In an interview today with the BBC, Vice President Joe Biden insisted that President Obama’s pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay by next January was “on course” and that a decision would be made on every detainee at the facility “well before January.”
Earlier this week it was revealed that Obama’s special task force which was developing the plan for how to close the facility was going to miss the deadlines for two key reports on the plan, with those reports being delayed by at least “a few months.”
Yet Biden says that the administration is “going through every single detainee’s records… to make a judgement about whether or not they should be tried.” Officials have previously suggested that many of the detainees may spend life in prison without a trial, though it would likely be in a different detention center.
Shortly after taking office, President Obama signed an executive order halting the military tribunals at the Guantanamo facility and promising the closure. He has since revived the tribunals, however, and the delays have left doubts as to his seriousness about following through on the pledge.
The issue is not what is closed or left open, but what happens to its, um, guests and the minimum standards of, um, hospitality to be applied at all detention centers worldwide.
Torture's prime value is not extraction of operational information, but terrorization of the population within its reach. To that end, it is very very important to publicize that most detainees are probably innocent: that way EVERYBODY feels threatened and goes to extremes to keep beneath the radar screen.
Got it now?