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And unfortunate intersection between fighting a war and then applying legal principles to it. one thing to pick people up on battlefield and say you're dangerous and enemy combatant and then make a criminal case on them based on strict rules. it doesn't work. peter, jeff, thank you for joining us. >> coming up, look who is not number one in the u.s. economy will soon be surpassed in fact sooner than you might think. is there anything we can do to change the tide? details when we come back. [ male announcer ] this is james. the morning after the big move starts with back pain... and a choice.

Prison for terror suspects in guantanamo bay cuba and how impossible our job is there. wikileaks released 700 classified documents. joining me to talk about revelations, cnn national security analyst peter burgin and jeff toobin. welcome to both of you. jeff, you have been to gitmo twice in your capacity as a journalist, i believe. not as an inmate. just want to put that out there. what do these documents tell us about our capacity to prosecute successfully the 172 people we hold there? >> it's really hard. it's really hard to learn anything accurate about these people. the judgment the bush a...

Guantanamo where there is real concern about their dangerousness but really no evidence to put them on trial. the obama administration effectively has come up with policy of indefinite detention. they didn't call it that because of course that's a sort of thing we associate with regimes like the egyptian regime but that's a fact. it's an uncomfortable fact. obama came into office immediately within two days promising that guantanamo would be closed and it turned out to be a very hard mission. basically it is very much where it was under george w. bush in terms of military commissions and in te...

It is something. >> i was going to say, when i first went to guantanamo which was 2005, i remember interviewing the general then in charge. i said what does it mean to be interviewing people for actionable intelligence, that is intelligence you can use for years day after day. how can you learn anything new that is useful and i think these documents suggest they haven't learned much that's useful. >> that's correct. this is many years after some of these individuals have been captured. how is it possible that anything they could tell us today would be useful going forward. on the other hand, p...

Of providing law and order. the afghan military is a questionable institution. more importantly if not the government, the individuals have their feet in both camps. they are collaborating with each other and making billions of dollars off of us. when we hire a security company, that security company is then paying off the taliban not to attack or if they think their contract is in danger, they pay off the taliban to attack and demonstrate their value. the drug trade involves people who are associated with the government and people in the taliban. it just goes on. the problem is that it is a f...