CNN’s Kyra Phillips Cites Misleading Bush Report On Guantanamo

by mcjoan
DailyKos
Thu Jan 22, 2009

It might be a new administration, but it's not a new Kyra Phillips at CNN. Here she is today, pushing the Republican line on how dangerous it would be to release Guantanamo prisoners, citing a Pentagon report that was completely and thoroughly debunked last week.

Kyra Phillips: It's one of the biggest fears about releasing terror suspects from Gitmo, that they'll go back to their alleged old ways.

New Pentagon figures actually say 61 released detainees have been linked to some kind of terror activity, up from 37 as of March, 2008. About 520 Gitmo prisoners have been freed or transferred to other prisons around the world.

Seton Hall Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, on the Rachel Maddow Show last week,

Mark Denbeaux: Our model is to simply look at what the government reports show and analyze them. The government has given its 43rd attempt to describe the number of people who have left Guantanamo and returned to the battlefield. Forty-one times they've done it orally, as they have this last time, and their numbers have changed from 20, to 12, to 7, to more than 5, to 2, to a couple, to a few, 25, 29, 12 to 24. Every time the number has been different. In fact, every time they give a number, they don't identify a date, a place, a time, a name or an incident to support their claim.

(More here.)