[dude1394]

Love the opening line so much that "I" have to write it myself.

Each day, more and more it seems, the Old Gray Lady transmogrifies into America's al-Jazeera

Each day, more and more it seems, the Old Gray Lady transmogrifies into America's al-Jazeera. The following appeared in a New York Times editorial this weekend:

For more than two years now, about 600 men have been kept in American custody in Cuba, and the odds are that some — perhaps most — were merely hapless Afghan foot soldiers or bystanders swept up in the confusion of the American invasion. But it took the Supreme Court to tell the Bush administration they could not be kept there forever without giving them a chance to contest their imprisonment. [Emphasis added.]

First of all, the Times has absolutely no basis in fact — none — for this preposterous supposition. The military picked up thousands of people on the battlefields of Afghanistan. It screened and released the vast majority (well over 90 percent) of them. Of the remaining number, even more were weeded out before being sent to Guantanamo. While there were well over 800 Gitmo detainees a few months ago, that number — after months of interrogation and investigation — has been reduced by more than a quarter under circumstances where litigation and public scrutiny have caused intense interest.

That is, given the screening, the attendant political costs, and the burden involved in keeping prisoners (and there's more to say on the burden, presently), there is every reason to believe that the 600 still being held are extremely dangerous. Does the Times think there are no dangerous al Qaeda operatives?