Speaking today to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the administration’s first comments on the prospect of closing Guantanamo Bay in quite some time, and the news was not good.
Despite President Obama officially promising that the closure would happen by January 2010, and despite officials forever insisting that the president plans to eventually keep that promise, Gates conceded that the odds the facility will ever close are “very, very low.”
Gates cited two reasons for keeping the facility open, both that a large portion of Congress is vigorously opposed to the notion in principle and because the administration doesn’t want to release a number of the detainees, despite never charging many of them with anything. He insisted the US would be “selective” in releasing those detainees.
Gates has long been amongst the most honest about the policy of virtually eternal continuation of the facility. and his comments were largely in keeping with those he made in 2008, that the US is “stuck” keeping the facility, and the extralegal detainees who will never be released or charged with anything, for the long term.
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There are three distinct populations at Gitmo:
*** those "Worst of the Worst" that we think we can try in court, convict, and sentence to prison;
*** those that we suspect have done bad things, but because our evidence is tainted by torture, we know we can never convict, so we plan to hold them without charges and without trial until they die; and
*** those we know to be wrongfully detained ( in a word, "Innocent") but are reluctant to release because they might, after 8 years of inhumane treatment, want to take some action against the US.
The most outrageous aspect of Gitmo is our indefinite detention of men we acknowledge don't belong there. That alone is the reason that Gitmo is a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. That is the part of Gitmo that we need to close ASAP.
Fortunately, Obama has been given a plan that can fix that aspect in a matter of months.
Unfortunately, he's not smart enough to implement it.
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Jason — I typically enjoy your writing style; you have demonstrated that you are no "main stream media" reporter — thank God! However, I do have one little quibble to pick on this article: when are reporters going to stop calling these incarcerated individuals "detainees", which implies that such incarceration to be of short duration. At the very least, they are prisoners, or captives or hostages, take your pick. Jason, I am sure you can come up with an appellation that is even more applicable — just don't call them detainees!