So, in their eagerness to torture people, it appears that Bush and His Evil Minions^™ never bother to assemble files on the Guantanamo detainees, which makes an evaluation, much less a fair trial of the detainees.

As Hilzoy notes, “It takes, well, a special kind of administration to detain people for years on end without bothering to assemble case files on them. I’m just glad they’re finally gone.”(emphasis original)

Notwithstanding Bush’s insistence that the military commissions were the only way to try these folks, this makes it clear that they never wanted trials, just torture.

How bad was it? Here are the last two ‘graphs of the WaPo article:

In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was “strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks.”

He said he once accidentally found “crucial physical evidence” that “had been tossed in a locker located at Guantanamo and promptly forgotten.”

This is not a serious attempt at competent prosecution or trial.