Democrat Nelson Jerry Cannon points proudly to his leadership in 2003-04 of the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp in requesting your vote. In a Roll Call interview of October 8, 2013, he was asked if his time at Guantánamo Bay could be construed as controversial. His answer:

Guantánamo Bay. People should be -- People need to understand that there's two missions there. There's an intelligence mission and there's a detention mission. I was responsible for the detention mission during the time that I was there. We conducted that mission, not just I but all the people that were under my command, we did that in a manner that the American people would be proud. And we had an opportunity a couple times a year for the International Committee of the Red Cross to come in and look at our detention operation and every box was checked to go. It was a great mission.

Nelson Jerry Cannon

During and after President Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Democrats attacked the camp at Guantánamo Bay as a "sad chapter in American history". Today they are reversing course, and putting someone forward who embodies it.

They had it right the first time.

Cannon's exact starting and ending dates there are unclear. His website says it was from the spring of 2003 to sometime in 2004. But one report says the disgraced Major General Geoffrey Miller ran the place until August 2003 when he left for Iraq. Another says Miller remained the "commander of the Guantánamo operation ... to March 2004," and his successor was Brigadier General Jay Hood. Another says Hood took over on March 24, 2004.

ICRC, NY times, academic reports

Cannon's claim that the International Committee of the Red Cross gave his mission a perfect score is questionable in light of a New York Times story on November 30, 2004:

The International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June [2004] in Guantánamo.

Contrary to Cannon, officials at the camp sought to deceive the ICRC. On January 1, 2005, the Times reported the military had an arrangement that a particular prisoner Mohamed al-Kahtani was not visited by the ICRC on a few of its regular visits, "in order to carry on the charade that he was not at Guantánamo." (All charges against Kahtani were later dropped because his interrogation amounted to torture.)

On October 17, 2004, the Times gave some specifics of longstanding harsh, coercive treatment used on Guantánamo detainees. The paper's sources,

military guards, intelligence agents and others, described in interviews with The New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators.

Guantánamo Bay guards set conditions for the interrogators' work, according to a Defense Department official quoted in the article, which noted:

Much of the harsh treatment occurred as recently as early 2004. Harsh techniques were abruptly suspended with publicity of the Abu Ghraib scandal in April 2004.

One regular tactic was to make uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and endure strobe lights and screaming rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels. The bands included Eminem, Limp Bizkit, and Rage Against the Machine.

In another common procedure an inmate was awakened, interrogated, returned to a different cell, re-awakened, interrogated again, and returned to yet a different cell, with the procedure performed five or six times a night.

Cooperative prisoners were rewarded with time in a large room with access to magazines, books, a TV and video player, R-rated movies, a water pipe, aromatic tobaccos, and occasional McDonalds milkshakes and hamburgers.

A month after the election the Miami Herald highlighted findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee's just-released torture report which noted black-site interrogations of detainees took place at Guantánamo Bay in 2003-04. This was during Cannon's tour, when all detainees were under his protection.

In practice, inmates in black sites have no rights other than those given by the captors. CIA officers are allowed to use what the agency calls "enhanced interrogation techniques." Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has called "enhanced interrogation" a euphemism for torture. In 2005 the CIA destroyed videotapes depicting prisoners being interrogated under torture at a black site in Thailand. Jose Rodriguez Jr., CIA operations chief, justified the destruction saying what the tapes showed was so horrific that they would be "devastating" to the agency.

Cannon was chief of the guards. They were charged with seeing that all detainees were treated with care and respect. Accordingly he had authority to order a stop to torturous interrogation practices.

Physical abuse inflicted by detainees on Guantánamo Bay guards was minimal. An academic researcher examining DOD records in 2002-05 reported:

The disciplinary reports reveal that the most serious injuries sustained by guards as a result of prisoner misconduct are a handful of cuts and scratches.

Most of the detainees had no reason to be there. In October 2004, Brigadier General Martin Lucenti, then-deputy commander of Guantánamo detention, said:

[o]f the 550 [detainees] that we have, I would say most of them, the majority of them, will either be released or transferred to their own countries . . . Most of these guys werent fighting. They were running.

