This time on a Pentagon report that erroneously concluded that "1 in 7" prisoners released from Gitmo returned to the battlefield. The real number, once you factor out people who were not terrorists before their incarceration (but who became radicalized by the experience), is 1 in 20. Which is pretty striking, because it means that it is possible that we created more terrorists than we released, pretty well illustrating how it could be that the whole Gitmo project was counterproductive.* And yet, Cheney was able to quote this false statistic during the public debate between him and Obama on national security.
To the Times' credit, though, this story was written by their public editor.
* You can't necessarily conclude that anyone who was not a terrorist before Gitmo but who became one afterwards indeed became a terrorist because of their experience at Gitmo; it might have been the case that they would have become a terrorist even if they hadn't been incarcerated. You'd have to examine each case on its own. Still, though, I think there is enough circumstantial evidence in this to strongly suspect that their incarceration in Gitmo caused them to become terrorists--and this should have been the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment