And then he does, and the media makes a big deal out of it and people cry out "never again", "how did we not see this coming?", "whos accountable?".

Setting them free and closing the illegal prison is the right thing to do. If I was calling the shots I would close it and release them.

BUT:

I just see why they haven't done it yet. It's a quagmire, with extreme consequences. Sure, let a prison full of "suspected terrorists" out into the world, what could go wrong?

How nice would it be to live in a world where we all trust each other and enjoy peace and harmony?

I don't think anything will go wrong if we let them go.

Everyone knows that they will be monitored up the wazoo by the NSA. Any smart terrorist operative will not associate with the released prisoners. And the ones that do will provide a nice honeypot for the NSA.

The real quagmire will be when the NSA picks up intel about the released prisoners and fails to pass it along to any other intelligence agencies.

Then we'll be blinded by our own incompetence and go back to the media blame you mentioned in your comment.

I get your point, but really it's more like "Oh I have this guy in my basement I've been torturing for four years, I can't let him go now because he's going to want to kill my family who couldn't stop me from torturing this guy anyway".