Mustafa Ait Idir

Mustafa Ait Idir

Cannon has not described particular accomplishments of his tour at Guantánamo Bay. But a 2006 Report On Torture And Cruel, Inhuman, And Degrading Treatment Of Prisoners At Guantánamo Bay, Cuba of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) documented many illegal incidents which appear to have overlapped with his time. It concluded:

The report reveals patterns and systematic practices that implicate not the idiosyncratic predilections of sadistic soldiers and interrogators but policies approved at the highest level of the U.S. government.

Of great interest is one incident in the report involving a particular Bosnian prisoner, Mustafa Ait Idir, who later beat Cannon in the US Supreme Court.

The court has delivered three rulings against government policies at Guantánamo Bay. The first was actually a set of two rulings on the same day in separate cases, the first involving a US citizen being detained in Virginia and the second involving foreign nationals at Guantánamo Bay. Hamdi v Rumsfeld (2004) held that though the US seized citizen Hamdi in a combat zone in Afghanistan and declared him an "illegal enemy combatant," he had to have a meaningful opportunity to offer evidence that the declaration is untrue. Rasul v Bush (2004) held the courts could consider detention challenges of Kuwaitis and Australians captured abroad in connection with hostilities between the US and Taliban.

In the second, Hamdan v Rumsfeld (2006), the court ruled that an act of Congress to allow the US to try enemy combatants by military tribunals, rather than through the court system, violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Third Geneva Convention.

The third, Boumediene v Bush (2008), afforded the right of habeas corpus to all detainees, both US citizens and foreign nationals.

In Boumediene, Ait Idir was a petitioner (plaintiff). As an army colonel and the custodian immediately responsible for his detention, Cannon was a respondent (defendant). The DC court of appeals had accepted respondents' argument that an act of Congress had the effect of suspending their right to habeas corpus relief, and instead providing Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) in its place.

The Boumediene court rejected the CSRTs as an adequate substitute for habeas corpus. The CSRTs allowed hearsay evidence and refused the right to present exculpatory evidence. Additionally the court rejected government defenses that the US does not have sovereignty at Guantánamo Bay, and that the petitioners -- sometimes known as the "Algerian Six" since they were part of a group which emigrated from Algeria to Bosnia in the 1990s -- should have exhausted review procedures before filing their claims.

Five months later, in November 2008, Judge Richard Leon ordered Ait Idir's release, as well as the release of four of the other six. (The sixth was ordered to remain in custody, but he appealed and prevailed, and eventually was also released.)

The "Algerian Six" in court

In Bosnia, Ait Idir worked in computer repair and charities. With tacit US support, the Six had originally come as part of a Muslim group to fight the Serbs in 1992-95. After the war Ait Idir stayed, married, and had three sons. The six were arrested in 2001 for a plot to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo. That proved baseless but in January 2002 they were brought to Guantánamo Bay anyway. After extraordinarily persistent efforts of pro bono counsel they got the Supreme Court ruling, which allowed them to present evidence to Judge Leon.

Cannon and the other respondents filed a 53-page narrative and 650 pages of exhibits with the judge. The court held over 50 hours of discovery hearings. The Six filed 200 pages of narrative and 1650 pages of exhibits. Closed-door proceedings concerning classified evidence were on seven days in November 2008. Ait Idir and another petitioner testified to the court via video-teleconference from Guantánamo Bay. Finally there was a 4½-hour closed-door oral argument in court.

Respondents' case is summed up here. Relying solely on an unnamed source in a classified document, they were claiming the Six were part of a plan in late 2001 to travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against the US and allied forces. But Judge Leon ruled he could not assess credibility of an unnamed person. He added there was insufficient evidence to show a plan even existed, much less that any of the Six knew of and were committed to it.

Four years earlier in October 2004, Ait Idir had also testified at a CSRT hearing. In 2005 his testimony was cited as "vividly" illustrative of CSRT's "inherent lack of fairness" by Judge Joyce Green in a different case. (Ait Idir can communicate in rudimentary English.) She wrote:

The Recorder of the CSRT asserted, "While living in Bosnia, the Detainee [Ait Idir] associated with a known Al Qaida operative." In response, the following exchange occurred: "Detainee: Give me his name. Tribunal President: I do not know. . . . Detainee: That is it, but I was hoping you had evidence that you can give me. If I was in your place  and I apologize in advance for these words  but if a supervisor came to me and showed me accusations like these, I would take these accusations and I would hit him in the face with them. Sorry about that. [Everyone in the Tribunal room laughs.] Tribunal President: We had to laugh, but it is okay.

