The changing of the guard (but we take the prisoners with us)

A new plan now has us turning over the Abu Ghraib prison over to the Iraqi security forces by sometime in August. Note that doesn't mean we lose control of the prisoners. Its amazing how fast we want to disassociate ourselves from this thing:

The U.S. military plans to vacate Abu Ghraib prison by August, handing over operation of the facility to Iraqi security forces and transferring the remaining detainees 300 miles to the southeast, prison authorities said Wednesday.

In an interview at the prison, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, deputy commander of U.S. military detainee operations in Iraq, said the military had already relinquished the cell blocks at Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers were photographed abusing Iraqi prisoners late last year. The last of the security detainees -- civilians accused of attacks on U.S. forces -- being held by the U.S. military were moved last week from the cell blocks to tent camps on the grounds of the 280-acre Abu Ghraib compound, 20 miles west of Baghdad.

The plans outlined by Miller made clear that the United States will maintain a large detention facility in Iraq after June 30 to deal with what it deems to be security threats. It was not clear, however, what authority the U.S. military will have to detain and operate a facility in Iraq when it is no longer the occupying power in the country.

Miller said 980 prisoners will be released from Abu Ghraib in the next two weeks as military officials attempt to reduce the prison population to 1,500 by June 30, when occupation authorities are to turn over limited authority to an interim Iraqi government. More than 1,700 prisoners have been released in the last 30 days.

Now wait, I'm confused. If these are people who are guilty of attacks on U.S. forces, then why we would release 980 more of them? And this on top of the 1,700 we have already freed? Especially odd in light of this statement:

"We don't put them in Abu Ghraib to detain them for a period of time or to detain them until proven innocent," Kimmit said. "They are deemed to be a security threat by a judge through multiple sources. It's that simple. If they were innocent, they wouldn't be at Abu Ghraib."

Well at least before they released these guys, they gave up good information once we covered them in feces and posed them as sexual action figures, right?

Apparently not:

The questioning of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners last fall in the newly established interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison yielded very little valuable intelligence, according to civilian and military officials.

The interrogation center was set up in September to obtain better information about an insurgency in Iraq that was killing American soldiers almost every day by last fall. The insurgency was better organized and more vigorous than the United States had expected, prompting concern among generals and Pentagon officials who were unhappy with the flow of intelligence to combat units and to higher headquarters.

But civilian and military intelligence officials, as well as top commanders with access to intelligence reports, now say they learned little about the insurgency from questioning inmates at the prison. Most of the prisoners held in the special cellblock that became the setting for the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib apparently were not linked to the insurgency, they said.

All of the prisoners sent to Abu Ghraib had already been questioned by the troops who captured them for urgent information about roadside bombs, imminent attacks and the like.

The officials could not say whether the harsh interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib were counterproductive. But they said few if any prisoners there had been able to shed light on questions to which Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander for the Middle East, and his deputies had assigned highest priority, including the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein and the nature of the insurgency's leadership.

"Most of our useful intelligence came from battlefield interrogations, and at the battalion, brigade and division-level interrogation facilities," said a senior military intelligence officer who served in Iraq. Once prisoners were sent on to Abu Ghraib, the officer said, "we got very little feedback."

I wonder how disappointed that will make Rummy when it hits his desk? Back to the drawing board, I guess.