Bush's German Interviews Make News

From Dan Froomkin's White House Watch (in the Washington Post):

Bush gave two interviews last Friday to German news organizations. In one, he asserted that the finest moment of his presidency came when he caught a fish on his private lake. That one got a fair amount of attention.

But in the other one, with ARD German television , he made this startling assertion: "I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court. And we're waiting for our Supreme Court to give us a decision as to whether the people need to have a fair trial in a civilian court or in a military court."

Reaction is only now starting to burble up.

Dahlia Lithwick writes in Slate: "His statement was surprising for several reasons, not least because it represents a major reversal from prior policy statements about the camp."

The Los Angeles Times editorial board is agog: "With his latest explanation for the continued confinement of almost 500 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, President Bush sounds like the proverbial teenager who killed his parents and then asked for mercy from the court because he was an orphan."

Comments

[Sid]

interesting

[Don]

Actually looking at rates whether linear or expnential is complete nonsense, though I would argue that forecasting using exponential is even more nonsensical than using linear.

What really matter are two things: US administration policy and terrorist activity impacting the US or countries closely allied with the US. If administration policy is to release prisoners whom they can determine most likely aren't dangerous then most of them will be out sooner than later, apart from the core group of about 75 they think are dangerous. They will get them out as quickly as they can find places for them where they can be supervised, I think.

The only factor likely to change that is a major terrorist attack on a western country or which impacts a lot of westerners - such as Bali. That could put on the brakes or even reverse the process. Another thing which might inflate the G-Bay numbers could be capture of the foreign terrorists in Iraq. I doubt they'd send indigenous Sunni or Shia terrorists to G-Bay except at the specific request of the Iraqi government - which is unlikely. But they might send Zawahari and his boys there unless the Iraqis want to try them locally.

[strcmp]

Don, the population shrunk from 600 to 350, i.e. by a factor of 600/350=1.714.. in 4 years. If this shrinking rate continues forever, in 2010 (in 4 years) there will be 350/1.714=204 people left, by 2014 204/1.714=119 etc. If we continue to round to integer numbers, the last prisoner will leave the camp when the population will have shrunk by a factor of 350 from now on. You can calculate the year as 2006+4*log(350)/log(600/350) = 2049.5 .

You of course assumed a linear rate, i.e. the same absolute number each month. Both can happen, in the exponential case (as above) the same fraction of the people still in prison is released each month (the hard cases need more work); the linear case can happen, if you need the amount of work to check each case, but there are not enough people doing this.

[Don]

From Slate:

"That would leave only about 350 remaining on the base. Approximately 250 detainees have been released since the camp was re-established in 2002. At this release rate, Guantanamo might be totally empty by 2042, without the government ever admitting a mistake. "

Dahlia Lithwick seems to have a few problems with her math. If in 4 years the population of the camp drops from 600 to 350, the camp will be empty in another 5 or 6 years at that rate. Actually I expect it to be faster than that because the rate of release seems to be speeding up if anything. I find it perfectly believable that Bush would want to be rid of G-Bay - it's a political and diplomaric disaster at this point. But releasing prisoners who actually are guilty of major offenses would be even more of a disaster. And let's not forget the kind of cooperation many of the EU countries are giving on repatriating prisoners i.e. none. Nobody wants them. I don;t blame them for that, but bashing the US for G-bay but not being willing to take released prisoners is pretty hypocritical.