3/24/2010

In a declaration on March 24, 2010, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson claimed many Guantanamo detainees were not enemy combatants. He also reflected on Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying: " 'my investigations…revealed that some 50-60% of those imprisoned at Abu Ghraib were probably innocent. They were swept up in combat operations and gotten off the battlefield by imprisoning them–an understandable tactic by military forces operating with too few assets to accomplish the mission, always the case in Iraq. No real records existed of evidence or facts that incriminated them, just as happened at Guantanamo Bay.' "

 – M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, 274