“The camp was divided into compounds of roughly 1,000 inmates. The Americans knew Sunnis and Shiites, the two main factions of Islam in Iraq, could not be incarcerated in the same compound if the camp was to remain peaceful.”
Here is one of the many problems and one of the reasons ISIS exists. Not because of the camp. These two groups have been warring with each other for centuries no end. Also read my long standing tagline. That’s the real reason you have all the hatred, death, torture, etc. in the Middle East. It’s too easy and too “neat” to blame the existence of ISIS on a camp. ISIS is an inevitable creation of ISLAM as a religion. And it’s not the first time this has happened.
Camp Bucca was probably the best alternative to handling the problem of military detainees at the time. It was fairly well executed given the information the U.S. military had at the time. It was a decent balance of cost-benefit and it was transparent to those interested. In retrospect, was it perfect? No. But does anyone think that the U.S. would have footed the bill for the perfect solution? Absolutely not.
Lots of Monday morning quarterbacking in his article after the fact.