A "known" Al Qaida operative of whom the tribunal president said she did not "know" his name? The contradiction is surreal. Judge Green commented:

The laughter reflected in the transcript is understandable, and this exchange might have been truly humorous had the consequences of the detainee's "enemy combatant" status not been so terribly serious and had the detainee's criticism of the process not been so piercingly accurate.

We know from Judge Leon that Ait Idir isn't a terrorist. Now we also know from Judge Green he is astute and perceptive. These two judges found him credible, even inspiring, showing grace and good humor under fire.

Judge Leon ordered Ait Idir's release "forthwith." He returned to Bosnia where he is today.

No pants for prayer

We come now to the specific reason why these public-record matters are important to Nelson Jerry Cannon's campaign. According to the Defense Department assessment of Ait Idir in 2008:

Detainee is assessed as a MEDIUM threat from a detention perspective. His overall behavior has been compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff. ... [I]ncidents for which he has been disciplined include ... failure to follow guard instructions/camp rules....

Ait Idir summarized the "failure to follow guard instructions/camp rules" incident at a military hearing in October 2004. According to the transcript he testified:

Detainee: ... As an example, a soldier broke my finger. (Detainee holds up his left hand. The left pinky finger is distanced about 1½ inches from the four remaining fingers. The detainee is unable to bring the left pinky finger in alignment with his other fingers.) Can you see? I cannot bring this finger close to my other fingers. I cannot close this gap. On the middle finger (detainee points to the center knuckle on the middle finger of his right hand), my knuckle has been broken. You probably cannot see that. But my finger (detainee holds up his left hand, the left pinky finger) you can see that clearly. Nelson Jerry Cannon Tribunal President: Let me ask you a question? Are you saying a soldier in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba broke your fingers? Detainee: Yes. Soldiers took me and placed me on the ground in the rocks outside. My hands and my feet were bound. The soldiers put my face on the ground. You can see maybe my eye - a small little hole near my eyes (detainee points to the outside corner on his right eye). One soldier put my head on the ground, and then another soldier came and put his knee on my face. The soldier hit me on the other side of my face that was not touching the ground (detainee points to the left side of his face). If my head was turned a little bit more (detainee turns his head to the right attempting to show the Tribunal the position of his head at the time of the alleged incident) the rocks would have gone into my eye. Next to my eye (detainee points to his right) there is a little hole. There are a lot of things regarding the soldiers, but I won't talk about all of them.

The matter of the broken left pinky was noted again in a FOIA complaint filed by one of Ait Idir's attorneys in Boston in 2005:

22. On another occasion, Requester Ait Idir was severely beaten because of his religious beliefs. In early 2004, Mr. Ait Idir and many others were stripped of their pants, which Muslim men must wear for prayers. There were two rows of 24 cells. Guards approached the internee in each cell and demanded that the internee give up his pants. The internees repeatedly told the guards that they could not give up their pants because they would not be able to pray without them. The guards threatened to take their pants by force if the internees refused to give them up. A special team known as the Immediate Response Force (IRF) was present and available to go into a cell if the internee refused. There were a number of U.S. military officers present. 23. When Mr. Ait Idir was asked for his pants, he explained that he needed to keep them in order to pray. The guards refused his plea and demanded the pants. The reason the guards demanded the pants was to harass the men in their efforts to practice their religion. The guards insisted he could keep only his underwear. Mr. Ait Idir explained that he could not pray in his underwear. A colonel demanded the pants. Mr. Ait Idir offered to give up his pants so long as he could have them back for prayers. The colonel refused. 24. As threatened, the IRF came into Mr. Ait Idir's cell to forcibly remove his pants. He was sprayed in the face with chemical irritant, and one IRF member squeezed Mr. Ait Idir's testicles until he fell to the ground in a fetal position. The IRF members jumped repeatedly on Mr. Ait Idir's body while he was prone and his face was down. 25. After the IRF had secured Mr. Ait Idir's hands behind his back on the ground, and after he was fully under their control, one of the IRF members slowly bent Mr. Ait Idir's fingers back until one of them broke. The pain was excruciating, but Mr. Ait Idir was afraid that if he screamed, the IRF would react by injuring him further. After his finger was broken, he was refused any medical attention, despite his repeated requests.

Mustafa Ait Idir: "They treated us worse than animals. If we were animals, people wouldn't treat us that way."

