Obama's Guantanamo Is Never Going To Close, So Everyone Might As Well Get Comfortable

[unhappycamper]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/16/obama-guantanamo_n_2618503.html



U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta replaces an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that President Barack Obama, in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama's Guantanamo Is Never Going To Close, So Everyone Might As Well Get Comfortable
Ryan J. Reilly B
Posted: 02/16/2013 10:36 am EST | Updated: 02/16/2013 10:41 am EST

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- In late January, shortly after President Barack Obama began his second term, Navy Cmdr. Walter Ruiz stood inside an old airplane hangar on the southernmost tip of the island and reflected on a central but unfulfilled promise of Obama’s 2008 campaign.

“We’re still here,” Ruiz said, as reporters milled around the aging hangar, which has been repurposed as a work space for the journalists and human rights observers who have been flying in and out of Guantanamo since the first suspected terrorists were brought here 11 years ago. Instead of planes, the hangar is now home to several trailer-size sheds with slanted roofs. More offices line the hangar's perimeter, and a giant map of the base is painted on the floor. Screeching bats fly in and out of the hangar at night.

“We’re still in military commissions. We’re still arguing about the basic protections the system affords us. We’re still talking about indefinite detention," Ruiz continued. "We’re still talking about not closing the facility.”

After years of legal wrangling, the trials of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and four other men allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks have barely gotten off the ground. Ruiz, an attorney for alleged 9/11 organizer and financier Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, estimates he has traveled to Guantanamo 50 to 100 times for client meetings and pre-trial hearings on legal minutiae since he joined the military’s defense counsel office in September 2008.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Obama's Guantanamo?

geez.

[DinahMoeHum]

2. If these suspects had been tried in civilian courts. . .

in the first place
as accused criminals (not military). . .they would already be serving life terms in supermax and Gitmo would be closed.