BTW… Your logic appears to suggest that the released detainees, held for three years without any charge, should somehow be grateful to the United States that they were not executed.

‘Thank you for not killing me without due process!’

Excuse me while I smirk.

WOOF quotes the Guardian:

Prisoners who had already been interrogated were sat down behind one-way mirrors and asked old questions while the visiting officials watched.

A regurgitation of Erik Saar’s charges about the detention center. Goes to show that you needn’t be factual or unbiased to be accepted as truthful by WOOF. You just have to give him that warm and fuzzy feeling. For them, skeptical inquiry is reserved only for viewpoints that

In any case, in the context of the posting, this is a truly dumb-ass comment. Of course the Gitmo prisoners have been interrogated before. After all, most of them have been there for 2 1/2 years. As for the “…and asked old questions,” if WOOF had any real interest in the truth, he would ask himself i) what is the strategic value of terrorists being held prisoner at Gitmo and ii) what sort of questions would be useful to ask the prisoners.

Here is another excerpt from Saar’s book

Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners. Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing.

Yes, how utterly shocking… shockingly stupid and utterly lame on part of the Guardian writer. I’m sorry, but if you put a healthy male in a cell without female companion for about six months then have a cute semi-clothed babe rub up against him, it isn’t exactly going to be torture. However, to show my patriotism, I volunteer to be used as a test subject for this type of interrogation by female interrogators. I reserve the right to prescreen the interrogators and will refuse to sit on my hands during the “interrogation.” 2

I’ll also note that with pornographic materials being used as rewards obviously implies that not every prisoner at Gitmo was being “tormented.”

Saar’s also says

Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners

Utter bullshit. If we weren’t getting continued intelligence of strategic value and if the prisoner was not a known threat, he would have been released. Indeed, there have been instances of too-quickly releasing some high value prisoners, since at least 12 ex-prisoners are known to have returned to the battlefield.

Carrick –
It’s not ‘utter bullshit’ that prisoners at Guantanamo are ‘often innocent’ – it’s a fact.

You are right, though, when you point out that innocent prisoners have been released – and that should be recognised. However, while some have, as you say, been released ‘too-quickly’, the flip-side of that is, of course, that same have been released far too late.

All the British inmates at Guantanamo were released earlier this year. They are free citizens in this country.

That means they were incarcerated for well over three years, without any charges being brought against them, and (in the light of their release and subsequent freedom) without any prospect of any charges being brought against them. That is surely intolerable.

We have to face it, this is a very different kind of war. We are not fighting a country, or an army in the traditional sense. I think it is too much to hope for to have them ‘play by our rules’. We are using traditional weaponry, training, and technology and they are using volunteers, home made bombs, suicide, and media savvy. It is a very strange match up.

That being said, whatever label these combatants go by, they are still prisoners of war and can be held as such until the fighting is over, simply to KEEP THEM OFF THE BATTLEFIELD. I think it would be proper to at least make their names made available for family members, but they do not get lawyers or a day in court as they are simply being held to keep them from actively fighting. That is reason enough.

On the other hand, when do you release them? You know there will never be a formal surrender signing on a battleship between the two groups. I doubt if they even have a true leader and heirarchy that could sign anything in the first place and would their army follow orders anyway? How do you know when it is over? When the frequency of bombing drops to a certain level? It will never be zero.

I personally don’t find anything wrong with the whole Gitmo thing. It is a matter of survival and they are all receiving adequate food, clothing and shelter. They are just much better at using the media to get the spin across. Our current leadership has done a very poor job with media relations and communicating their message and that is why these things snowball into huge stories.

Civil as always, Mr. Bowen…

Lets (sic.) review… Where was the military tribunal of which you speak in the case of the released Britons?

Carrick -
Much as I hate to get bogged down in semantics, I think you have confused the word ‘often’ with the phrase ‘more often than not’ (as suggested by your comment, ‘I’m objecting to the word “often”, which to me would imply more than 50%’).

The word ‘often’ can be used quite correctly in reference to small fractions. For instance, I could say, quite legitimately, that ‘ethnic minorities are often elected to the British Parliament’, even though the actual figure is less than 10%. Or, ‘when I bought eggs from X supermarket last year, they were often broken’ – again, the number of broken eggs could be less than 10%. So, I think you are wrong to pick me up on that. Sorry.

As to the more substantive parts of your post, I am interested in this claim – ‘Being released in no way absolves them of crimes. It simply means that the political costs of retaining them exceeded the intel benefits of retaining them, and that the determination was made that upon release, these individuals would not represent a continued threat.’

What I am curious about is why the Britons, for instance, have not been charged with the crimes of which you speak. If they are indeed terrorists, or linked to terrorist organizations, should they not at least have been brought to trial, regardless of whether or not, on their release, they would ‘represent a continued threat’? If they are guilty of crimes, they should be brought to justice. If someone was accused of murder, you would not release them simply because you don’t think they would commit any more murders. Or am I wrong?

The problem is that in the case of the 5 Britons, there was no evidence, or if there was any, it was of the most tenuous kind imaginable. That, along with the obvious fact that they have no information to give, is why they have been released.

&heellip; Earlier this year Senator Dick Durbin stood on the floor of the Senate and compared the terror detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Stalin-era Russian gulags. Later, a group of Congressional Democrats visited the facility and found that Durbin’s claims were outrageous (something that didn’t get nearly as much attention as Sen. Durbin’s original remarks). The worst treatment found at Guantanamo Bay had to do with sleep deprivation, making rooms too hot or too cold and playing loud music. Obviously, to anyone with common sense, those measures do not add up to torture. &heellip;

RJacksonB asks

On the other hand, when do you release them?

Excellent question, which al Qaeda must consider if it really ever wants its captured prisoners released. I guess this is the price its soldiers pay for fighting outside of the bounds of international law.

Our current leadership has done a very poor job with media relations and communicating their message and that is why these things snowball into huge stories.

Agreed. Bush sucks at public relations. A lot on the right blame it on the media, but frankly Bush is at least as much to blame.