Succeeding paragraphs of the FOIA complaint relate continued guard abuse a few days later causing dislocation of knuckles on his right hand, after which half of his face became paralyzed and he had pain. He was diagnosed with Bell's palsy.

The FOIA suit resulted in production of 10,000 records. As to a requested video of a forced cell extraction of Ait Idir, the government said it existed but was irretrievably lost.

The quoted paragraphs of the FOIA complaint about the colonel's demand for and extraction of the pants and the second incident involving Ait Idir's knuckles and face are elaborated in greater detail in a three-page passage in the CCR Report on Torture. Too lengthy to be quoted in full here, the report recites the following in the text accompanying footnotes 178, 202-07, and 268, based on first-hand witness notes which are on file at the CCR. Quotes are from the report:

"Religious abuse at Guantánamo is systematic, calculated, and part of the disciplinary system. Prisoners are punished for infractions, such as refusing to talk, by having their religious items taken from them. When a prisoner is 'reclassified' from level one to level two, he loses his prayer mat; at level three, he loses his beads, and so on. Religious abuse has been used to coerce interrogations, including at Ramadan when guards have withheld food at the break of fast. Moazzam Begg observed: 'it is the faith of the detainees that is targeted: the religion of Islam.'" [footnotes omitted]

In February 2004 military police ordered all 48 prisoners in Romeo Block to give up their pants, knowing that a Muslim man cannot pray unless his waist and legs are covered.

Ait Idir refused unless the colonel would promise to return the pants at times of prayer. The colonel would not agree and said the IRF would get them by force.

IRF members came into his cell three times, each time preceded by a renewed demand from the colonel and protest by Ait Idir that pants were necessary for prayer, each time with protective gear and a shield, and each time preceded by tear gas.

Ait Idir fought multiple IRF members out of his cell twice. (Back in Croatia and Bosnia, he was a karate champion, he noted proudly in the CSRT hearing. According to a 2008 Defense Department assessment, in the 1990s he obtained the level of third degree black belt.)

On the third incursion: "He knocked the first IRF enforcer to the side. By then, a second IRF enforcer was in the cell. He and Mr. Ait Idir were wrestling with each other. The second IRF enforcer grabbed Mr. Ait Idirs legs and wrapped them in a tight hug, trying to knock him over. Mr. Ait Idir struggled to knock the enforcer away. His eyes were blurry and stinging from the spray. The lead IRF enforcer ran back from the wall and grabbed Mr. Ait Idir's testicles and squeezed. Mr. Ait Idir was in intense pain."

Ait Idir went face down. Two of them landed on his back and secured his hands in restraints.

"After he had stopped resisting and his hands were tied, and after he was fully in their control, one of the guards slowly bent his fingers back until one of them broke. The pain was excruciating...."

Two prisoner witnesses -- Fahmi Abdullah Ahmed Al Towlaqi (still at Guantánamo Bay but recommended in 2010 for transfer to Yemen under conditions) and Lakhdar Boumediene (Ait Idir's co-petitioner in the Supreme Court, now living in France) -- saw his finger being bent, and the former saw that it broke. Ait Idirs medical records confirm the broken finger.

Ait Idirs resistance when his pants were demanded "led to" an unprovoked attack a few days later. There had been no intervening disciplinary issues at the time. Whether the colonel issued direct orders in the second incident is not known.

In the second incident, guards came to search his cell. He cooperated but they sprayed his face with chemical irritant and put him in restraints. They slammed his head on the floor. They lowered and submerged his face in the toilet and flushed it. They took him outside and threw him on crushed stones. "They stuffed a hose in his mouth and forced water down his throat. A soldier jumped on the left side of his face with full weight..." leading to left-side facial paralysis. They twisted his right middle finger and thumb. "The knuckles were dislocated." The symptoms from the attack continued to plague him at the time of the report, which was two years later.

The CCR report documents other incidents of abuse of Ait Idir in the text accompanying footnotes 26, 126, 130, 147, 187, 193, and 194, but these are not know to have occurred during Cannon's tour.

IRF / SWAT / NMLETG

The IRF is variously referred to as the Immediate Response Force, Initial Reaction Force, Internal Reaction Force, or Extreme Reaction Force. IRF actions are videotaped. The IRF has been compared to SWAT ("Special Weapons And Tactics") teams.

