America's legal shame lives on behind the walls at Guantanamo Bay

That hundreds of classified military documents assessing Guantanamo Bay prisoners should contain large amounts of drivel should not be strange news.

Those who have been following the affairs of Gitmo know only too well that the treatment of detainees was appalling, the slipshod ''intelligence'' interrogations tainted with mistreatment and worse and the military commissions system stacked.

What else could be the outcome of vacuuming up an assortment of foot soldiers from the Afghan civil war, hangers on, and plain unfortunates, rebranding them as global terrorists and sending them to a black hole prison with no legal rights?

Advertisement: Story continues below

Despite the assessments that these people posed a threat to America, and the free world in general, most have now been released. Of the original 750 or so sent to Guantanamo Bay, 172 are still there. Presumably they are the ''worst of the worst of the worst''.

The misconceived intelligence cut both ways. Among those released as being ''of little value'' was a Pakistani who went on a suicide bombing mission three years later.

The lasting damage is to the US and its tirelessly vaunted ''values'' and the allies who slavishly went along with the trashing of the law of war.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/americas-legal-shame-lives-on-behind-the-walls-at-guantanamo-bay-20110428-1dyno.html#ixzz1KukmGWCQ