A guy gets held for 5 years. What useful intel could he give you after 5 years? Whatever Afghan bases or attack plans or allies, well, after 5 years of torture, he probably has said everything there is to say. And info becomes obsolete during war.
Problem for the white house is, there are a lot of world lawyers just salivating to defend these guys in a trial. Why? Cause they want to show there is little evidence against these guys, and they want to show the effects of 5 years of torture. Sure they're terrorists, cause that's what our govt tells us. That convneient classification of 'enemy combatant' means we never have to release them.
This puzzles me. We considered the Taliban a legit govt in 1998 when we used them to locate and fire missiles at OBL. They wanted him dead too. In spring 2001, we considered them legitimate as we tried to pay them for rights to an oil pipeline thru afghanistan.
However, when war started, we decided to reclassify them, as a "terror group" and not a legit govt. This way, we don't have to release their POWS, we don't have to provide proof of anything. We just kill them, and the geneva convention doesn't apply.