The McClatchy newspaper group has done excellent independent reporting on the excesses and illegalities of the Bush administration. A recent series, Guantanamo: Beyond the Law, highlights the travesty of the United States’ Cuban-based detention center. As a comprehensive series of stories, interviews, photos and videos makes clear, many of the prisoners that have spent years detained in harsh conditions had little or no connection to terrorism. Many were instead turned over to U.S. forces for reward money or revenge for local slights.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

According to Wikipedia, 420 of the 775 detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo were released without being charged. This doesn’t count the prisoners who killed themselves or suffered physical or emotional damage from mistreatment and their seemingly endless confinement.

The interviews conducted with wrongly detained prisoners are heartbreaking as they recount their abuse and hopelessness. Nusrat Khan, an 80-year-old Afghani who has been near paralyzed since suffering dual strokes nearly 20 years ago, was held at Guantanamo for three years. They had to transfer him to the camp on a stretcher. Sami Al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman, spent seven years in the camp. He spent more than a year on a hunger strike before being released, without charges, in May.

The government detained many innocent people, subjecting them to mistreatment and giving them no opportunity to challenge their imprisonment. The tribunal system that was belatedly established have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The United States’ international reputation is abysmal. Unsurprisingly, the number of militants that are detained at Guantanamo have used it a a recruiting tool.

From its inception, it was clear that Guantanamo was a reactionary, immoral response to 9/11. Like many of the Bush administration’s similar practices, it has proven to be fundamentally counterproductive as well. Perhaps the only thing it’s been good for is shocking the conscience of those loath to acknowledge the state’s potential to abuse its power.