Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent

Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Unfortunately this is neither novel nor unusual. War is notorious for failing to contain its effects to soldiers. It preys upon the innocent and bites the hand of the complicit. The worst part, if you don't choose to see it as a redeeming factor, is that it's not a failing of any particular government, people, or official, at least not beyond war itself considered as a failing – it's a fact of how war functions.

It's impossible to wage a clean war without turning it into something else entirely. War is horrible, or else it's ineffective. And confining its horror to one particular cross-section of the enemy does nothing but limit its effectiveness.

Anyone around?