap - a "blown opportunity to capture bin Laden"??? Shouldn't this be the biggest news story of the year???
The New York Times gives more detail:
In testimony during public sessions of the two-week-old trial, it was clear that Mr. Hamdan had provided details about Mr. bin Laden’s possible whereabouts, even taking interrogators to some of Mr. bin Laden’s Afghan homes and training camps.
The testimony to which Commander Mizer referred was given Thursday by two Special Forces officers in a closed courtroom.
The public session information is plenty damning - we can only imagine what was said in the closed courtroom. But it's not hard to imagine how bin Laden's driver could have either led us directly to bin Laden, or helped us figure out how to find him.
Congress should demand to know what exactly the "opportunity" was - and how and why it was squandered!
Obviously the Busheviks don't want to tell the media, because they might be tried for treason. But why would Hamdam hesitate to tell the media what he willingly told U.S. interrogators?
The government case against Hamdan also was based almost entirely on information the defendant gave willingly in interviews with at least 40 U.S. government interrogators in the first two years of his captivity. Defense lawyer Charlie Swift said that information was of vital importance yet ultimately used against the cooperative captive.
In other words, Hamdam sounds very much like Habbush - someone with personal firsthand knowledge of our most hated enemy, who cooperated fully with U.S. interrogators. In both cases, there was no need to lock them up or punish them in any way.
But in both cases, Bush wants them hidden away so they won't tell the media what they told the U.S. government - because their stories would lead first to the impeachment of George W. Bush, and then to his indictment on war crimes and treason.
Update 1: Another interesting case is that of the Taliban's former Intelligence Minister, Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, who wanted to help us capture Mullah Omar but couldn't get any interest from the CIA.
The US is not interested in help from a high-level Taliban informant. Mullah Mohammed Khaksar was the Taliban’s intelligence minister and is currently their deputy interior minister. He is in charge of security in the Afghan capital of Kabul and regularly meets with other high ranking Taliban leaders. But since 1997, he has also been secretly providing a steady stream of intelligence to the Northern Alliance, the enemies of the Taliban. Further, he had offered to help the US defeat the Taliban, and several times before 9/11 CIA agents disguised as journalists visited him to solicit inside information (see April 1999). [Washington Post, 11/30/2001] However, in the weeks after 9/11, he passes letters to get in contact with US intelligence, but never hears back from them. Time magazine will later report, “Khaksar said he was ready to pass on information that might lead to the capture of the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and to some al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. But he waited days, weeks, months, and nobody contacted him.” [Time, 2/25/2002] Finally in late November 2001, he will publicly defect to the Northern Alliance, thus ending his ability to get real-time information on the movements of Omar and others. [Knight Ridder, 11/29/2001] The US will continue to remain uninterested in what Khaksar has to say (see February 25, 2002).
