The Worst of the Worst?

AP has this article (posted at CommonDreams.org) detailing the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, based on a report compiled (at Seton Hall University) from declassified Defense Department evaluations.

8% of the detainees are classified as terrorist fighters.
30% are considered members of a terrorist group.

Fully 60% of the people we've been holding (some for more than four years) a considered "associated with" terrorists.

55% of the detainees are "informally accused of committing a hostile act", ranging from torturing and killing Afghan natives to "possessed a rifle", "used a guest house" or "wore olive drab clothing".

Seriously? We've got people in Guantanamo Bay for over 4 years whose main crime is waking up and putting on the wrong ensemble? And people still wonder why many question this whole "Enemy Combatant" dodge that the President whipped up to avoid the legal rights afforded "prisoners of war" and "criminals"?

Now, they do say that the declassified defense department reports omit some details about the prisoners, but still... remember that many of these people were not aprehended directly by the U.S. military, but were turned over by Pakistan or turned in by their neighbors at a time when we were paying large bounties for information leading to the arrest of "terrorists". I've mentioned before that there are documented cases of people turning in neighbors they didn't like, and in one case a son trying to claim a reward for turning in his father, largely because the father could no longer do any work and was a burden on the family.

We can't be that nation. We can't be the guys who will engage in questionable behavior and human rights abuses without any chance of justice.

And don't get me wrong, I do mean justice. The real terrorists in all of this deserve to be brought to justice. The terrorists who bomb buildings with airplanes and drive car-bombs up to buildings.

But true justice also requires freeing those who are actually innocent. True justice also might exact a pretty heavy toll on America, for Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition and torture and dumping phosphorus (a chemical weapon) on citizens. Our disgusting behaviors may have been in retribution for someone else's, but ours were not directed at the ones who hit us first, so even if you subscribe to the eye-for-an-eye theory, it doesn't apply here.

Liam.