analog wrote:Individually they could be noble or savage.
At this state of the game I'm guessing 51% savage is the best we could hope for.
In mid-2005,
NPR reported that, "at its height, Guantanamo Bay held about 750 prisoners." By the spring of 2006, 538 Guantanamo detainees had been
released. By the summer of 2007, the Pentagon
reported that "at least 30 former GTMO detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention." (link was good a while ago but not there now)
Since "the US government does not generally track ex-GTMO detainees after repatriation or resettlement," one could surmise that those 30 were only a fraction of former detainees who have returned to militant activities or other anti-US activities.
Why did we release them? They lied, and we apparently could not prove otherwise.
"These former detainees successfully lied to US officials, sometimes for over three years. Many detainees later identified as having returned to fight against the U.S. with terrorists falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-scale merchants, or low-level combatants. Other common cover stories include going to Afghanistan to buy medicines, to teach the Koran, or to find a wife. Many of these stories appear so often, and are subsequently proven false that we can only conclude they are part of their terrorist training."
Several of the "less risky" ones released went straight back to the battle, the good news is this time we killed them.
Actually the only reason that many of them are breathing today is because, despite OT sensibilities and beliefs, information obtained by torture or "rigorous questioning" IS valid. If it was demonstrably untrue, there wouldn't BE a Gitmo except as a holding area for bodies.
analog wrote:The everyday GI's watching them probably know best.
Probably the ones that caught them would be the best judges, now they get fat and watch "
Death Wheel of Allah" and "
Iranian Idolater"
operatenor wrote:We also choose to ignore that at least a fair percentage of these people were sold to the US authorities for bounty
So if someone dimes out OBL for the bounty that make it less valid than catching him ourselves?
Obama supporters who criticized Bush’s position on indefinite detention at Gitmo have begun
rethinking that policy:
As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama sketched the broad outlines of a plan to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: try detainees in American courts and reject the Bush administration’s military commission system.
Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?
That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.
“You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone,” said one civil liberties lawyer, David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor who has been a critic of the Bush administration.
You can’t? That’s all we’ve heard from the close-Gitmo crowd for the last seven years. Indefinite detention supposedly violates American values, we’re losing the war if we adapt to the threat against us, blah blah blah. Certainly Barack Obama never gave any indication of nuanced thinking along the lines of indefinite detention during the last two years while campaigning for the presidency.
June 2007:“While we’re at it,” he said, “we’re going to close Guantanamo. And we’re going to restore habeas corpus. … We’re going to lead by example _ by not just word but by deed. That’s our vision for the future.
Now that Obama has to live with these decisions and not simply snipe from the sidelines, the game appears to have changed. A month ago, the NYT’s editorial board scoffed at the Bush administration’s efforts to keep Gitmo detainees from being released as merely a way to avoid bad press and not to keep dangerous people from killing Americans. Suddenly, the New York Times discovers that the American system does allow for indefinite detention to protect society from dangerous individuals without full-blown criminal trials — as with the criminally insane.
So what happens when the incoming Obama administration decides to continue indefinite detention and back away from Feinstein’s bill on interrogation techniques?
Despite the obvious, I personally don’t think the MoveOn/Code Pink crowd will revolt, but it will force a re-evaluation of the Bush administration’s efforts to keep this nation safe from attack — and the success he had in doing so.
I just love the delicious irony of all this.
