Another big story on the war from the NY Times, but still a little confusing in it's details.

U.S. Said to Overstate Value of Guantánamo Detainees

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

While some Guantánamo intelligence has aided terrorism investigations, none of it has enabled intelligence or law-enforcement services to foil imminent attacks, the officials said. Compared with the higher-profile Qaeda operatives held elsewhere by the C.I.A., the Guantánamo detainees have provided only a trickle of intelligence with current value, the officials said. Because nearly all of that intelligence is classified, most of the officials would discuss it only on the condition of anonymity.

Here, as in many places, I think the Times is raising the bar for holding people from "people who would kill Americans" (not sufficient) to "people with information on an imminent 9/11 size attack" (in which case they still probably wouldn't agree with holding prisoners in this manner).

The article itself mentions that "officials...have been unable to get any information from at least 60 detainees". In my opinion, people held in this manner with nothing to hide would at least proclaim their innocence.

Also, when prisoners were released, "at least 5 of the 57 Afghan detainees released have returned to the battlefield as Taliban commanders or fighters. Some of the five have been involved in new attacks on Americans, officials in southern Afghanistan said, including a notorious Taliban commander, Mullah Shahzada, who was reportedly killed in a recent accident." If these people are Taliban commanders, past and present and are willing to kill Americans, how is this not "the worst of a bad lot" as the Times mockingly quotes Dick Cheney.

Finally, the report mentions a "26-year-old Saudi man who apparently tried unsuccessfully to enter the United States as the 20th hijacker in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001".

Personally, I'm pretty happy he showed up in Guantanamo.

I guess part of the question is how many innocent people could you morally round up and throw into prison if you thought that one would be as evil as to have taken part in September 11? The Times does not answer this question.