What Is President-Elect Trump's Policy On Guantanamo?

Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald: What will President Trump do with Guantánamo?

Will President Donald Trump put pen to paper on Inauguration Day and declare the Guantánamo Bay prison Barack Obama couldn’t close officially open for business? Will he order his Secretary of Defense to start searching the globe for “some bad dudes” to put there?

Today, 20 of the last 60 war-on-terror prisoners are cleared for release, all sent to the remote base in southeast Cuba during the presidency of George W. Bush. The Obama administration is still actively pursuing places to send them with security assurances that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

But a former Bush-era official responsible for detainee policy at the Pentagon, Cully Stimson, predicts the transfers will stop the day Trump takes office, Jan. 20, just two days shy of eight years after Obama ordered his administration to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo Bay.

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WNU Editor: The only thing that we know for sure is that he is not going to close the prison Guantanamo. As to the current prison population .... and future use of the facilities .... what comes next is unknown.

Is Guantanamo A Gulag?

In 2002, with memories of the Twin Towers atrocity still raw, many were prepared to accept, albeit with great reluctance, that the usual rules and ethics of conflict no longer applied

Gulag That Shames The West: Five Years After Obama Said He'd Shut It, Over 100 Prisoners - Including A British Resident - Are Still Chained In Guantanamo. DAVID JONES Went Inside And Was Horrified By What He Found -- David Jones, Daily Mail

Dawn is still two hours away and for those on the outside, beyond the reinforced concrete walls and coiled barbed wire, the good life in Guantanamo Bay has stilled temporarily.

McDonald’s has closed, the numerous bars, restaurants and Caribbean beaches that make this shameful prison colony such a coveted posting for fun-loving American servicemen and women have emptied, and the temperature has cooled sufficiently for even the indolent iguanas to slither about.

For the 166 men who languish inside the detainee camps here, however, out of sight and mind on a sealed-off section of this 45-square-mile naval base in south-eastern Cuba (leased to the U.S. for more than a century under an agreement the Castro regime is powerless to break), time is of no consequence.

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My Comment: My nationality is Russian .... so calling Guantanamo a 'Gulag' kind of caught my attention. Maybe the definition is different in English .... but for Russians, Gulag is another way of saying concentration camp .... and here is a hint to David Jones .... Guantanamo is NOT a concentration camp. To say so is to disparage the millions of Russians who suffered and died in such prisons. Now having said that I am not going to get into a debate on the moral arguments of Guantanamo .... I have done enough of that over the years .... my only wish right now is that they are given their military trial and be convicted and/or released depending on the outcome .... a process that unfortunately this White House has zero interest to proceed with .... preferring instead civilian trials. As for David Jones' above Daily Mail article .... the dripping remarks in the comments section deserve reading.

Why Is The Pentagon Trying To Shield Testimony At Guantanamo That Is Already In The Public Domain

It's Ridiculous For Pentagon To Try To Shield Testimony At Guantanamo That's Already In Public Domain -- McClatchy News Editorial

The Pentagon has long claimed that it can infringe on the public's right to know what takes place at the island prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, under the guise of protecting national security. Now it's going to absurd lengths to justify a secret hearing involving a Saudi captive's account of how CIA agents interrogated him while shackled in custody.

The government has played the national security card repeatedly for more than 10 years, relying on post-9/11 paranoia and fear of terrorism to win public support for the kind of odious policies that have no place in a democracy. Secret interrogations, secret custody, secret jails. Even the Red Cross was kept in the dark at one time about who was in captivity, and where - a violation of fundamental Geneva Conventions rules.

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My Comment: 9/11 terrorists, Guantanamo, CIA renditions, torture .... you betcha they want to keep this under the rug as much as possible .... even when a good chunk of it is in the public domain.

What To Do With Enemy Combatants?

Iraq And Afghanistan: Who Is An Enemy Combatant? -- L.A. Times

Unconventional wars produce unconventional prisoners; it's crucial that the U.S. develop sensible guidelines on how to handle such prisoners.

Two things distinguish the irregular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: It is not clear who is a combatant, and the United States is fighting a conflict with no clear battlefront.

That leaves us with the vexing question of how to handle detentions in this particular form of warfare.

My Comment: An interesting debate on what to do with enemy combatants. In the Second World War the debate was very simple .... enemy combatants that were not in uniform could be executed on the spot .... and they were. But we do not live in that world anymore .... in our politically correct idea of what war should be like we are now following a torturous path of giving rights (and in some cases freedom) to some of the worse human beings on the planet.

We are already paying for this policy by having former Gunatanamo detainees become Al Qaeda/Taliban commanders when they are released from detention and put back into the field .... and I expect this trend to continue as we search for ways to come to some form of accommodation with Islamic extremism. But the results will be the same .... we are in a long long war against a religious/political ideology that extremists have adopted as their own .... and the sooner that we realize this the sooner that we will accept the idea that some of these extremists are going to be in prison (with no trial) for a very very very long time. Until then .... the debate continues.

