As the shitstorm over the prospective release of the Gitmo remnant rages, the prospect of the newly embittered jihadi, rightfully furious over his torture and captivity, turning his burning anger upon his old tormentors is brandished as if it were an excuse to perpetuate an injustice once it has first been perpetrated.

There is, of course, a thread of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence which is denigrated by this debate (besides the thread ending in the prohibitions against forced testimony in the Fifth Amendment.)

When the state wrongfully holds an individual, upon discovering its mistake, the *State pays damages. What a concept!

The justly compensated claimant may retain his dignity without the (otherwise necessary) striking out at his torturers and their countrymen; For an “honor society” the idea of just payment is even more fundamentally implicated in self-respect than, perhaps, our own mostly materialist culture.

Withal, a financial incentive for pacification can be built in ( Periodic payments conditioned on non-combatent status should quell the howls from the right.)

Consider that we compensate the wrongly held, wrongly convicted.

How much more do we owe to the wrongly held, never convicted?

*”amounts ranging from $15,000 total to $50,000 per year of imprisonment”