GITMO Obama's 1st Executive Order - Close GITMO within 1 Year

i wonder if some of the haitian people who need evacuation will be sent to gitmo

Better to keep terrorists off and far away from the US and the Civy population.  Keeping them in the country allows for terrorist organizations a home base in which to free them and put the US population at risk in the event of a prison break.

Interesting how much political power those ignorant teabaggers seem to possess.

Justice Task Force Recommends About 50 Guantanamo Detainees Be Held Indefinitely - Peter Finn, Washington Post. A Justice Department-led task force has concluded that nearly 50 of the 196 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war, according to Obama administration officials. The task force's findings represent the first time that the administration has clarified how many detainees it considers too dangerous to release but unprosecutable because officials fear trials could compromise intelligence-gathering and because detainees could challenge evidence obtained through coercion. Human rights advocates have bemoaned the administration's failure to fulfill President Obama's promise last January to close the Guantanamo Bay facility within a year as well as its reliance on indefinite detention, a mechanism devised during George W. Bush's administration that they deem unconstitutional.

Detainees Will Still Be Held, but Not Tried, Official Says - Charlie Savage, New York Times. The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday. However, the administration has decided that nearly 40 other detainees should be prosecuted for terrorism or related war crimes. And the remaining prisoners, about 110 men, should be repatriated or transferred to other countries for possible release, the official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the numbers. There are just under 200 detainees left at the detention center. President Obama established the task force shortly after his inauguration last year as part of his administration’s effort to deal with the detainee issues left behind by the Bush administration. It was facing a deadline of Friday to complete its work.

Thank you for the updates snuffy:)

It is important to remember that the U.S. offerred rewards for turning in terrorists.  It was an opportunity to get some cash and get rid of people you didn't like.  To kidnap people and torture them does not make friends abroad.  Probably the single most useful tool for recruiting jihadists is the presence of 'black' prisons. 

Thank you for your comments Roy and Barbara. 

Many of the extreme fundamentalist groups have their origins back with the Khawaarij, historically the first breakaway sect to bring unstability to the Muslims, they even killed some of the Prophet Muhammad's close companioins.

The over-reaction by fundamentalists to any percieved slight makes them at odds with the vast majority of peaceful Muslims, and they will use any excuse that they can to call down jihads and recruit new members to the cause, isn't it strange how it's always youngsters and new recruits who end up sacrificing their lives as suicide bombers and the like, never the foam-at-the-mouth instigators.

Gitmo was an ill concieved idea in the first place, it's turned into something that nobody wants to hold onto, and nobody knows how to let go of for fear of getting bitten. The USA isn't the first country to make the mistake since the second world war, Britain did much the same with dissidents in Northern Ireland back in the seventies.

Thanks for the additional update stejeb.  Youth are always recruited for any cause to stand in the front line.  So this is not a major surprise.

I think that GITMO could have worked and may still work by reexamining the laws and regulations governing the classification and prosecution of enemy combatants. Really, the congress and President dropped the ball by failing to think through the problem. That is the key indication and characteristic of the Obama administration -- failure to think completely through a problem and solution.

Went to Harvard. What was your grade? Incomplete.

Thanks for your comments and witty final remark. 

There were a number of speed bumps encountered by the Obama administration that tended to hamper the immediate closing of Gitmo or might be slowing down the closing process.

Among those glitches, the ongoing revelations about the extent of torture being conducted at Gitmo, incomplete records of who was at Gitmo, in some cases, no records at all for prisoners held there, as well as those former Gitmo prisoners who'd been whisked off to any of a number of 'Black sites', of known and unknown origins.   

All the above mentioned situations might make it difficult to close down the facility until those now in charge got a handle on what the hell had been going on there for all the years the place was in use as a prisoner of war camp/torture chamber, especially since not all those held should have been there in the first place. 

Karen thanks for commenting and the additional links