Hey Chaotic,

Your first couple of sentences had me worried until I realised it was sarcasm!  The only comment I’d make is that very very few of the people who’ve been through or remain imprisoned at Guantanamo were “picked up” anywhere near a “battlefield”.  Many could not even be said to have been picked up in a “war zone”.

I would also add that the delays in releasing the prisoners known to be completely innocent are bizarrely embarrassing and cowardly.  The most well known, the Ouigers (or however you spell it) have been known to be innocent for over seven years.  One of them in his early thirties when kidnapped would now be approaching middle age.  Since they’ve been known to be innocent, have they been staying in the barracks along with the U.S. soldiers while the government decides what to do with them?  I don’t believe so ... this in monumentally evil and they are far from the only ones.

The U.S. owes it to them to AT LEAST let them live free in the U.S. if they cannot go home.  The chickenshit “not in my backyard” reaction to moving Guantanamo detainees (either to prisons or, where innocent, to new lives in the community) is embarrassing.  I didn’t know that Americans were such self-interested cowards (or is it just the self-interested cowards in charge?).

Do you know that it is a scandal in Britain that some British Intelligence and military personnel are believed to have collaborated with U.S. interrogations between 2001 and 2005?  It is taken for granted in England that the U.S. are torturers.  How has such a proud nation with so much good in its history (yes, I know not perfect) sunk so low? 

It will take a generation to repair the damage of the Bush Era if the changes don’t come through immediately to show that it was an aberration.  There should be immediate trials and punishments.  Without them, there is little hope for the restitution of the America’s image.

Imagine the embarassment, if someone who was proclaimed innocent, was then caught on the battlefield again.  Imagine the embarassment if someone were to say, “see I told you that torture works” and now you have to agree that it does.  Better that the innocent rot in prison until the “War on Terror” ends, right?
Does our constitution mean anything or is it just a nuisance to be circumvented.  I was appalled when Obama said that some prisoners must just be kept possibly forever because they are considered a danger to the USA. 
America is in danger largely because we have given up the high moral ground and we have sunk into the pit of “just another empire”.  We we protected all over the world by middle class people who quashed radicals in their midst because they believed that the United States was special.  It tried to be fair and just.  That illusion was destroyed as our rapacious oil needs superseded our good sense.  We must not sink further into oblivion.  All our military might will not save us if the world sees us as the enemy.  Taking political prisoners and torturing them is what we have condemned since our country’s founding.  We must close and destroy the memory of Gitmo, irregardless of the consequences in the short-term.  That action will do more to make us safe than anything I can think of.

All very interesting ... if Mr. Jawad is innocent then this can come none-to-soon.

What the world is waiting for is the prosecution of the torturers ... or is that legal now in the U.S.?  One cannot throw-out a confession on the basis that it was obtained through torture and then pretend that there are no grounds for investigation of the torture.