The terror camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is the Bush administration's goose that lays the golden eggs. So long as we keep throwing them in the clink, the argument goes, we are taking one more terrorist off the streets and away from your children. "That's why there hasn't been another 9/11," they say, usually before another election.

We know that Bush & Co. have been executing "extraordinary rendition," where guys are shipped from Guantanamo to foreign countries, apparantly for the kind of real torture that will squeeze out of them the next terror plot. This begs the question: what happens to these people when they are sent abroad? Most of them are let go.

This story is a must read:

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America's staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.

The United States does not systematically track what happens to detainees once they leave Guantanamo, the U.S. State Department says. Defense lawyers and human rights groups say they know of no centralized database, although one group is attempting to compile one.

. . .

But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this news. Either the U.S. is rounding up mostly innocent people and throwing them into internment camps without any rights or recourse, or the U.S. is not taking care to ensure that, upon transfer, they are getting the justice they deserve. The article says that the U.S. is not following through on what happens to these people. Why not? The possibility that innocents are being detained as alleged terrorists or that the U.S. is not taking care to ensure that dangerous people are walking the streets again is worrysome. Either foul-up only creates more resentment, and more terrorists.

The paradox is shown in the article as follows:

The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn't mean they weren't dangerous.

"They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth."

"After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo," Colangelo-Bryan said.

When analysts try to understand what's going on, they often attribute things to political motivations. It may very well be the case that Bush & Co. were rounding up people as trophies in the "war on terror" and that no one cared whether they were innocent or not. Here's another explanation: the incompetent goons who fouled up every program over the last six years, from Hurricane Katrina to post-Iraq war occupation and planning to Social Security reform, have done it again. It's like asking a television repair man to perform open heart surgery.