The U.S. has no good options here. If we send these people to be imprisoned in Britain (or wherever) and they get trials there, it could turn out that they were innocent the whole time (in fact, many of them are innocent)*. That would make the U.S. look pretty bad. If we release them ourselves, that raises the question of why we didn't do it immediately after they were captured. If they are terrorists and we send them to Pakistan or Syria, they could be released and/or serve as anti-US propaganda props, telling everyone about how we tortured them (which we probably did). Alternatively, if we send them to those countries and they get tortured, that could make us look pretty bad, too.

Three cheers for Bush's war on terrorism!

Dave

*
here are some excerpts from an analysis of the Pentagon's own data of the people detained there:

There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies.

"Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

"Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies." (Emphasis added.)

The Northern Alliance included Afghan warlords—not noted, to say the least, for their concern for any due process in rounding up "suspects" or the quality of the "evidence," if any, connecting their captives with terrorism. But these warlords were attracted by the generous sums the U.S. gave them for these suspects—many of whom were then warehoused at Gitmo.

The Seton Hall Law School report concludes with just two sentences—exposing the Bush administration's cold fraudulence in imprisoning these "enemy combatants" at Gitmo in the name of our national security and in total violation of due process, the basis of American rule of law, along with violating international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions on civilized treatment of prisoners:

"The detainees have been afforded no meaningful opportunities to test the Government's evidence against them. They remain incarcerated."

What does it matter if we're still running prison camps in the former Soviet Bloc countries?

Does anyone else think the real story here is that this White House is asking someone for advice?

Mannning:

Are you suggesting that the US have trials? Or just presume guilt? And if trials, what kind of due process are you going to have? Will hearsay be admissible? Evidence obtained through torture? As everyone knows, most of the prisoners were not captured on a battlefield, or under arms, much less by US military people. Do you have any idea how little of the evidence against these people is "direct" and "verifiable"?

And what's an enemy combatant anyway? If you use the formulation that the Supreme Court accepted in Hamdi, you're going to have to let a bunch of people go. If instead you use the Wolfowitz standard, under which you can hold the little old lady from Switzerland* -- you're still going to have to let people go, but not as many.

* If you don't know what this means, you might think about doing a little reading on what the actual policy is.

What's a "definitive connection"? If we don't know, how can we be sure it would merit being imprisoned even if were proven? Say, for example, that my brother is an Al-Qaeda operative, and I know it. This may be a "definitive connection," but not ratting my brother out is, afaik, not a crime, and shouldn't be. The connection absolutely merits my being questioned, trailed, and/or wiretapped, but it doesn't justify imprisonment, and it certainly doesn't justify imprisonment without trial.

For all we know, a "definitive connection" could be much more tenuous than that.

Bruce, your point doesn't have anything to do with the vast bulk of GTMO prisoners, who were not apprehended by the US military under arms. And your answer is shocking: since it's too much trouble to try to find out whether the denunciation of some individual by a Pakistani bounty hunter is based on fact, let's just presume it's true. For what amounts to a life sentence.

What are you so scared of that you're willing to throw our values over the side so casually?

The elephant in the room is that these guys were tourist in a war zone. Nobody wants them. At best they are undesirable citizens. Maybe they could be sent to Harvard law school for processing.

I see no point in sending these guys back to their country of origin. The war crimes that they are accused of perpetrating were not committed in their countries of origin. When a foreigner commits a crime here, he is tried and punished here, notwithstanding the interests of his home country. I suggest we send them back to the places where they were captured, and let the locals deal with them there.

John Thacker, the Seton Hall study was based on CSRT records of prisoners currently in custody, and so does not include the many prisoners already released (before late 2004, anyway).

I didn't (and wouldn't) say that no effort has been made, but that if that effort relies on (a) evidence obtained through torture (by us or, more importantly, others); (b) evidence/witnesses with insufficient confrontation (ie, where the prisoner isn't told the charge or evidence, or the source of the charge); and/or (c) hearsay from people who are not US servicemen and women, then it falls seriously below the burden that must be on the state to deprive someone of freedom. These are real issues: there are likely people in prison as a result of being denounced by someone with a grudge, rather than some kind of actual activity.

You say I'm wrong about presuming the truth of what some Pakistani bounty hunter has said about a prisoner -- what can you point to that supports your contention that this is "scurrilous"? (BTW, I was commenting directly on Bruce Hayden's response, not US policy. The government, as a result of Rasul, made much more effort in 2004 than ever before [but still insufficient, imo]. People who think Rasul wrongly decided hardly have the moral authority to claim that the government's response to Rasul demonstrates the incorrectness of that decision).

Houston Lawyer, the point in the Seton Hall study -- and the government indictment of only 10 out of the 490 prisoners -- is that the vast majority of them are not war criminals. Sending them back to Pakistan (even if they are Yemenis) has some surface appeal. You know why the government doesn't want to do this: if they didn't do anything illegal under Pakistani law (or if their crime was illegal entry into that country) then they'll get released.

Huggy, you say that no one wants them, but I think if you look into the thing a little closer, you'll find that Saudi Arabia and Yemen, to pick two, have not rejected the return of these prisoners. Rather, they have balked at the terms the US seeks to impose on such transfers. And, of course, their diplomats may well not know any more about what some individual prisoner did than what our government tells them. If we tell them these people are dangerous terrorists -- whether this is true or not -- their attitude may well be different than if we tell them that most of the people have little or no actual involvement in any hostilities.

Duncan, I can't tell whether your comment is serious. If it is, 30 years is plenty long to be held without a real trial.