A case for Guantanamo Bay

The New York Times published an article today detailing an escape by four detainees from the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan in July of this year. Two of the men, Omar al-Faruq and Muhammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani, are considered former high level al-Qaeda operatives. Apparently:

According to military officials familiar with the episode, the suspects are believed to have picked the lock on their cell, changed out of their bright orange uniforms and made their way through a heavily guarded military base under the cover of night. They then crawled over a faulty wall where a getaway vehicle was apparently waiting for them, the officials said.

More disturbingly:

One American intelligence official said the prisoners also took advantage of "a perfect storm" of mistakes by the military guards.

A theory also exists "that American intelligence officers had once proposed staging an escape to release a detainee whom they wanted to act a double agent against Al Qaeda." But, this theory has been denied by American officials.

The question remains about how this could happen. I realize that this detention facility is not Alcatraz, but how does the military allow high level al-Qaeda members escape from one of its prisons? Shouldn't keeping terrorists detained be something our military takes seriously in this War on Terror/Global Struggle Against Extremism?

Although I am not in the military and would never claim I could do better, I hope we would all expect better security than this. Maybe putting them on an island isn't such a bad idea.

Update: I didn't see Dr. Farley's post on this at LGM until after I posted this one.