The FOIA complaint says the incident when his pants were demanded occurred in "early 2004." The CCR report says "Feb. 2004." Both are near the end of Cannon's Guantánamo Bay tour.

Reviewing the FOIA complaint and the Torture report I wondered who might be this "colonel" who sicked the IRF on Ait Idir three times to force him to pray without pants.

Today Cannon is not a colonel. He is a general. Part of what he does now in Michigan is oversee

specialized SWAT Team training, urban assault tactics training, live-fire training opportunities and other interior situations unavailable anywhere else in this part of the country,

Cannon does this through an organization Northern Michigan Law Enforcement Training Group (NMLETG) that he co-organized at Camp Grayling in 2001 with the approval of then-Governor John Engler, on the board of which he sits today. On August 16, I wrote NMLETG staffers Kelly Vandecar and Bruce Coxworth, noting the SWAT/urban assault curriculum and asking:

if NMLETG alumni or past or present staff are or have been involved in leadership of recent law enforcement activities around Ferguson. Stated otherwise, has there been any relation between NMLETG and official personnel or activities current in Ferguson today?

NMLETG staff has not answered.

The Center for Constitutional Rights coordinates the efforts and maintains a roster of US lawyers who have assisted with Guantánamo Bay litigation. I was led through the roster eventually to two lawyers of Ait Idir, Stephen Oleskey and Rob Kirsch.

Pictures sent on August 20 to

Mustafa Ait Idir via Rob Kirsch.

I asked them if the "colonel" who demanded the pants might have been Nelson Jerry Cannon. Kirsch responded on August 20:

"The best source for the information you seek is Mr. Ait Idir.... Of course, he did not have access to a calendar at the time, nor does he have notes of the incident.... If you send a photo, I can ask Mr. Ait Idir if he recognizes the person in picture. Identifying information was stripped from uniforms when soldiers were with prisoners at GTMO."

Queried how Ait Idir could have known the rank of the colonel if he wore no identifying information, Kirsch later explained:

"I do not believe rank was considered identifying. We have dozens of unclassified interview note references to the rank of JTF [Joint Task Force] personnel."

I responded with Cannon pictures from his campaign website and google, and a link to his 3½-minute Roll Call video of last October.

On receipt Kirsch wrote Ait Idir "Do you recognize the man in the photos or video?" Ait Idir wrote him back an hour later.

Kirsch forwarded me Ait Idir's iPhone email the next day, explaining:

"I intended to include in my last note the following response, which came from Mustafa after he viewed the video and still images. 'I think that Is I think that is a colonel whom told me if i do not give my long pents He will send to me IRF team.'"

Fitness to serve

For years as sheriff of Kalkaska County Cannon housed prisoners. And starting in 2001 he helped train local law enforcement SWAT teams. It would not be a surprise to learn that he taught the very IRF tactics used to bring down Mustafa Ait Idir in 2004.

In the Roll Call interview last October -- the one where he said "not just I but all the people that were under my command, we did that in a manner that the American people would be proud." -- one of Cannon's additional arguments was this: "I don't have a voting record."

It's true. He doesn't have a voting record. But he does have a record. It's one of torture.

Deliberately inflicting severe physical pain and injury to a person under the torturer's control or custody is torture.

Torture and the conspiracy among Cannon and the IRF team to commit it, done "outside" the US by US "nationals," is a 20-year felony. Guantánamo Bay is outside the US and Cannon is a US national. Congress first put the prohibition on the books in 1994.

Ait Idir has now unmasked the conspiracy. Its purpose was not to elicit intelligence information from him. He had no information to offer. It was to humiliate him religiously. Even a prisoner has a right to refuse and resist this.

In an appendix, the 2006 CCR report concluded -- and I agree -- that the assault on Ait Idir constituted torture under the statute. As to the conspiracy, according to a 2012 report out of the American University Washington College of Law:

Conspiracy is an ongoing crime, coming to an end only when either the conspirators no longer take actions in furtherance of the conspiracy or the conspirators withdraw from the conspiracy. [footnote omitted, emphasis added]

Since I first published Ait Idir's identification of the colonel on this page on August 30, Cannon has said nothing publicly to rebut the facts. He did not appear at the October 1 candidate forum in Gaylord where the Republican Dan Benishek and I spoke and I noted the issue.

A Traverse City reporter did ask him generally about torture at Guantánamo Bay, and in general terms he denied anything of that nature happened: "[Cannon] said all detainees were treated with care and respect and Boal's accusations are 'absolutely wrong.'"

