In testimony today Saxby Chambliss asked Sec'y of Defense Gates about Gitmo and returning prisoners, Gates commented that the recidivism rate was "four or five percent, but there's been an uptick in recent months", or as Spencer Ackerman at firedoglake says:
So much for the bogus 61 detainees back in the fight number -- which, by my back-of-the-envelope calculations based on about 750 detainees having gone through Guantanamo in total, would be about eight percent, or about double Gates' total.
Of course it has been diaried here often that the bandied about 61 who have rerturned to active combat after being released from Gitmo is garbage using criteria such as if they had engaged in "propoganda" or advocacy against the US then it was considered returning to the battlefield. Nonsense of course, but it never kept CNN from reporting it as "fact".
I doubt that Gates mild backtrack of that number will hardly resonate with the MSM and I am sure the 61 number will remain the "truth" for all time.
Ackerman also pointed out something else of iinterest:
Also, Gates is "heartened" in terms of Afghanistan, where the Bush administration already returned around 500 detainees from Guantanamo to Afghan government custody -- which has put about 200 on trial, with a "conviction rate about 80 percent."
I take away a couple of things from that one statement. First, it appears that these terrorists CAN be tried like you know .habeas corpus and all those other fancy latin words we like so much to protect ours and others rights give us the opprotunity to do. Second, 80% is indeed a fairly decent conviction rate, I think. Of course it is not ideal, we wsih everybody on trial was actually guilty, but that is not the case. And that is precisely WHY we have trials and rules and it is unfortunate that 1 out of 5 is actually found not guilty, but at least they got their day in court.
However, eighty percent is an appaling number when you consider that hundreds were to be denied their day in court. One out of five is innocent (technically I guess Not Guilty, those found not guilty may indeed be guilty of something) and are being held WITHOUT recourse.
It appears that with the Obama Administration that the days of holding people without the opprotunity to truly determine their guilt or innocence, a cornerstone of our society, is hopefully a thing of the past.