An interesting publication, the Guantanamo Bay Gazette. You can find it online easily enough. For residents of the sole American military base sited in a country with which the United States has no diplomatic relations, it contains a deal of useful information.

An article in the latest issue, entitled "Stay vigilant - even in GTMO", must have caught a few eyes. Petty theft and incautious drinking are always troublesome, even in the military. Those with higher thoughts were perhaps happier to know that an Islamic service, among several other varieties, would be taking place in Sanctuary C last Friday at 1.15pm.

If not, there was a decent choice of movies available later at the Downtown Lyceum. I couldn't make this up, so I won't. What would you fancy after a hard day with "the Detainee Mission of the War on Terrorism"? Live Free or Die Hard? Or the not-actually-satirical Pirates of the Caribbean?

The Gazette, unsurprisingly, does not have a great deal to say about that famous mission, inherited late in 2001. The subject is tricky at the best of times, certainly for a forces' paper, and has lately become trickier still. The US Supreme Court having reversed itself in June in deciding to hear an appeal on whether 385 GTMO guests can challenge their detention in federal courts, the White House is wary about loose talk.

Things have changed, though. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has conceded that Guantanamo, and the legally-bizarre notion of "unlawful enemy combatants", have done America's reputation no good. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has insisted that her country has no desire to be "the world's jailer" indefinitely. Despite huffing and puffing, there is, finally, a desire to see GTMO emptied of men in orange jumpsuits, preferably before the Supreme Court strolls into action.

Was Gordon Brown told as much when he visited George Bush recently? It would certainly explain why Britain has decided to take some responsibility for five prisoners we previously disowned. The US government, its policy of military tribunals in disreputable tatters, wants shot of them. The new British government would be happy to distinguish itself from its predecessor. And there's a final detail: it would be the right thing to do, at long last.

For anyone interested in the surrender-monkey response to the big, tough (but invariably inept) war on terror, Guantanamo was never much of a stretch. If you have a case to make, make it. In a court. Then do it under the rule of law we fight, so you say, to defend. If you cannot gather enough evidence after almost six years, in some cases, amid persistent allegations of mental and physical torture, and if you cannot even sustain private tribunals, there may be a tiny flaw in your logic.

After an indecent interval, Tony Blair agreed that Guantanamo should be closed. His government would not agree, however, that it bore any responsibility for Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, Jamil el-Banna, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohammed al Habashi and Abdulnour Sameur. These were not, are not, British citizens. So much is true.

They were, however, long-term residents of this country, allowed to become so because, variously, they had been judged worthy of refugee status, indefinite leave to remain or exceptional leave to remain. Amid current British attitudes to outsiders and incomers, this was more than nothing. Several of the men have families here, and children they scarcely know being raised here. Not citizens, then, but guests, according to an old British tradition. Our guests and guilty - the US would have wasted no time in stating the contrary - of no crime.

Blair did not want to know. The loyal and intimate relationship he enjoyed with Bush, and the leverage he was supposed to possess, counted for nothing. Yet here is Brown, few weeks into the job, countenancing a letter from Foreign Secretary David Miliband to Rice, with habeas corpus as its subtext.

The previous attitude - that the five should be returned to their native lands to await their fates - has been abandoned. America's insistence that "third countries" must not be involved in such transfers appears - let's not speak too soon - to have been dropped. Most interesting of all, the solemn promises extracted by the Blair team from various Arab states guaranteeing that torture would never follow repatriation have been given due weight. Which is to say, ignored. Britain, not Jordan, Libya or Algeria, is asking for the return of these men.

That is, to repeat, the right thing to do, even if we can probably guess what has been going on. Bush or Rice has said: "Ask for them back, please." Brown and Miliband have thought: what's the most dignified, politically advantageous way to set about this exercise?

Perhaps I am being unfair. It is entirely possible that the Prime Minister is making a symbolic gesture, at no great cost, in order to spell out a larger meaning to do with past, present and future policy. Miliband is, meanwhile, reputed to be an Iraq sceptic. If the effort to free the five counts as the beginning of an attempt to clear up a revolting mess, I'm not sneering.

It won't excuse Guantanamo, though. All actual British citizens were out of the place by 2005, most with dreadful tales to tell. As the parliamentary intelligence and security committee reported less than a fortnight ago (another non-coincidence, I think), Britain's security services were "naive" in their dealings with the CIA in these matters, when not actually complicit, and any subsequent complaints were in any case ignored. But we - delete as applicable - still went along with a programme of kidnap, incarceration, rendition and torture with few arguments.

Guantanamo is an excellent example of how best to lose an anti-terrorist struggle. It stands alongside the introduction of internment in North Ireland in advertising an absolute failure of understanding. The base - first leased as a coaling station, according to the fascinating Gazette - no doubt has a symbolic standing for average, all-purpose western liberals. They don't count for much. Among Muslims in the Middle East, seeing precious few trials, and no convictions worth the name, its name will be potent for decades.

If Brown understands as much, good for him. But if the Prime Minister also cares to explain where he's been hiding his views since the latter part of 2001, all the better. The trouble with a war of beliefs is that it is far easier to make a catastrophic mistake, such as Guantanamo, than to rectify it. The belated release of five men because the US Supreme Court has begun to stir, and because a new Prime Minister needs a fresh start, will not purge all past errors.

What about the rest, the remaining 380? Prisons in north Africa? Disappearance, somewhere within the legal systems of states with a limited interest in the democratic process? Perhaps Miliband should begin to prepare a few more letters.

Not a single "unlawful combatant" has been found. A couple of the detainees have said recently, however, that they would rather remain in sunny Cuba than be returned to their homelands. That tells us a good deal about some of our allies in the war on terror, but it also tells us something about militant Islam's choice of targets.

When Guantanamo is preferable, the struggle begins at home.