Guantanamo

Just to sort things out in my mind I need to understand something about Gitmo.

It has been around for a hundred years (1906, I think).

It houses “enemy combatants”, including five of the 9/11 terrorists.

They are treated well, including dental care and colonoscopies. (I picture scenes from the movie “Marathon Man”, but I’m told the Red Cross is monitoring their treatment, so it is legit.)

There are fewer than 300 prisoners there at the present time.

They are at Guantanamo because of political loopholes. Some because no other country will take them. Some because of the nature of military tribunals.

Those same loopholes will likely place MORE prisoners there when we do the Afghanistan surge.

This has become a cause celebre for the left. It is symbolic of the Obama administration’s commitment to human rights. It is an attack on Bush and Cheney and Halliburton and the GOP in general. For this reason alone we should keep it open. It is a political move, akin to Jimmy Carter and his ill-fated overtures into Iran. How did that turn out?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/jimmy_carters_human_rights_dis.html

I believe Obama could have gone another direction here. He could have committed additional military legal resources to the problem with orders to explore the cases of the detainees, release those with the flimsiest cases, and put the other processes on a fast track.

That way he could satisfy himself that the prisoners really BELONG there. As it stands he is simply taking a stand on behalf of his far left friends. It sounds strangely like Blago’s media tour where he told us that if he can be railroaded, we can lose our rights to a fair trial, too.

Neither analogy works very well.