Quote Originally Posted by MikeF View Post
In my last tour as a company commander, I had a 90% detention/retention rate meaning that if we sent someone away,then they stayed there for a long time (minimum of three months). That took a lot of me putting on the lawyer/DA hat to build the case and sending my boys to Baghdad to testify.

With that said, the majority of dudes stayed as guest in our patrol base for 72 hours. For innocents, they had to stay so that they were not killed. For the bad guys, we could not transport them away b/c the only accessible road had over 100 IEDs over a 1 mile stretch. This bought me time to make a decision to detain or let go before air could be scheduled.

I would estimate that 40% over the bad guys that we held and released provided us valuable intelligence. Most of them were kids (15-24 yrs old) that had been told that Americans would torture them. When we didn't, instead gave them 3 hot meals a day and a cot, smoke cigarettes, and bull#### with them about Michael Jordan, Guns and Roses, Britney Spears, and American porn, they started telling us everything that we needed to hear.

The intel captured allowed us to kill the primary bomb maker and 3 of the top 5 al Qaeda deputies in our area, force the main leader to flee, roll up about 15 caches, find 3 rigged houses, get early warning on two impending attacks, and 30 emplaced IEDs.

If we released someone, then they were tracked. Sometimes we would get to know their parents, some converted to double agents, and others went back to doing bad things. Those that went back to bad things were killed.

My only regret is that I let the primary executor of Shiites go. We captured him, did not know who he was, no locals would make a statement other than a verbal "he's a bad man," and we let him go free. I'm still frustated over that one. That dude was beheading his neighbors.
I can't follow what you are talking about here. Are these prisoners taken in combat or people picked up at road blocks for during sweeps/searches?