Hacker News Reader

Comment by RealGeek | Hacker News Reader

Let's not forget, not all the detainees were terrorists.

US promoted a reward program in middle east asking locals to turn in anyone with ties to terrorists. All they had to do was tell a name to US military, and collect reward for every name.

Many locals turned in thousands of innocent people just to collect a reward. These people were immediately arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without any investigation. US did not even require any probably cause, evidence or investigation to detain and torture these people.

If CIA tortured George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in this way, I am sure they would confess to being an accomplice along with Osama Bin Laden in 9/11 attack.

Unfortunately, this US "war on terror" has created tens of thousands of more terrorists all over the world. It haven't made the US or World any safer, it has created a even bigger monster.

View on HN

As any war on anything is bound to do. You can't push against something and get less of it - you get more pushing right back at ya.

In this sense, US Gov is the primary cause of and is directly responsible for nearly ALL terrorist acts in the past decades, globally.

The actual thread of terrorism is so minute, that it's not worth worrying about. However, the fact that a 'war on terror' exists is what is desired (by the various parties that stand to gain with such a war). ANd it's not even just one group or org - it's a whole bunch of them, each individually acting in a self-interested way. The end result is the military industrial complex, all the federal money and various other parties, all pushing in the same direction because it benefits them.

The only real way to get around this problem is balance of power - more people need to be richer, so that on average, nobody can push their agenda better than anyone else.

What is your source? Both because I have always heard about the "rewards program" and am interested in reading more, and because wherever you got the information that thousands of people were ever sent to Guantanamo Bay is simply wrong [1]. I see a trend of people rehashing things about Guantanamo Bay that they've heard somewhere else and just putting it out there. It doesn't help the progressive agenda of understanding GTMO and closing it, because the information is just plain wrong.

[1] http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/gtmo-by-...

I saw this in a documentary (I guess it was PBS or BBC). It also had testimonies of innocent people who were detained & tortured for 5+ years, then released by US.

Here are few links about it:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8472804/...

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/publiceducation/2012_08_30_Public...

Gitmo was not the only detention centre. Abu Ghraib is the most notorious of the other centres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner...

The most famous innocent victim of paid-information is the taxi driver Dilawar, beaten to death in the Parwan Detention Facility.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_to_the_Dark_Side

your link says this: "Bounties paid by Bush Administration to anyone who would hand over a possible terror suspect: $3,000 to $25,000" and references http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8049868/ns/world_news

You got that right. :|

    at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard
    ...
    included an "intellectually challenged" man whose CIA detention was 
    used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information

A program similar to this was employed in Vietnam war , however after thousands were assassinated and killed by said,South Vietnam and the program having had diminishing returns the program was halted, they believe many innocents were turned in due to localized revenge minded regional authorities.

No.

But A LOT of them were.

s/A LOT/some

Reply on news.ycombinator.com