There are good and legitmate reasons for having these guys twisting in the wind, so to speak.
Yes, that's probably true. But the Bush administration also missed a great chance to turn the tables on the bleeding hearts who wail about the need for extending American rules of justice to the Gitmo terrorists. How so? One of the basic rules of American justice is the right to a speedy trial. If Bush had expedited the trials of a few of the major terrorists, he could have answered criticisms that the trials were being pushed too quickly by pointing out that he was simply giving the terrorist the American right to a speedy trial. A missed opportunity, in my view.
Your Bush Derangement Syndrome has made you forget that Guantanamo and in fact the prisoners in general became a political cause with the left almost immediately. It took years to even get permission to try them at all; initially, the plan was for fairly speedy military tribunals, but the left didn’t like that and filed challenge after challenge. Since we have a system based on laws, all of those had to be answered first.
Then the left began on other angles (”torture,” “renditions,” etc.) and finally it wasn’t even clear how these people were going to be punished if found guilty.
If it had been up to Bush, these people would have been tried and dealt with as soon as they landed.
I don’t know where you were for the last four years. These ongoing legal battles were in the papers every day.