[Peace-discuss] some things AWARE might call on the Obama...

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Four reasons Obama won't close the controversial prison soon.
	Dan Ephron
	NEWSWEEK

The detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the flawed justice system created to 
try terrorist suspects held there are among the most complicated legacies of the 
Bush administration. They're Obama's problem now. The president elect has said 
he will shutter Gitmo and put some of the detainees on trial in American 
criminal courts or military courts martial (his campaign did not return calls 
seeking comment.) But the prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen 
in November 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and 
resourcefulness to clean up. Here are four reasons the controversial facility 
will probably still be open for business a year from now.

The Yemeni Factor. Any route to closing Guantanamo involves repatriating most of 
the roughly 250 detainees still held in Cuba. Sending detainees home requires 
negotiating the terms of their release with the home country. Since Yemenis make 
up the largest group of prisoners in Cuba, talks with the government in Sanaa 
will be key. But Yemen has been the hardest country to engage on the issue, 
according to a former senior official familiar with the process. The Bush 
administration has asked home countries to impose restrictions on the returnees. 
Saudi Arabia, for example, has imprisoned some Gitmo veterans, limited the 
travel of others and put those it thought it could co-opt through a 
"de-radicalization" program. "Yemen doesn't want to be seen as doing anything 
for the United States," says the former official, who declined to be named 
discussing sensitive diplomacy. Even if it agreed to U.S. demands, Yemen might 
not have the capability to honor them. "It has areas of the country that are 
poorly governed and its borders are porous," said the former official. If the 
new administration is willing to release detainees without demands on the home 
country, the process can go quickly. But the risk is that some might pose future 
security threats to America.

Other detainees face possible torture if sent home—most notably Gitmo's 17 
Uighurs from China. Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress, a liberal 
think tank headed by former Clinton White House aide (and Obama ally) John 
Podesta, has suggested the United States. ask its allies to help create an 
international resettlement program for those detainees who can't return to their 
countries. The goodwill Obama has already generated in Europe and elsewhere will 
help. But the process will take time.

The NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) Problem: The United States will continue holding 
a few dozen suspects it intends to put on trial or deems too dangerous to 
release. But where? A secret study conducted by the Pentagon in 2006 outlined 
alternative sites within the U.S., including the military facility at Fort 
Leavenworth, Kan., and at Charleston, S.C., according to a former Pentagon 
official familiar with the details. But congressmen representing those and other 
districts with military brigs have already vowed to fight the move. "What you 
have is a NIMBY problem," says Charles Stimson, who served until last year as 
the Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Detainee Affairs. "I haven't seen one 
congressman raise his hand and say, 'give them to me'." Even if Capitol Hill 
could be persuaded to go along with the relocation, Stimson said, extensive work 
would have to be done on existing military brigs before Guantanamo detainees are 
housed there. "You can't commingle them with military detainees, so you'd have 
to set up a separate wing or clear out the facility," he says. The structures 
would have to be reinforced so they wouldn't be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. 
"And you would have to address secondary and tertiary [security] concerns within 
the town, the county and the state."

Miranda This: Once moved, the high-value detainees already indicted for their 
role in the attacks of 9/11 or other crimes would presumably be tried in either 
federal criminal courts or in military courts—a suggestion put forth by Obama in 
a statement earlier this year. But it's not at all clear that convictions could 
be won against even top Al Qaeda suspects like the alleged 9/11 mastermind 
Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. Federal and military courts are much more protective of 
a defendant's rights than the military commissions operating at Guantanamo. In a 
federal court, an Al Qaeda defendant held for years at a secret CIA site could 
complain that his right to a speedy trial was violated, that he was never read 
his Miranda rights, that the evidence against him did not go through a proper 
chain of custody and that confessions were gleaned through coercive 
interrogations, according to retired Col. Morris Davis, the former chief 
prosecutor in the Guantanamo trials. "Any one of these issues could jeopardize 
the prospect of a conviction," he said. Some legal scholars, like Neal Katyal at 
Georgetown University, have suggested creating new "national security courts", 
where suspects would have more rights than they do in military commissions but 
would not get the full range of criminal protections. The idea is controversial 
in the legal community, but might be the only viable alternative to the 
discredited Gitmo commissions. Establishing the new courts would require a 
lengthy legislative process.

We'll Always Have Bagram? Obama will also have to think through where the U.S. 
can put detainees it captures in the future. The detention center at Bagram air 
base in Afghanistan is currently being expanded. But Bagram shares Guantanamo's 
dark record of abuse, secrecy, and detention without trial. Human rights groups 
describe it as Gitmo with a different zip code. To really change course, the new 
administration will have to formulate a new policy for holding terrorist 
suspects that allows them some form of quick and fair adjudication. "In my mind, 
Guantanamo is a symptom of a larger problem," says Matthew Waxman, a law 
professor at Columbia University who has held senior positions in the State 
Department and the Pentagon. "We're going to continue capturing and detaining Al 
Qaeda members. We need a durable system for handling them." Ideas abound. 
Choosing one and building a new structure around it will require strong 
leadership—and time.

With Katie Paul
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/168022
© 2008


Stuart Levy wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 11:49:32PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Why can't we take seriously what Obama says?  He announces murder and 
>> mayhem. Why shouldn't we believe him?
> 
> He also says he'll close Guantanamo and end torture.  And remove troops from
> Iraq. And negotiate with Iran, of which he's also said (to AIPAC) that there
> is no greater threat to Israel's existence.
> 
> He says lots of things.  Do we believe them all? Including apparently
> contradictory statements?
> 
> Something I hope our statement ends up doing is calling on an Obama admin to
> hold it to the best of what he's said, and then add to that what we would 
> have liked to hear a candidate say.
> 
> ... and then in looking for material, I ran across this lovely quote:
> 
> My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling
> yeast. - Miguel de Unamuno
> 
> Anyway, I've opened too timidly (stale yeast?). Thanks, Neil and Carl and
> Mort, for upping the ante.