What's Important 22

Twenty-second in a series.

This one's from the Washington Post's Fact Checker column:

"By the way, thirty of the people that have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again. One of them just a couple of weeks ago as a suicide bomber in Iraq."

--John McCain, Town Hall meeting, Pemberton, NJ, June 17, 2008.

Thirty is more than twice the number of former detainees confirmed to be "engaged in some kind of terrorist activity" - and yes, some have been found in places like Mosul. However this trying "to attack America again" line is not just exaggerated - it's wildly exaggerated. Mosul isn't "America", even if they were fighting Americans in Iraq. And some of those captured or killed in "terrorist activities" were in Chechnya - not exactly attacking America.

The conclusion:

This is a complicated and emotional issue, which makes it all the more necessary to be very precise in the definition of terms. It would have been accurate for McCain to have said that the Pentagon has confirmed that 13 former detainees have engaged in some kind of terrorist activity since their release, and suspects another 24 men of being involved in such activity. Instead he said flatly that 30 people who have been released from Guantanamo have "tried to attack America again." There is a significant difference between those two statements.