Thom Hartmann's "Independent Thinker" Book of the Month Review for BuzzFlash.com

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Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side
By Clive Stafford Smith
Reviewed by Thom Hartmann

If you were to ask the average American where the people currently being held in the US-run Guantanamo Bay concentration camps came from, most would tell you that they were Al Qaeda "fighters" who had been "captured on the battlefield." This myth has been repeated over and over again during the past six years -- and it's just that, a myth.

Fact is, 95 percent were not even taken into custody by US troops, but instead were turned over to US troops by people being paid the equivalent of about a quarter-million dollars "bounty." Right after our invasion of Afghanistan, US planes flew over impoverished regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan dropping leaflets offering US$ 5000 -- more than 7 years average salary in those regions -- to anybody turning in a "terrorist." People saw opportunities to settle old scores, turning in neighbors they'd been feuding with, literally kidnapping strangers just to get the bounty, and using the US to dispose of troublesome members of rival tribes, clans, or sects.

As a result, 92 percent of the people held at Guantanamo are not even accused of being fighters for Al Qaeda.

Clive Stafford Smith is a British-born US citizen and attorney who has defended roughly 50 of the Guantanamo detainees over the past few years. His book -- brilliantly written in first-person narrative and an evocative, almost novel-like style -- lays bare the horrors of the most prominent of a worldwide chain of US-run torture centers and concentration camps.

The main reason most of them have not been released, it appears to this reader of Smith's book, is because to do so would expose crimes of torture, illegal detention, and human rights violations so severe that they could lead to international criminal prosecutions of senior Bush (and, possibly, Blair) administration officials.

(Full review available by clicking the link below.)