But this side-steps the issue. The specific accusations are not mine. They are by Ait Idir and two witnesses who were there, corroborated by medical records. The reporter did not ask Cannon specific questions about the pants incident, and he has provided no specific facts. Nor have officials at Guantánamo Bay disputed the specifics published by CCR in its 2006 report.

If Cannon wanted to withdraw from the conspiracy, the time to do it was in the Roll Call interview in October 2013 when reporter Abby Livingston asked if "his time at Guantánamo Bay could be construed as controversial." Instead the conspiracy continues today. He calls the mission "great," even as Ait Idir continues to suffer from it.

The Democratic Party supports Cannon. An unnamed blogger reported on September 2 that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has reserved $940,000 of TV time for him. Even if Cannon goes to prison for torture, under the Constitution at article I section 2 he can still sit in the House and speak for the Party.

What happened to Ait Idir is just one example of prisoner abuse in CCR's Torture report. Cannon as the commander was responsible for all guard actions and IRF actions during his tour, under the military doctrine of command responsibility, which the US supreme court has upheld.

The CCR's Torture report, unlike the above New York Times articles, lists many specific examples of abuse. Except the dates of incidents are not specific (because prisoners did not have access to calendars). The incidents occurred over a period of years. They are too numerous to spell out in detail here. Many were before or after Cannon's tour, and many were during it. Here are some which were likely at least partially during his tour:

On August 18-26, 2003 there was a mass suicide attempt of 23 detainees.

For three years Othman Abdulraheem Mohammad lived 24/7 under fluorescent lights.

Around Ramadan (October and November) 2003, Isa Ali Abdulla Al Murbati was shackled to the floor by his hands and feet, with his hands pulled underneath his legs, for 12 hours while very loud music and white noise played through speakers near his head.

For 1½ years Ruhel Ahmed had a need for corrective lenses because of an eye problem that, left untreated, caused permanent damage.

For the eight months preceding February 2004, Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer was in solitary confinement.

From early 2004 to late 2005 Juma Al Dossari was held in isolation.

For the one-year period ending in July 2004, Moazzam Begg was kept in solitary confinement.

See also the time in March 2004, when IRF team members sprayed mace in the eyes of Omar Deghayes, and pushed a finger in his eye, and authorities refused to provide him with medical attention, causing permanent loss of sight in the eye.

See also the case of teenager Mohammed Jawad, who is now cleared, released, and back in Afghanistan. In the closing argument of his 2008 military trial, his attorney David Frakt argued that charges be preferred against Cannon for "cruelty, maltreatment and abuse, dereliction of duty, and violation of a lawful order" because of his failure to prevent abuse of a detainee under his protection. The abuse was the prison's "frequent flyer program." Said Frakt: "It is high time that someone in a position of authority be held accountable, and not just the guards who were carrying out orders this time." The tribunal held Jawad's confessions inadmissible because obtained by Afghan and US torture. He was freed a year later.

Cannon is proud of what he and the IRF did at Guantánamo Bay. But voters need to know several things:

what were the beginning and ending dates of his command responsibilities at Guantánamo Bay, has he reviewed the particular incidents (involving all prisoners not just Ait Idir) alleged to be abusive in the 2006 CCR report, which of the incidents occurred during his tour, what precipitated the early 2004 order that 48 prisoners surrender their pants even during prayer, what conversations he had with Ait Idir on the occasion his pants were seized, what training and orders were given to the IRF team to accomplish the pants seizure, who was the videographer of the missing video of the extraction of Ait Idir's pants, and what was the chain of custody including custodian names, custody locations, and dates, what if any enhanced interrogation techniques were used on inmates during his tour, and whether NMLETG alumni or past or present staff participated in leadership of recent law enforcement activities around Ferguson Missouri.

If Cannon wants people to vote for and entrust him with public office, where he would hold power to affect people around the country and the world, he must now provide details. A person who ordered and supervised torture is not fit to sit in Congress.

He and I talked about this on the stage on October 21, as we shook hands when the Candidate Forum in Traverse City ended. He said "Your facts are wrong." I said well then he should give answers to my questions publicly. He said "No."

Since he refuses, a Congressional committee should invite Ait Idir and the two witnesses to testify, along with the IRF and medical records, so the truth can be heard by everyone.