Americans have been killed by prisoners released from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior Defense Department official told lawmakers Wednesday, triggering sharp criticism from Republicans opposed to shuttering the facility in the wake of deadly attacks by the Islamic State group in Brussels and Paris.
Paul Lewis, the Pentagon's special envoy for Guantanamo detention closure, declined to provide the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee with details. He would not say whether the incidents occurred before or after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.
"What I can tell you is unfortunately there have been Americans that have died because of (Guantanamo) detainees," Lewis said during an exchange with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.
via abcnews.go.com
And this is a surprise to absolutely no one.
The Bush administration's handling of terrorists captured on the battlefield had to walk the line between respect for international law and our own constitution. Indefinite detention of enemy prisoners is legal so long as the connflict is ongoing, and if you haven't noticed, yeah, there's still a war on terror.
The one bright thing the Bush administration did was to ensure that detention took place outside the jurisdiction of Federal District Courts.
The frustration is that as illegitimate, unlawful combatants in the eyes of international law, the prisoners should have been subject to court martial, and then simply executed.
But in spite of losing almost 3000 Americans on 9/11, and several thousand troops since then, we simply don't have the intestinal fortitude to do what needs to be done.
XBradTC 
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