It's worse than I thought. (And yes I thought it was pretty bad.) From the conclusions of an investigation by the resolutely non-partisan National Journal:
* A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at
Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the
battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill
American forces" (as McClellan claimed).* Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available
evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.* Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban
foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly
seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to
murder Americans.* The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by
reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly
doubtful reliability.
Gitmo was once described as a "dumping ground for mistakes." I wish I could remember who said that, because it's looking ever more like that's exactly the case.
One example, from the National Journal, about how justice is administered at Gitmo:
A Yemeni, whom somebody fingered as a bin Laden bodyguard, finally said in exasperation during one long interrogation, "OK, I saw bin Laden five times: Three times on Al Jazeera and twice on Yemeni news." And now his "admission" appears in his enemy combatant's file: "Detainee admitted to knowing Osama bin Laden."
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