Is there a convenient single online resource to look up or review the background and current status of past and current Guantanamo detainees, included those released or convicted?

I know in any particular case there are often many articles available, of varying accuracy and timeliness. What I'm thinking about is a site dedicated to compiling information about all those identifiable as current or past prisoners: a wikiGuantanamoDetainee, if such exists.

For way too many people not sensitive to civil liberties issues, Guantanamo detainees remain, by indifference reinforced by official mythmaking, a faceless, sinister group, the worst of all possible terrorists whose rights no security-conscious American should worry about.

And for some of us who do care, it's hard keeping up with all the names amid ongoing court cases and changing circumstances.

If there does exist such a site, where non-specialists can see, for themselves, the vast discrepancy between government claims of death-dealing, America-hating UberTerrorists and the sad, stark reality of who many of these people are, how they came to be unfairly incarcerated, and, in the case of those released, how they have gotten on with their (non-terrorizing) life - I think publishing it here would be a great public service.

The NYT has this:

"The Guantánamo Docket is an interactive database of Pentagon documents and New York Times research regarding 779 men who have been detained at Guantánamo as enemy combatants since January 2002. [...]"

http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/about

If you know the prisoner's name, use Wikipedia, and scroll down to the bottom. There are almost always links to their CSRT reports and other documents. Then use these, and any mentioned names within the Wikipedia article to narrow searches on the prisoner's name. Be careful to allow for variations in spelling, a lot of newspapers have standardized spellings of Muslim names based on Arabic, but if the prisoner is, say, Pakistani, the vowels are likely to be different and they have a legal spelling in English there. Organizations like the ICRC will always use that legal spelling (because they ask the prisoner how they spell their name). That should pick up whether or not they've been in any studies, like PHR or HRW, or on the AI missing persons list. After gathering enough information that way, take your search to the National Security Archives or the ACLU archives (both actually). That will work for most prisoners as long as their names are known.

If you don't know the name, it's a lot harder, unless you know of a group, like "Bosnian-Algerian" or "Uighur" or "black site detainee".

I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but that's what I use. If I've been following the person for a while (e.g. Aafia Siddiqui), then I do a google news search by date followed by a blog search by date, followed by any sites that I've found to be invisible to google.

After college which was long ago,

I have read several historians over the years. to name a few:

"The Russian Revolution", Leon Trotsky

"Rise and Fall of the Third Rich", dont remember the authors name.

'The Gulag Archipelago", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

'No Ordinary Tine", Doris Kerns Goodwin, FDR

'Taking Charge', Michael Becholoss, LBJ

'Abuse of Power", Stanley Kutner

Right now in between my fiction, I am reading

"The Defining Moment, about FDR Joaathan Alter. Who is is not that great a writer.

I have read much in art history.

Of course I'm not sure what this proves, listing some of what I have read in history.

I like Ms. Manner sarcastic deliverance on stupid questions. Of course my mother presented me with the 'teen' version of the Emily Posts book of manners year ago. And yes, showing my age, I do remember 'candid camera'.

Supermax prison: Obama's books objectionable
By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer [link@sig]

Jul 9th, 2009 | McLEAN, Va. -- The federal government's most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" and rejected an inmate's request to read them.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security. [...]
___________________________

We have long since passed through the Looking Glass, so Lewis Carroll references like the one Glenn quoted yesterday are entirely apropos.

But I doubt that even the combined genius of Lewis Carroll and Jonathan Swift could create an imaginary dystopia as surrealistic and bizarre as contemporary Amerika.

Those versed in legal proceedings are doubtless aware of the general principle that if any part of a witness's testimony is found to be untrue and incredible, that the tryer of fact may discredit and reject the whole of the testimony.

To my mind, the absolute absurdity and preposterousness of the devolving policies and principles articulated by the Amerikan government supports the conclusion that both elected misrepresentatives and administrative officials are deranged and incompetent, at least within the scope of their employment, and that their credibility has been entirely impeached-- if only in the broad sense of the term, alas!

It boggles the mind, even when one believes that one has become habituated to the government's having become a source of perpetual arrant nonsense.

Silly me. I thought the subject of discussion here was the piece Glenn wrote.

What I ran into instead was the bernbart discussion group.

For all the intelligence in the room(and I mean that seriously), and for the purpose of saving brain cells can't we just ignore him and move on to real issues?

Signed, Last time I will EVER mention or react to a bernbart post

(which is also the FIRST time)

...to Bill Owen or Frankly, My Dear or anyone else, but opium growing and heroin production in the modern cycle was introduced from Pakistan, was and is used by the ISI to fund a range of terrorist groups, is the primary money source of the Taliban and al Qaeda groups that the ISI sheltered and nurtured back to health in Pakistan, most of the money goes to and stays under Pakistani control, and it has reduced Afghanistan from being agriculturally self-sufficient to much less than sufficient, starving people in some areas of the country.

OBTW, did you hear about the bomb blast? 25 dead, majority school children, plus some police and adult bystanders. A truck bomb, employing Eric Rudolph's old tactic of waiting until rescue workers had arrived on the scene and then detonating by remote. That means that the assholes who detonated it were in full view of the scene and knew full well they'd be killing those children. Do you like the Taliban version of collateral damage? And wasn't killing police (as opposed to soldiers) a war crime when it was done in Gaza?

Read all the news, otherwise you might not get the whole story. The U.S. is not acting properly in Afghanistan, but that never meant that the Taliban were wonderful indigenous freedom fighters, did it? They always have funded themselves on heroin. Heroin to Iran, heroin to Russia, heroin to Europe and beyond. Blood heroin, as in blood diamonds. That's why people like Wakil oppose it.