Thanks for your continuing coverage Spencer.

Bush administration already returned around 500 detainees from Guantanamo to Afghan government custody — which has put about 200 on trial, with a “conviction rate about 80 percent.”

sweet, hard to believe but the bush administration did something right…wonders, they never cease

Did the detainees get a fair trial in Afghanistan?

I’m pretty skeptical, not that they’d have gotten a fair trial here. Still, the fact that they haven’t had a 100 percent conviction rate suggests the accused have some opportunity to defend themselves. Of course we also have no idea if the people who are not convicted actually get released.

Where do you think they should be tried so as to best insure fairness?

good question foothillsmike, me no know

See Jon Stewart’s take on this. He starts with the 2.3 million people we have in prison, and shows us just a few of our home grown. It’s spot on.

OT Geithner announces new lobbying rules for bailout

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200….._secretary

The new rules will restrict the contact officials can have with lobbyists in connection with applications for funds from the bailout program

The practical effect will be to make it harder for Goldman employees outside of government to talk directly with Goldman employees in goverment. I guess business will now be conducted by winks and nods, oh wait that is the way this was done.

somedays you’ve really got to stretch to fit those punk references in your headlines… not complaining, i enjoy the trivia challenge…

So, 750 released, presumably because there was no evidence against them, and roughly 250 remain out of 750+250 = 1000. And of those released 61 have been involved in terrorism, e.g., have appeared in documentaries that displeased the Bush administration.

In the penal system, prisons are for punishment: retribution, deterence, separation for the safety of society. Guantanamo is an interrogation camp. The torture is intended not as punishment but as a means to extract precious information about ticking timebombs etc. It’s not a matter of guilt or innocence but of whether there is useful information yet to be extracted by whatever means are still available.

The lack of case files is a dead giveaway as to how the people running that place viewed it.

The only problem is that the alumni of Gitmo are walking war-crimes indictments, ready for interview and ready to testify. Damn those folks running Gitmo must have had a lot of faith in those OLC legal opinions that Gonzales and Yoo wrote.

The conviction rate in federal courts is 90+ % for comparison. But Afghan courts like everything else there are very corrupt.

I have no idea. If tried in the U.S. they won’t be afforded the same protections as U.S. citizens. Afghanistan nearly qualifies as a failed state and any action undertaken by their thoroughly corrupt government is suspect.

In addition, it sounds as if the “records” pertaining to the inmates is haphazard, incomplete, and widely strewn. The Bush junta made a real mess of things.

The lack of case files is a dead giveaway as to how the people running that place viewed it.

Yes, I made this point in an update to item 10 of my scandals list. The lack of real case files shows that the commissions process was never serious. We knew this but now we have the evidence for it.

I’m assuming that when you say “Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) asks about Guantanamo. Finally.” you mean that he asked what Guantanamo is. Saxby is as dumb as a box of hair. (I used to say he was dumb as a box of hammers, but hammers have heads after all…)

Chambliss: “If Guantanamo is a detainment camp, what the hell have I been puttin’ on my nachos?”

That’s an understatement, but I expect Obama’s committed to unscrewing it.
I’ve got to think that, at this point, if any remaining prisoner is tried, he’s going to get a reasonably fair trial here.

Snort! We can only assume that he’s been served lots of snotchos over the years…

Seems likely.

Spencer,

Thanks for posting the info. To put my response in the proper perspective, as a military vet, I a member of the Chicano Veterans Organization, in that capacity, I write the Cactus Juice Commentaries at their web site. And within this context, I have considered, cogitated and even contemplated writing about the detainees at Gitmo. However, to date, I have refrained, although this story would resonate and quite amply within our Spanish-speaking communities, but the historical problem continues. But the ‘problem’ as with most political issues at the national level, “unassailable” facts emanating from the Bush Administration, was either non-existent or simply, misplaced while in pursuit of trashing the Constitution. And Congressional oversight was abysmal given that Senator Lieberman refused to hold any hearings in keeping with his responsibility and duty for holding an important chairmanship in the Senate.

So, I will continue to compile any data readily avialable, and at some point in time, I will write ’something’ that addresses the existing public placebo for any unwillingness to prosecute the detainess in our federal criminal courts. And much to our national shame. Perhaps, Iglesias will turn this sorry state of affairs around by providing some ‘enlightenment’ for the generic public?

I finally realize that Gitmo is not a penal colony. Rather it is an interrogation center. Their product is (mis)information. It was never really intended for convictions and/or punishment. It was detainment and interrogation only.

Anyway, good on you for having realized that distinction long ago. It took the lack of case files for me to get it.

The torture is intended not as punishment but as a means to extract precious information about ticking timebombs etc. It’s not a matter of guilt or innocence but of whether there is useful information yet to be extracted by whatever means are still available.

Oh Gee. Here, all this time, I thought it was just a way for bullies to get their rocks off–torturing terrorists. My bad.

I frankly do not think that anything these prisoners have done or might still do once they are free has any bearing on the decision to release them. They are held illegally and have been grossly mistreated. If we are to return to the rule of law, then we now have no legitimate recourse against these people for what they have done and no right whatsoever to punish what they might do in the future. We just need to do the right thing and let them go immediately.

If 100% of the prisoners choose to repay years of American lawlessness with yet more lawlessness, well, that’s the price we pay for our moral folly. We’ll just have to deal with such consequences as they come–though I suspect most will just want to get back to their lives, while most of the remainder will have lawyers prepared to sue widely on their behalf in both US and international courts. I suspect that the risk management that underlies the continued detentions is mainly focused on the latter possibility, actually.

Be that as it may, delaying release any longer just compounds the costs we’ll have to bear and, more importantly, the depth of our moral degradation. Get it over with.

“…we now have no legitimate recourse against these people for what they might have done and no right to punish what they might do in the future.”

That seems to be overstating things a bit.

I thought Gitmo was like…Ellis Island. That’s what Steve King told me.