Much ado right now about this former Gitmo detainee who is now an Al Qaeda chieftain. He was released under Bush, but if you listen to some of the commentators at Fox and on conservative radio (like Mike Gallagher, who I listened to a while this morning), you'd think Obama released the guy. The right-wing detractors are out in force.

On Fox's morning "Fox and Friends" show, Squirly, Gomer, and Legs were fussing about how Obama was going to put all these Gitmo terrorists "in your back yard." Meaning, in prisons on US soil. Well, those max-security prisons already contain hundreds of mass murderers and psychopaths. That's what prisons are for. It's not like Obama is going to turn these terrorists loose, and give them C4 as a going-away present. It's just obsurd what I'm hearing.

We've heard that 60 Guantanamo detainees have returned to terrorism. My question, when I hear stats like that, is always, "Where did that number come from?"

The Bush Administration, particularly the Cheney wing, has consistently massaged numbers and facts to buttress their agenda. So I've wondered, how do they define someone who has "returned to the battlefield"?

TV news shows are pretty much useless, even the ones (like Olberman) that you would think would want to debunk fact-manipulating. For any real light and context, you need to get away from TV and read in-depth features--the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate...in fact, practically anything beyond MSNBC, FOXNews, and CNN, whose shows are designed as three-minute blocks of shouting matches.

So, how many detainees have returned to fighting?

Slate magazine offers an explanation in "Bad Men: How Many Terrorists are Really Left at Guantanamo, Anyway?"

The Bush Administration set a number over 40 times, and it's gone back and forth. A 2007 Department of Defense report actually downgraded the number from 30 to 5. But the number jumps back up when the Defense Department defines "returning to the fight" as talking to reporters or publishing something critical of Gitmo. So when a guy is released from Gitmo, and then talks to a reporter about his treatment at Gitmo--he is now one of those 60-some folks who have returned to terrorism.

It's all in the definition. Always is.

A more realistic number seems to be 12. That's what I've concluded, after sorting through much nonsense.

There are, indeed, some really evil dudes there. We all know that. But there are other sub-groups within the Gitmo population. For a number of them, it's simply a matter that they've been cleared of being "enemy combatants," but no country will take them. So they sit incarcerated in limbo.

It's all complicated, particularly legally (thanks to the torture). Obama inherited a dismal mess, and now he's being criticized for trying to fix it. Welcome to the Presidency.