Obsessing Over Guantanamo -- A Commentary

Camp Delta, the fenced-in core of the Guantánamo prison.
Angel Franco/The New York Times

The Guantanamo Obsession And The Prisoners Who Will Neither Be Tried Nor Released -- The New Republic

Barack Obama is stuck with another of his campaign pledges. There are still nearly 200 prisoners in Guantanamo. I, for one, do not care if they are moved to a jailhouse in Illinois. But I still wonder what is wrong with that tip of Cuba (which happens to be U.S. territory) functioning as a penitentiary.

In any case, the deadline that candidate Obama set for President Obama to meet--the end of last year--has now passed. And, given the administration’s dire electoral and legislative troubles, I doubt that the president and his attorney general are about to engage the Congress and the people about shutting down Guantanamo, however late or early they can engineer a move--if they can ever.

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My Comment: I was surprised to read this commentary in the New Republic .... I thought that they would be more harsher in their criticism of President Obama's failure to close Guantanamo .... but there is no such thing.

This is a good summary on why President Obama is having trouble closing Guantanamo, and what are the consequences if he does.

Terrorist Recidivism -- A Commentary

From Commentary Magazine:

I recall visiting Saudi Arabia a couple of years ago and being briefed by Saudi officials on their program to reeducate and rehabilitate Islamist extremists in their prisons. The program had long been seen as a model effort; it influenced a similar program created in the U.S. detention system in Iraq that is now being replicated in Afghanistan. But recent events suggest the Saudi program was not all it was cracked up to be.

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My Comment: Suspending the transfer of Guantanamo detainees will probably only last a short time .... the Obama administration have made their intentions very clear. Guantanamo is going to be closed .... and its prisoners sent to "who knows where".

Terrorists Free To Kill Once Again As They Slip The Grasp Of Gitmo's Kid Gloves -- A Commentary

BREEDING GROUNDS: Detainees are allowed to pray, keep the Koran (inset), and study other other Islamic texts at Guantanamo Bay. The suspected terrorists have access to anti-Western literature, thanks to the detention camp's library, where books aren't screened for content, unlike those at federal prisons.

From The New York Post:

THE Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terror ist activities after claiming they weren't terrorists.

Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure.

These dangerous prisoners should never have been cleared for release. Why did interrogators fail to find the cracks in their stories and alibis?

Why wasn't more intelligence gathered to predict they'd rejoin al Qaeda or the Taliban?

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Nobody Wants A Terrorist For A Neighbor -- A Commentary

From The San Francisco Examiner:

President Barack Obama made a serious mistake when he decided to close the U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without first figuring out where to put the 240 detainees held there. Most of these people are hard-core jihadists whose main goal in life is to kill Americans.

Obama can call it an “overseas contingency operation,” but for the Gitmo detainees it is a declared war against us and terrorism is their weapon of choice. Despite these realities, Obama seems determined to shut down Gitmo — even if that means transferring the detainees to less secure facilities in the U.S.

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How to Handle The Guantanamo Detainees -- A Commentary

A guard leans on a fencepost as a Guantanamo detainee jogs inside the exercise yard at Camp 5 detention centre, at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Jan. 21, 2009. Brennan Linsley/Pool/Reuters

From Wall Street Journal:

Preventive detention will continue to have a place in the war on terror.

When President Barack Obama declassified and released legal memoranda from the Department of Justice, he opened the door to a drawn-out battle over the Bush administration's use of coercive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists. We believe that any subsequent attempts to subject those who provided such legal advice to prosecutions are a mistake. They will have a chilling effect on the candor with which future government officials provide their best counsel.

The country must move on from debates about the past, because pressing questions about U.S. detention policy in the war on terror requires us to make difficult choices -- and to make them soon.

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Gitmo On The U.S. Mainland -- A Commentary

U.S. troops enter Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. AP

Terrorist Hotbed -- IBDeditorials

Politics: The Pentagon will have to build a facility for the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay if their current housing is closed. We know the perfect spot: a military prison in Cuba on a naval base called Gitmo.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday that he has asked for $50 million to build a prison in the U.S. that would house the enemy combatants who were sent to Guantanamo after being captured in the war on terror.

If the brig at Gitmo is closed, as many as 100 of the roughly 250 inmates there would be moved to the U.S. The rest could walk away because the evidence against them, while good enough to keep them incarcerated in a military prison as enemies of America, might be inadmissible in a criminal court on U.S. soil.

