K: Indeed, what happens to detainees upon release? Will they sue in civil courts for wrongful imprisonment? Will the people who brought them to Guantanamo be prosecuted for kidnapping, like the Italians are prosecuting the CIA? Will they, as the Pentagon keeps saying, return to the battlefield? Your point and mine, clearly, is that five detainees returning to jihad is less worrisome than the five thousand middle-class Egyptians radicalized the way Qutb was back in the day. (I did actually remember that NYT Mag piece from 2003...) The Supremes have just agreed to hear three cases involving executive branch responsibility for deprivations of civil rights carried out abroad, probably in order to shut 'em down. So the fear that former secretaries will have to pay for private school in Canada, or new rims on a bunch of Afghan Hummers is unmerited. And the 9-0 Munaf-Omar ruling makes clear that whatever the consequences of deporting a detainee, it ain't challengable.
Summary castration be damned: What Happens in Yemen Stays in Yemen. Ultimately, no one cares what these dudes do after their day in court.
The real question is, What will these dudes do in court? The administration hasn't been arguing to block the release of detainees; certainly not while they've been steadily draining Gitmo. They've been arguing to keep detainees from having access to their own lawyers, from seeing the evidence against them, or from having their testimony preserved in toto.
Torture is the weenie. This is why David Hicks, the Australian Talib, is subject to a gag order. This is why Andy Card, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers et alia refuse to obey subpoenas, risking jail rather than dent the armor of executive privilege. The administration is scared shitless of Carl Levin! They fear no mujahideen; they fear memoirs! Depositions!
This is not Syriana, it's Michael Clayton. (Check me later on Tilda Swinton intentionally modelling her character on Condoleezza Rice.) Detainees will demonstrate in court that a program of coercive interrogation originated at Guantanamo shortly after Rumsfeld signed off on it in 2002. Pre-Abu Ghraib, pre-"bad apples."
A program of torture spanning three continents and half a decade was conceived, promulgated and concealed by the executive branch. And the people subject to it now get their day in court? The goddam plane has crashed into the side of the mountain...
My concern is that this will bump us into a higher-echelon paranoia. Just as Al-Qaeda will feed on the shadow-government narrative, the Hammerhead Right will cite the Boumediene decision as evidence of the Enemy Within. At least, until these dudes testify...
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