Getting into GITMO

This quote from Lt Colonel Gordon Cucullu's "Inside GITMO" helps temper the rhetoric and explain the conditions which set an individual up for confinement to Guantanamo Bay:

"...evacuation for a terrorist is not automatically assumed by American field force commanders; just the opposite. Evacuation is a needs-driven process.

"It must be strongly demonstrated that a particular individual merits in-depth interrogation, extra-secure confinement, or both. Hard questions are asked: Is there good and sufficient reason to think tha tby his possible position, access, or relationships he has high-value intelligence information? Do we consider him a high-level security threat? Has he confessed to being a bomb-maker, financier, ideologue, or possible martyr? Any of these reasons could be sufficient to get him a ride to Guantanamo." ~ Inside GITMO, pg 54

Not all terrorists, and certainly not all suspected terrorists, make it to Guantanamo Bay. In fact, of the thousands who have been screened, only a small percentage are moved to the isolated facility on the far eastern-edge of Cuba. Righteous, but well-meaning constitutional and human rights activists should bear this in mind, when advocating the release of these hardened radicals.