After 9-11, the "smartest guys in the room" concluded that the criminal system, being reactive, wasn't good enough: you have to pre-empt and prevent. Hence, indefinite detention, torture, and the rest. You give up the opportunity to prosecute, but (so the theory goes) you gain the advantage of being in a position to prevent or pre-empt, not just deter. I guess you could argue that it works -- no more domestic attacks since 9-11. Except that, world wide, terrorist attacks are up. And that, as far as I know, the modest successes in thwarting attacks have resulted from traditional criminal investigative work: stings, spys, tips. What those smart guys don't seem to have thought through is, what do you do with the detained and the tortured in the long run? Can't prosecute them in a traditional court on evidence adduced through torture and mistreatment. Can't safely let them go, either, since there is no reliable way of figuring out which ones are innocent -- and, if they weren't enemies of the US before, surely they are by now. It's a dead-end strategy, as should have been obvious from the start.

When my wife and I saw Seymour Hersh speak in the 'Couv earlier this year, this was the one subject where I saw him lose his cool. He asked how we could let this happen in America...illegal prison camps and allow our young soldiers torture. Sick.And.Wrong...that it is not in the editorial pages every day.

I couldn't believe it when I first heard it, and it's still a shock now.

We are running a totalitarian prison camp, in Cuba.

The people running this country are possessed.

"It's a dead-end strategy, as should have been obvious from the start."

Wrong again.

It has worked for the last 5 years. How many of those in Gitmo have been released to commit war crimes and kill more US soldiers again after they were released?

As long as they are in Gitmo, they are not killing US troops, now are they? Or don't you give a hoot about US troops anymore?

You are still trying to prosecute this WAR as if it was some kind of criminal prosecution of felonies committed on US soil.

Or have you forgotten that these are war criminals who committed crimes of war during armed conflict against US troops in wartime? Most of whom have violate the Geneva convention by posing as civilians when they were in fact armed soldiers in wartime.

If they committed murders on US soil, they would have been on parol/probation by now, probably protected (as illegal aliens) by Mayor Potter in Portland, free to rape and murder some more, after they have been rehabilitated by the crimal justice system.

Yeah, that is the strategy that we want! Please move them all into our US Criminal Justice System, and close down Gitmo. Right. Good strategy Allan L.

Larry

As long as they are in Gitmo, they are not killing US troops, now are they? Or don't you give a hoot about US troops anymore?

If you're talking about Iraq, the U.S. troops should be out of there.

This "war" is lost, my friend. It was lost before it was ever begun.

You lost. Time for damage control, but that's something the Chimp has never been very good at. He just moves on to the next job his father gets for him.

"Or have you forgotten that these are war criminals who committed crimes of war during armed conflict against US troops in wartime? Most of whom have violate the Geneva convention by posing as civilians when they were in fact armed soldiers in wartime."

Larry, you've apparently got information that no one else has. No one else has ever shown that anything you say about any of those people is true. But you have a point: I mean, they could put you in the concentration camp, and then you wouldn't be killing any US troops either, now, would you?

Well, your are right, I don't know everything about each of these (possible non-)Taliban fighters.

Perhaps they were Taliban tourists visiting Paris, and were kidnapped by CIA operatives (Ms Plame-Wilson?) and shuttled over to Gitmo via a private company chartered GulfStream IV? Yeah, maybe that's it. Paris, or maybe Taliban folks visiting Beruit?...Iraq?...but not NYC. At least not yet.

As you say, I could be wrong here. They could be innocent... all of them. Or some of them might have done some wrong somewhere, maybe even against a US soldier. Maybe? Maybe just one of them?

Or maybe they are all innocent. Kinda hard to know from my vantage point.

Wow, Larry scares me...and he needs to open his eyes to what is going on and not just taking the Chimp at his word...

As you say, I could be wrong here. They could be innocent... all of them. Or some of them might have done some wrong somewhere, maybe even against a US soldier. Maybe? Maybe just one of them?

That's why we have a justice system to put people on trial to determine their innocence or guilt.

Oh. Just kidding. I didn't mean to include those people we've taken to Cuba or any of those secret prisons we keep around the world. For those folks justice isn't just blind, she's left the room entirely. In embarassment.

The prison at Guantanamo is an un-American perversion of justice. An America that tortures and imprisons without due process of law is NOT the America our soldiers have signed up to defend with their lives.

I salute Col. Brownback, and hope his ruling hastens the end of this shameful gulag.