Representative Rooney, have you been briefed on how expensive it has been to run the Guantanamo detention camp? Prior to 9-11 the population at Guantanamo numbered about 3,000. The population of the base more than tripled to support the camp. So, where-as in a normal US Federal prison, where the inmates outnumber the guards about ten to one, in Guantanamo guards outnumber the captives by twenty to one. As the number of captives held there has shrunk the number of guards remains the same.

Representative Rooney, are you really arguing that the USA should spend an extra two hundred million dollars a year to hold men in Guantanamo, because some members of American public are afraid they will break out of a Supermax?

Well, we should all be grateful this reader is not in the service. What they described is a serious war crime.

It also exposes how deeply a misconception has spread. Most Americans think that the Guantanamo captives were captured by Americans, on something like a battlefield. They think GIs came to the captives' foxholes, when the captives' had run out of bullets, and said: "hands up, you are going to Gitmo".

In fact, if you read the transcripts, you won't find many captures that resemble that description. In addition to Omar Khadr's capture there is just one that resembles that description.

On February 10, 2003, a column of American vehicles reported being fired upon, while on their way to capture a warlord named Abdul Wahed Raes, at a fortified compound outside the small village of Lejah, Helmand Province. The Americans rounded up every military age man in the region — even paraplegics. They decided to pick a dozen captives to send to HQ. They had no idea if any of the 71 men they rounded up had fired on them. There were no American casualties. I strongly suspect these were green troops, and that they hadn't been fired upon at all.

So, if our reader had been in charge, what is he saying he would have done differently? Would he have shot all 71 of the local men his troops found going about their daily business? Does our reader know what Josef Stalin use to say: "It is better to kill ten innocent men than risk one guilty man goes free."

Our reader might be reassured to learn what happened on February 11th, 2003. American aircraft returned and bombed the village. ISAF aircraft continued to bomb the region for another two weeks. "Operation Eagle Fury". DoD spin-doctors described the operation as a success. They denied the local reports that the bombing had caused widespread civilian casualties.

In fact, when you read the transcripts, you can see that the capture, and subsequent bombing, were an enormous, costly mistake. These men were just who they said they were — innocent villagers. They should not have been captured on February 10, 2003, they shouldn't have spent years in Guantanamo, and their relatives shouldn't have been slaughtered on February 11, 2003.

I not only read them, I read the same DoD documents they analyzed to write them. Those documents simply do not support the claim that all the Guantanamo captives were "militant islamic extreme radicals". A very significant portion of the captives were clearly innocent bystanders.

When you read the transcripts from the annual reviews the captives started having in 2005, you will come across the transcripts of innocent men. After they respond to the allegations initially used to justify their detention, they answered them so credibly that the answers sitting on their Board had no followup question.

So, what did the officers ask them. Paraphrasing, these men were asked: "Okay, we accept when you were captured, and transferred here, you were just an innocent bystander. But that is not enough for us to recommend your release. That was years ago. Now you have to convince us that years of unjust detention haven't radicalized you, and made you start to hate the USA, and made you want to retaliate. Remember, we know you have spent the last years hanging out with some very dangerous men. Go ahead, convince us you don't hate the USA."

I can't help but wonder what we stand for any more. It most certainly doesn't compare to the principles of our founding fathers.

Guantanamo does contain a small fraction of actual terrorists, and actual fighters. As Representative Rooney should acknowledge, the individual allegation memos the DoD prepared in 2004 and published in 2006 never supported the claim that most of the captives were fighters or terrorists.

Some of the small fraction of captives who really were dangerous were transferred to the custody of their home countries, and were ultimately released. But this was not because they "tricked" their way out, as the Bush administration claimed. This was due to simple incompetence, or Bush administration toadying to the Saudis.

I recommend Representative Rooney read the find analytical work of the legal scholars at Seton Hall University, who conducted detailed, methodical analysis of the DoD claims of who the Guantanamo captives were, and compared them with what the record said they were.

They found that former captive were considered as "supporting terrorism" merely for candidly answering reporters' questions about their experience of US hospitality.