Here's a link to a link that has more of this... including an incident in which a US soldier was shot and wounded by a terrorist that had been captured and released for 'lack of evidence'...

"Japproval"? Is that related to the World War II analogy?

;-)

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

pfff. Safaa Mohammed Ali was my cab driver yesterday. And makes a mean kabob. And runs the bodega...

I was hoping they'd say he was in Abu Ghraib. At least then I could feel confident that Private Lindsay laughed at his wiener.

Hi, "Ace"!

This is a silly post. The only way to be sure you will never release a bad guy is to never release anyone you detain which is not practical.

The only way to be sure you will never release a bad guy is to never release anyone you detain...

But there's a wide gulf between our current policy and surety.

geoff, our current policy has nothing to do with requiring proof to a federal jury or any other level of due process. I suspect detainees are released more or less at random when we run out of space. It is at least arguable that requiring some degree of proof to hold people would improve matters. What do you think we should be doing differently?

I suspect detainees are released more or less at random when we run out of space.

That was not my understanding. The Abu Ghraib scandal forced the US to accelerate prisoner releases, rather than detaining them indefinitely as POWs. This policy, while hopefully more just, has the side effects mentioned above. The question is: is a Type I error (letting a terrorist go) sufficiently bad that we should allow more Type II errors (mistakenly detaining innocents)?

But the point here is that the policies espoused by the liberal critics have had the obvious consequences for which those same critics will never take responsibility.

geoff, liberals are not running our detention facilities in Iraq. If detainees are being released inappropriately it is not their fault. People were released from Abu Ghraib because it was overcrowded and understaffed. You can't keep adding prisoners and never let anyone out. If you think we need more prisons perhaps you should say so.

geoff, liberals are not running our detention facilities in Iraq.

Nor are they running the facility at Guantanamo. But pressure from the left has forced the release of several prisoners, some of whom were later captured in Afghanistan after they rejoined the Taliban.

If you think we need more prisons perhaps you should say so.

We are already expanding the prison facilities and adding a fourth prison, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future the prisons will be handed over to the Iraqis.

You can't keep adding prisoners and never let anyone out.

Well, yeah, that's what you do with POWs. We have the unusual situation that we can't exactly tell if the detainees deserve to be POWs, since the combatants don't have uniforms, but other than that, yes, we keep them until the fighting's done.

That said, I'll admit that there's at least as much pressure from the Iraqis themselves as there is from the liberal faction at home.

Michael Yon has described how frustrated the US troops are with the Iraqi judicial system which has truly become westernized in it's adaptation of the 'Catch and Release of Dangerous Criminals' program.