--Gross shortage of Arabic speakers in the US defense establishment and pipeline? If you like intel-speak, call it part of overall gross neglect of "humint." If you are into Area Studies, call it neglect of Middle Eastern Studies
WS:
I used to work for a DoD joint called the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, training foreign language specialists @ $100k per person, payable by the US taxpayer (at that time the Stanford tuition was about $15k, so I once suggested that our trainees could go to Stanford instead, get better education and still save the taxpayers $40k). They trained specialists (mainly the five branches of service, FBI and NSA) in virtually every language, including the Arabic.
As far as outcome is concerned, however, the results were less than satisfactory. The goal was to achieve a level of competency that allowed the trainee basic linguistic functioning such as understanding of a simple narrative, communicating everyday life facts etc. or proficiency level 2 (they used a 0 to 5 scale, where 5 was native speaker proficiency), but that goal was almost never achieved. That is to say, in actual reality. In the reported reality, that goal was almost always achieved. Here is how. Instructors' (and administrators') job evaluation depended on the rating the trainees attained. The testers were recruited from among the instructors. If a tester tried to follow the testing guidelines instead of supplying the needed ratings, his/her colleagues and superiors were not happy, and they would not ask that person to test again.
At the same time, security concerns were almost paranoid, but completely useless. Frequent security briefings warned of such "signs" of security risks as high spending, drug or alcohol problems, sex or marital problems etc. And questions like "So how many spies have been caught by looking for these signs" were certainly not appreciated.
Following that experience, the Guantanamo story comes as no surprise - it is the usual DoD mix - high on useless security rituals, low on outcome and effectiveness.
Another thing to consider: the Europeans have successfully prosecuted a number of Al-Qaeda suspects (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3150594.stm) without violating any human rights; - the US, otoh, violated the rights of quite a number of people, but got zero successful prosecutions to date.
Wojtek