Gitmo Damage Control

Phil Carter has a rather cynical take on the New York Times article this morning on the operation at Guantanamo Bay . The article basically says the importance of the prisoners at Gitmo has been exagerated:

"In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings."

Phil Carter wonders if these are leaks by the administration in anticipation of set backs by the SCOTUS this week:

"I'm no media critic, but the following thought occurred to me while reading this lengthy piece: is this a piece of damage control by the White House and Justice Department in anticipation of the Supreme Court's decisions? Did the top lawyers in the Bush administration see the writing on the wall, and decide to launch a p.r. campaign regarding Gitmo and the Padilla detention? Did that p.r. campaign manifest itself in "background" interviews and leaks to the New York Times? The length of the story and commitment of editorial resources (8 reporters in the tagline) both contradict this theory, but the timing seems a bit too perfect to be just the product of coincidence."