Obama has acknowledged it will be "a challenge" to shut the jail in his first 100 days in office [Reuters]
Barack Obama will issue an executive order to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, probably in his first week as US president, two of his transition team advisers have said. The prison is unlikely to be shut until a solution is found on where to house its inmates, but a presidential order would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 detainees remaining there, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.
Obama said repeatedly during his presidential campaign that the prison for al-Qaeda suspects had to go, but the US president-elect said at the weekend it would be "a challenge" to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration. The Guantanamo directive would be one of a series of executive orders Obama is planning to issue shortly after he takes office on January 20, according to the advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Thorny issue
They said the order would direct the new administration to look at each Guantanamo case to see if the detainee can be released or if he should still be held, and if so, wher
Guantanamo protester speaks about fast
Guantanamo protester speaks about fast
Many of the detainees at the prison in Cuba are cleared for release, and others could be sent back to their native countries to beheld there. But many nations have resisted Bush administration efforts to repatriate the prisoners.
The Obama advisers said it was hoped that nations that had initially resisted taking back the detainees would be more willing to do so after dealing with the new administration. What remains the thorniest issue, the advisers said, is what to do with the rest of the prisoners, including at least 15 so-called "high value detainees". If the detainees were transferred to US soil they would have legal rights they were not entitled to while imprisoned in Cuba. It is also not clear if they would face trial through the current military tribunal system or in federal civilian courts and concerns have been raised about where they would be imprisoned.
More hunger strikes
The news of Obama's reported imminent order to shut Guantanamo comes as the US military said the number of inmates on hunger strike there had risen by eight to 42. But Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer for human rights group Centre for Constitutional Rights said that based on interviews with prisoners and letters the menhave sent to lawyers, more than 70 inmates were not eating in protest against their continued confinement.
More Guantanamo prisoners are on hunger strike than at any time since the spring of 2006. Navy Commander Pauline Storum, a spokesperson for the prison, said no detainee was in danger but 31 inmates were being force-fed, which happens after a detainee either had gone three weeks without a meal, had fallen below 85 per cent of his ideal body weight, or if a doctor has recommended it as a medical necessity to preserve a his life. Officials gave varying possible reasons for the spike in the number of inmates refusing to eat, including Obama's forthcoming inauguration and the anniversary of the arrival of inmates at the facility.
Detainees were first brought to Guantanamo on January 11, 2002.
From Al Jazerra
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Paul Krugman: Forgive and forget?
Published: January 16, 2009
Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration.
"I don't believe that anybody is above the law," he responded, but "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."
I'm sorry, but if we don't have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years - and nearly everyone has taken Obama's remarks to mean that we won't - this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don't face any consequences if they abuse their power.
Let's be clear what we're talking about here. It's not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation's security. The fact is that the Bush administration's abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.
At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally reserved nonpolitical positions for "right-thinking Americans" - their term, not mine - and there's strong evidence that officials used their positions both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute Democratic politicians.
The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the occupation of Iraq - an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to national security - in which applicants were judged by their politics, their personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job.
Speaking of Iraq, let's also not forget that country's failed reconstruction: the Bush administration handed billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, companies that then failed to deliver. And why should they have bothered to do their jobs? Any government official who tried to enforce accountability on, say, Halliburton quickly found his or her career derailed.
There's much, much more. By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years - in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated.
And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?
Why, then, shouldn't we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?
One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn't there be some penalty for the Bush administration's politicization of every aspect of government?
Alternatively, we're told that we don't have to dwell on past abuses, because we won't repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration's political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won't do it all over again, given the chance?
In fact, we've already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it's giving Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off - which isn't too surprising when you bear in mind that Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.
Now, it's true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again.
Meanwhile, about Obama: While it's probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he's going to swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's not a conditional oath to be honored only when it's convenient.
And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that's not a decision he has the right to make.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/opinion/edkrugman.1-409074.php
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