Four years ago, on 28 January 2003, in his State of the Union address to Congress, George Bush referred to the prisoners - more than ten and a half thousand of them - the United States had taken into custody in the course of the war in Afghanistan and the so-called war on terror. Not all were in prison, he said: some had been 'otherwise dealt with'. 'Let's put it this way,' he continued, 'they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.'

LRB 8 February 2007 | PDF Download