They're Chinese. They were arrested by mistake -- even the Bush Administration says so. So why are they languishing in their fifth year at Guantanamo?

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from two Chinese Muslims who were mistakenly captured as enemy combatants more than four years ago and are still being held at the U.S. prison in Cuba.
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The men's plight has posed a dilemma for the Bush administration and courts. Previously, a federal judge said the detention of the ethnic Uighurs in Guantanamo Bay is unlawful, but that there was nothing federal courts could do.

Lawyers for the two contend they should be released, something the Bush administration opposes, unless they can go to a country other than the United States.

So they're free to go, only elsewhere. Until then, they're non-persons held in a military prison because they're guilty of having been victims of a "mistake."

The U.S. government has been unable to find a country willing to accept the two men, along with other Uighurs. They cannot be returned to China because they likely will be tortured or killed.

So these Chinese men are in maximum-security lock-down as a form of sanctuary. Pretty big-hearted of W, isn't it?

Bush administration Supreme Court lawyer Paul Clement told justices that there were "substantial ongoing diplomatic efforts to transfer them to an appropriate country."

Clement said that in the meantime, the men have had television, a stereo system, books and recreational opportunities: including soccer, volleyball and ping-pong.

The detainees' lawyers painted a different picture, saying that hunger strikes and suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay are becoming more common and that the men are isolated.

"Guantanamo is at the precipice," Boston lawyer Sabin Willett wrote in the appeal. "Only prompt intervention by this court to vindicate its own mandate can prevent the rule of law itself from being drowned in this intensifying whirlpool of desperation."

Then again, these guys aren't exactly innocents:

Qassim and al-Hakim were captured as they fled a Taliban military training camp where they were learning techniques they planned to use against the Chinese government. They are Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims who have a language and culture distinct from the rest of China.

I wonder if you can Google up their names in China.

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