A reader writes:
Would it be too much of an exaggeration to say that, based on recent media reports that many of the innocent people held in US custody under Bush and Cheney are now engaging in terrorism, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush ran one of the most successful jihadist recruiting programs and training camps?
Not too much of an exaggeration. Al Qaeda nutjobs need no extra reason to kill infidels. But Gitmo was clearly as effective a Jihadist training and indoctrination camp as any in Waziristan. If I'd been innocent, and then seized, abused and tortured at Gitmo, I'd become an anti-American radical as well. Wouldn't you? However much Bush and Cheney regard these prisoners as sub-human, they aren't.
I have little doubt that Bush and Cheney cluelessly created far more terrorism than they prevented because of their fiasco in Iraq, incompetent occupation of Afghanistan, and embrace of torture techniques once the rpeserve of totalitarian regimes. Everyone in intelligence agrees that Gitmo and Abu Ghraib in particular were recruitment tools for the enemy. And so the resistance to closing Gitmo helps al Qaeda's goals. Again, it is not clear that Dick Cheney ever fully grasped that this country was at war and needed smarter, more professional leadership than his panicked proto-fascist incompetence.