The right-wing lie regarding "30 released Guantanamo detainees " returning to the battlefield

In his impassioned dissent to the 5 to 4 Boumediene decision Justice Antonia Scalia declared that “[the Court’s decision] will almost certainly cause more
Americans to be killed.” To buttress his argument Justice Scalia stated, “In the short term, however, the decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.”

Since I have sufficient respect for his ethics as a Jurist [*], I can only suspect that Scalia does not know he was repeating a lie. He said it again to Charlie Rose on the show aired June 21, 2008. The Pentagon has released the truth of the matter in in a Seaton Hall study of the issue.. The report essentially says that the Pentagon has no way of tracing released Guantanamo detainees, so it is reduced to culling unverifiable reports from the press. What is known, however is that the prior released detainees were not released through and process that was even quasi-judicial (some were released by political appointees against the will fo the military, and they were not tracked once they were released. There was only a single possible individual who might have returned to the "battlefield" (whjtever that means) and even that report is highly speculative.

From the summary of the report, here is what is known.

On December 10, 2007 The Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research issued a Report, THE MEANING OF "BATTLEFIELD": An Analysis of the Government’s Representations of ‘Battlefield Capture’ and ‘Recidivism’ of the Guantánamo Detainees, which demonstrated that statements asserting 30 detainees had returned to the battlefield were incorrect. Further developments since then, including recent hearings before Congress at which more information was provided by the Department of Defense, confirm that the 30 recidivist claim is simply wrong and has no place in a reasoned public debate about Guantánamo. This Report concludes the following:

• At most 12, not 30, detainees “returned to the fight.”
• Of these 12, it is by no means clear that all are properly characterized as having
  been so engaged since their release.
• According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data not a single detainee was ever released by a court. Moreover, every released detainee was released by political appointees of the Department of Defense, sometimes over the objection of the military.
• According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data and reports, not a single released Guantánamo detainee has ever attacked any
  Americans.
• The Department of Defense’s statements regarding recidivism are inconsistent with each other and often contradictory.
• This may be because, despite the importance of detainee recidivism, the Department of Defense’s sources of information are media reports.
• Despite national security concerns, the Department of Defense does not have a system for tracking the conduct or even the whereabouts of released detainees.
• The only indisputable detainee who took up arms against the United States or its allies was ISN 220.
• ISN 220 was not released as a result of any legal process, whether a CSRT or a federal habeas proceeding; no detainee has been released as a result of either process.
• The decision to release ISN 220 was made by political officers in the Department of Defense and was contrary to the recommendations of the military officers.
• The Department of Defense has never explained why ISN 220 was released or who is responsible for the decision.
• It is at least plausible that a more transparent process would have resulted in ISN 220 still being detained.

So. No thirty released detainees who have returned to the battlefield. Maybe there is one, and if there had been a transparent judicial process that case represents an individual who should not have been released. The Pentagon political appointees tend to overrule good sense and demand the Pentagon do what they are told.

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[*]That is not to say that I consider Antonin Scalia's theory of of textualism and originalism as he uses it in Constitutional interpretation valid or reasonable. But I do consider him to be a rigorous thinker who, within his limitations, makes every effort to use known facts rather than lies or misrepresentations and then applies his theory to those facts. Scalia is quite inconsistent on his application of originalism because of his limited acceptance of Stare Decisis. The result is that he is able to "logically" justify whatever he wants the law to be rather than being bound by law.

The result is that, while Scalia can always get the result of his decisions to be what he personally wants them to be (See Bush V. Gore), he does it by using his imprecise and non-binding theory of jurisprudence, not by accepting lies or misrepresentations.