"Enormously valuable intelligence"

That's how Donald Rumsfeld has described the results of interrogations at America's Carribean gulag at Guantanamo. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the case. According to a former senior Pentagon intelligence official, information from Guantanamo has failed to prevent a single terrorist attack, and the interrogations are a waste of time.

Why? Essentially because the prisoners there don't know anything. There have been several well-publicised cases of taxi-drivers and people who were clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time being held and interrogated there, and most of the rest are simply footsoldiers and spear-carriers. Why have these people ended up being flown halfway around the world to be interrogated and possibly tortured? Because the soldiers screening them in Afghanistan were

new recruits who had almost no training, and were forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'.

But it gets worse. Even the Al Qaeda captives don't know anything - they're low level proles from the training camps, whose "knowledge" is so limited and general that it is practically useless, or is simply fabricated to avoid further maltreatment. Assuming the translators get it right, that is. According to a second story on the subject, the contract interpreters are "of very poor quality", and their translations are not even recorded or checked:

In early 2003 [...] a group of Pentagon intelligence staff became so concerned about the Gitmo interpreters that they submitted a memorandum to their civilian bosses, recommending that interrogations should be taped and spot-checked as a means of verifying their work. Vehemently opposed by Miller, it was rejected.

Why didn't General Miller want any recordings of interrogations? There's an obvious answer: because they'd be solid evidence that detainees are tortured and abused. There's really no other explanation for it.