> How does one mention Gitmo and forget about it in the very next sentence?

One doesn’t. Gitmo is a black eye on our judicial system.

But there is a difference between a widely-debated exception and a generally-accepted baseline. Gitmo is abnormal in America. It is a baseline for Xi’s regime.

Excellent point. It's horrible and needs to become regular court based but it's an exception, not the standard. I still hate that it happens in my country.

By noting that gitmo is legally controversial, has a bunch of asterisks next to what can happen there (afaik they cannot send people on US soil there), and it's been used on a grand total of 800 "enemy combatants" In the last 20 years.

It is in every sense an anomaly, and is not even remotely comparable to what is discussed here.