Spencer Ackerman links to this dispatch from Tom Lasseter about detainees wrongfully held at Guantánamo and says, "Until Thursday's Boumediene ruling, the men held within Camp Delta were, for all intents and purposes, disappeared." In fact, though, Lasseter's piece proves the opposite point: Despite their manifold problems, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Boards have proven capable at least of identifying cases in which detainees clearly do not belong at Guantánamo. Mohammed Akhtiar, the unfortunate Afghan profiled in Lasseter's piece, was ultimately released. As Ben Wittes points out in his new book, more than 50 detainees at Guantánamo have been released (giving CSRTs a rate of release significantly higher than the rate of acquittal in federal court), and more than 150 have been transferred to their home countries for continued detention; some of those have also subsequently been released. Given that by most accounts a majority of the detainees at Guantánamo really do pose threats to varying degrees, it's not unreasonable for the administration to err on the side of releasing too few detainees, rather than too many. Of course it would preferable to immediately identify which detainees merit release, but in the real world that's not possible.

This certainly doesn't imply that everything is fine and dandy at Guantánamo--it did take three long years for Akhtiar to be released, and the Boumediene ruling will ensure that the remaining detainees, as they should, receive more thorough review than the decidedly imperfect CSRTs provide. But the main beneficiaries of the ruling likely won't be totally innocent people like Akhtiar who have been obviously detained in error; they'll be people (soldiers impressed into fighting for the Taliban, low-level grunts or aides who aren't dangerous, and so forth) whose cases are slightly more complicated. The point is that it's simply not accurate or fair to describe Guantánamo as a "black hole" or to claim that detainees there are being "disappeared." Some administration types wanted to make Guantánamo that sort of institution, but that's been off the table since the Rasul decision in 2004, and the situation now is somewhat less clear-cut.

--Josh Patashnik