Quote Originally Posted by Polarbear1605 View Post
If I remember the numbers correctly we officially processed 80000+ detainees in Iraq up to 2008 or 9 ? Of that number we release 73,000+. Question: Are our soldiers and Marines really that bad when it comes to IDing the enemy? If you catch a civilian with a rifle he is a combatant and therefore a POW. They belong in the POW camp for the duration. This processing detainees under the Rules of Law is not what the US Military is trained for. Now if you want to release a POW in exchange for information....hmmm...OK...especially, if he can tell me something I don't know. In a insurgency you gotta have a system.
That was definitely an issue for us. We would roll a guy up with proof that he was making IEDs or financing a cell or whatever. We would then have to turn him over to the local legal system for processing. If he knew the right people or had the money, he would be out before our after action reports would be done. That was not every time, mind you, but it was often enough.