The prisoners, that is. I really hope there is a GQ answer for this. I ask because I’ve been seeing a lot of conflicting attitudes toward the whole detainee situation. I’m not sure that all parties are even playing with the same deck. When I tried looking up information, it was a bit hard to get a straight answer.
My google search for “who is in guantanamo” gives me a lot of rather slanted replies. A lot of the discussions/arguments/brawls about detainees often involve various claims about who the detainees actually are. Today’s letters to the editor in the Wall Street Journal (pay access I think) refer to them as “the depraved monsters we are fighting” and that, “Americans…know that none of the people held in Guantanamo or anywhere else, nor anyone being surveilled by the NSA, is even remotely subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, nor are they entitled to or covered by the Constitution of the [US].” My google search tells me that most of the detainees are “innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants” who were turned in by anonomous tipsters and didn’t actually do anything wrong.
Let’s please please please not discuss the validity of any of these claims. That would make a nice GD thread. Go ahead and start one if you would like. I merely provide these quotes as background for my complete confusion on the topic.
My question:
Who are the present and past detainees of Guantanamo bay? How did they end up there? Do we actually have any hard information on this, or is it largely speculation at this point?
Again, please start another thread if you want to argue.