Since reprinting a piece I wrote for the American Legion magazine, I received a number of thoughtful yet critical questions. While I have responded individually, I thought the rest of my readers might also be interested.

Is this true? Got proof? Yup. I visited a number of camps at the American base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a guest of the Defense Department in September 2006. They did not put any restrictions on the questions that I could ask or the places I could go. Photographs were off limits in order to protect the privacy rights of detainees. All of the quotes in the article are drawn from interviews and conversations I had with camp personnel, including the admiral in command. I was accompanied by my friend, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal and a number of radio hosts, all of whom filed reports similar to mine. What’s more, everything here can be found in government reports and congressional testimony. Truth is stranger than fiction…

Aren’t these people innocent? They haven’t been convicted or even charged with any crimes, right? Actually, charging them with crimes would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions, if the detainees were actually prisoners of war. The idea of that provision was to prevent downed American airmen from being charged with murder after bombing German cities.

And, under what law, could these detainees be charged? If they are not U.S. citizens (and they are not) and the offenses occurred outside U.S. territory, what is the legal basis for charging them?

Roughly two dozen of the detainees had direct, personal knowledge of the 9-11 attacks. They can be charged, because the attacks happened on American soil.

As for the roughly 550 other detainees, under the charge-them-or-release-them rationale, we would have to let them go. Maybe you’re fine with that. But the doctor that gives them lifesaving medical care is afraid that the people you want to release will learn his name and hometown and track him down… And that doctor has spent a lot more time with them than you have. Add to that, virtually all of the prisoners have made violent attacks on the guards, cheer the 9-11 attacks, and support “martyrdom operations” to kill Americans.

As for the idea that some are just random farmers scooped up in some American dragnet, forget it. These guys were captured on the battlefield, gun in hand. Many were captured with bomb making manuals, al Qaeda record books, large sums of cash (one had over $1 million in his backpack), and other tell-tale items. Remember, Gitmo is the last place they go. Prisoners go through interrogation and evaluation for release at several different stops in Afghanistan before being shipped to Cuba. No Iraqi prisoners have ever been shipped to Cuba, U.S. military officials say.

Finally, in what war did the U.S. military release enemy combatants prior to end of the conflict? Hundreds of thousands of Germans were made involuntary residents of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona until 1946 (more than six months after the war ended in Europe).

If that seems harsh, the jihadis of the Earth have a simple out: Don’t take up arms against the United States.