Can we deliver a McClatchy news + GG commentary package to the White House? And somehow make sure the editors of major newspapers also read it?

I also think Rupert Murdoch should be stripped of his bought citizenship and his control of US media. I think everyone's behavior is influenced for the worse by fear of Fox.

In your article you ascribe the commonly used quote... in Gitmo "we house the worst of the worst" ... to Washington officials. You use a link to an interview when that quote was used to bolster your argument against Gitmo detention. Fair enough. However the link points to a CNN John King interview with Senators Boxer and Shelby. That interview was really a debate pitting Boxer against Shelby. Shelby is the one that used the quote. Boxer was actually arguing that she was with Obama in closing Gitmo but that they needed a plan around the funding. Based on what she has said in the past, including in that interview, it doesn't appear to me that Boxer would use the quote you broad brush to "Washington officials". Please be more careful.. Thanks Steve

That interview was really a debate pitting Boxer against Shelby. Shelby is the one that used the quote.

Is Sen. Shelby not a Washington official?

I believe that you may find that there is some uncertainty as to the amount of the bounties paid, but some reports suggest that they ranged as high as several thousand dollars. This does not change your point, but it does reinforce it further, I think.

Too right my man. And what's more these neocons operate like a virus. Their papers used to come from orgs like the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) later the AEI (American Enterprise Institute). Now the fuckers are producing neocon project papers from the Brookings Institute that once was considered independent and of liberal leanings.

Two party democracy long a sham is now becoming openly so.

Thanks for that link. I hope Harpei sees it as there may be information there that is pertinent to the torture timeline.

This first bit here....

Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data February 8, 2006

Asserted that very few Guantanamo captives were captured by Americans, on a battlefield, that most were captured by bounty hunters, or Pakistani border guards.[3]

...might be of interest to Bernbart and others who reflexively insist that everyone we have in our overseas gulags are terrorists.

ccputnam please accept my sincere apologies for landing on top of your soft spot long after others had so thoroughly exposed and shredded it.

"Is Sen. Shelby not a Washington official?"

He is.. and thank you for the response. My point is that you make it a practice to be thorough in your reporting.. Why didn't you just attribute it to Senator Shelby. I suspect most your readers know who is is, where he would be in this debate, and would not generally group him with all other "Washington Officials".. Especially given the changeover of the 2008 elections. While you are certainly in your right to characterize him in that manner, it appears to me that it is deceptive to the reader, giving them the impression that the quote is status quo.. when in fact it is coming from a right-wing idealogue..

You continue to ignore, the current administration's claims of attempts to release detainees who cannot be released where they were detained because (1) it is not their country of citizenship, and their country where they hold citizenship refuses to take them (2) They will lack any civil rights in their own country. To date I have seen no investigative proof this is not true but instead opinions using one or two cases then applying those situations to broad swath of detainees.

US law already provides for this situation. Persons in US custody who cannot be returned to their country of origin because of the likelihood that they will face persecution there are to be awarded political asylum in the US.

If we don't like the fact that we have to offer this particular group of men political asylum by the terms of our own laws, next time maybe we should think twice about seizing people and flying them to US administered territory for detention.

So we...decide that -- although he worked against our Enemies -- some alleged "associations" he had reflect an agenda that conflicts with ours and... entitle us to lock him away. -- GG

By that standard, shouldn't Donald Rumsfeld be encaged? Despite his claims to be on "our side", we have photographs of him shaking hands with Saddam Hussein back in the 80's. Hell, we even have videotape of him acting all chummy with the Grand Poo-Bah of WMD's. There's nothing "alleged" about these photos and tapes (our Ministry of Propaganda never got around to destroying them). And when asked about this connection, he gives very evasive responses!

Any reason we shouldn't throw away the proverbial key on him --and on all his known "associates"?

.might be of interest to Bernbart and others who reflexively insist that everyone we have in our overseas gulags are terrorists.

-- Pedinska

Read my posts more closely. You will notice that I do NOT call them terrorist, but detainees. I'm saying it's not a black and white situation and cannot be solved over night, and not all cases are the same. I did not say I approved of the detention of these 'suspects'. I am saying some have unrealistic expectations about their release, and trials and some never acknowledge that many countries will not allow the detainees to be released in their countries.

McClatchy is not known for great journalism either.

So let's take at face value that "one out of seven" detainees "return to the jihad."

Is that an admission that 6 out of 7 should have been tried, acquitted, and released?

The circumstances of Wakil's detention and the identification of Wakil's likely accuser paint a chilling portrait of how U.S. policy can go hideously wrong on the ground in an occupied country.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Wakil was detained after (in hindsight, foolishly) addressing criticisms of local U.S. tactics to an American commander at a U.S. base. Wakil says he advised the commander "'Don't take any direct action here. Coordinate your actions with the local forces. You don't understand the local security.'" Sage advice, obviously. But it doesn't take much imagination to see the officer steaming under the implication that Americans 1) don't know best how to conduct their own operations and 2) have an obligation to "coordinate" with local leaders.

The story of the likely accuser is equally telling:

Mohammed Roze, who directs the Afghan government's peace and reconciliation commission in Kunar, said he thought that Malik Zarin, who was then the head of the rival Mushwani tribe, had turned Wakil in because the Mushwani tribe opposed a poppy-eradication program that Wakil had begun in Kunar around the time of his arrest. Zarin had built close ties with American forces in Kunar, Roze said.

Americans in Kunar helping a friendly tribal leader involved in poppy cultivation remove an anti-poppy (but troublesome) elder from a rival tribe?

This sounds like an episode from The Shield: Kabul, not the way a superpower runs an effective ground operation in a country that has resisted foreign occupation successfully since the days of Alexander.