Here's a partial answer to "why" Guantanamo?

December 27, 2001 - Rumsfeld announces that many prisoners from Afghanistan will be transferred to a hastily-constructed detention center at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.[ed. note...irony is not dead] [16] [See January 6, 2002] During October and November 2001, an inter-agency task force had decided on this site because it is located outside the United States. Task force member John Yoo later wrote: “We researched whether the courts would have jurisdiction over the facility, and concluded that if federal courts took jurisdiction over…camps, they might start to run them by their own lights, substituting familiar peacetime prison standards for military needs and standards.” [92]

November 10, 2001-Vice President Cheney leads a meeting at the White House to finalize a Presidential order, drafted by David Addington, which details how detainees captured in Afghanistan and the larger "War on Terror" will be tried. Lawyers from the War Council, including Jim Haynes and John Yoo, are present but senior officials from the State Department and the National Security Council are excluded.[16] [See November 6 and 13, 2001] Instead of holding the battlefield hearings mandated by the Geneva Conventions to determine the combat status of detainees, Bush determined unilaterally that all prisoners captured in the “war on terror” were “unlawful enemy combatants” and could be held indefinitely. [92, p75] “Unlawful enemy combatants,” is a category not recognized in the Geneva Conventions.

Bernbart:

It's not as if these prisoners were fighting for the rights or freedom in their own country, they were traveling around the world with other terrorist. To say they were taken from their homes and off the streets as if they had no connection to Islamic terrorists is an absurd assumption. Bagram was not captured walking down the streets of London after all.

There have been many people taken out of their homes and off the streets who in fact have never had anything to do with "terrorism". Mistakes have definitely been made. Some people were fingered by others who were undergoing torture. Here is part of the story of Khled el-Masri:

January 1, 2004 - German citizen Khaled El-Masri is captured in Macedonia. He is flown to Kabul, Afghanistan [through Baghdad] on January 24, 2004, and imprisoned there until May 28, 2004. “During this period the CIA discovered that no charges could be brought against him and that his passport was genuine, but inexplicably kept Mr El-Masri in his squalid, solitary confinement for several weeks thereafter.” For details see [20] On May 30, 2007 the ACLU petitioned the United States Supreme Court to review the case of Khaled El-Masri. [43] To read about his experience in his own words see [53] “[…] I was warned that as a condition of my release, I was never to mention what had happened to me, because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret. […]” [Note: some records indicate El-Masri was captured on December 31, 2003]

You're statement is "an absurd assumption" because you seem to assume what you read in the NYT and what you hear from the Government is the TRUTH.

I still like the old "question authority" idea.

June 28, 2004- The Supreme Court, in Rasul v. Bush, ruled against the Administration’s argument that detainees had no right to challenge their imprisonment in American courts. That month, in a related case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared that “a state of war is not a blank check for the President.” (O) [For Rasul decision, see (XX)] In response to Rasul, rather than conduct habeas hearings in federal courts, the U.S. military established an internal system of military panels called Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) to review the evidence on each detainee and assess whether he was an “enemy combatant.” […] By January 2005, the military had […] found all but 38 [of the 558 detainees] subject to continued detention as enemy combatants. […]” These 38 men were not found to be “innocent” of wrongdoing but designated as “No Longer an Enemy Combatant”. For a description of how the Courts worked, see [92, p.57] On June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court decided Boumediene v. Bush, finding that Guantánamo detainees had a constitutional right to have a federal court adjudicate their petitions for habeas corpus, challenging the legality of their detention”

February 11, 2009- Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, Obama's Solicitor General nominee, told Senator, and former Air Force lawyer Lindsey Graham that she believed the government could hold suspected terrorists without trial as “enemy combatants”. “Civil liberties advocates […] have urged the Obama administration to follow the U.S. rules of criminal justice in such cases. Under these rules, civilians who are alleged to conspire with terrorists must be charged with a crime and given a trial.” [78] As of October 2008, of the more than 770 individuals known to have been incarcerated for some period at Guantánamo, the U.S. government has charged only 23 with war crimes. [92, p.76] To date, there has been no official acknowledgment of any mistake or wrongdoing by the United States as a result of its detention or treatment of any Guantánamo detainee. No former detainees have been compensated for their losses or harm suffered as a result of their confinement. [92, p.78]

I didn't believe the Linndie England and Pat Tillman stories either.

Sources at sig.

Thanks for clarifying that. After I had read a couple of articles, most with a definite slant toward the husband [who is, after all, not incarcerated at the moment and therefore more accesible for interviews], I just couldn't keep things straight.

That "City Room" Blog post you linked to earlier is just pathetic...more journlistic stenography, as far as I'm concerned.