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President Obama And The Real Shame of Guantanamo -- A Commentary

U.S. troops enter Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. AP/FOX News

From The Bulletin:

President Barack Obama has in the last few days, accelerated a process of dismantling the American security apparatus designed to protect American citizens at home and abroad. The administration’s disclosure of the techniques used to gather critical intelligence in order to stop terrorist attacks has been made to the world, our enemies and the terrorists. Dismantling of Guantanamo has begun. The president has condemned the entire security process that was put into place after 9/11 as being “not in accord with the principles of our nation.” Have we forgotten already? Has the President forgotten?

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Battlefield Injustice -- A Commentary

Afghan men in Kabul in February after they were freed from the United States prison at Bagram. Syed Jan Sabawoon/European Pressphoto Agency

From IBDeditorials:

War On Terror: A federal court says that even those held in Afghanistan must also be tried in American courts. Why not? After all, if there is no global war on terror, how can anybody be prisoners of that war?

Although the "war on terror" no longer exists, we still have the "overseas contingency operation" in Afghanistan. They are still shooting at us and we are still shooting at them.

We are still capturing and holding what used to be called enemy combatants or even that more archaic term — prisoners of war.

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My Comment: This commentary makes some good points. How can we say that we are at war when the government itself prefers to use different language. What is even worse .... is that this lack of leadership in Washington and the use of lawyers and judges to dictate military and war time policy in a conflict zone .... this confusion and uncertainty is only going to end up having innocent civilians and soldiers being killed on the battlefield.

Would You Want These Guantanamo Suspects Living Next Door? -- A Commentary

Guantanamo Prison (Photo from The Guardian)

From The National Post:

The latest way to seek an immigration pass into Canada appears to go like this: Act suspiciously like a terrorist or even become one; spend a few years at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; get your name on a refugee-status claim form for review by Canadian immigration officials based in Jamaica.

Canadian church groups and others have filed to "sponsor" five Guantanamo Bay detainees for immigration to Canada as refugees.

Three Uyghur separatists of China are among the group. The U.S. has formally cleared them of having terrorism intentions -- against the West, at least. An Algerian and a Syrian -- the latter the Canadian sponsors made public just this week -- are the others. Interpretations of their backgrounds vary according to who is making them.

What should the average Canadian make of this?

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My Comment: Would I want someone like that living beside me .... ahhh .... NO!

Terror Injustice: Cole Killer Could Go Free -- A Commentary

Photo from Cargolaw.

From The New York Post:

IMAGINE a terrorist setting off a bomb in your home, killing 17 friends and family members. Two years later, you learn authorities have caught the mastermind of the attack, who's confessed not only to bombing your house but other acts of terrorism.

Then, six years later, you hear that the charges against the killer have been dropped and that he might go free - while those who arrested and questioned him may face congressional investigation and even jail time.

If you can get your mind around this nightmare, then you can appreciate the feelings of retired US Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, former skipper of the destroyer USS Cole.

On Oct. 12, 2000, terrorists set off a bomb alongside the Cole as it was peacefully moored in the port of Aden. The blast killed 17 members of Lippold's command and wounded nearly 40 others.

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My Comment: I doubt that this terrorist will be released .... his release would unleash a firestorm of protest that would wipe out the Democratics in the House and Senate races of 2010.

What will be done is a review of the legal process and the levying of new charges on all Gitmo inmates .... including on those who were responsible for the USS Cole.

What is troublesome is the grey area that the Administration has decided to enter when it comes to interrogating captured Al Qaeda and other terror cell leaders. No CIA official is going to interrogate anyone now ....why should they when many in government are open to the idea of prosecuting them since they did not follow what Congress now feels is the right way to question terrorists .... whatever thta is.

Obama Made a Rash Decision On Gitmo -- A Commentary

President Obama was joined by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 16 retired generals and admirals in the Oval Office as he signed the executive orders. Doug Mills/The New York Times

From The Wall Street Journal:

The president will soon realize that governing involves hard choices.

During his first week as commander in chief, President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay and terminated the CIA's special authority to interrogate terrorists.

While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an "imperial presidency" -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001. He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.

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My Comment: In From the Cold's comments on this Wall Street Journal opinion piece are a must read.

A Firsthand Look At The Real Guantanamo -- A Commentary

(Photo from Digital Journal)

From Pajamas Media:

The truth about the facility bears little resemblance to the stereotypes peddled by media and politicians. (Also read Victor Davis Hanson: From Gaza to Guantanamo)

I recently visited the detention facilities at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was dismayed at what I saw. The place was nothing like what I expected, and I was struck by how little we Americans actually know about these facilities and the conduct of our personnel there. With every new interview and every new area walk-through I hoped to find some validation of the certainties I brought with me from the hundreds of articles, documentaries, and speeches presented to the American people by our intellectual superiors.

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The Real Reason Guantanamo Detainees Have Returned To The Battlefield -- A Commentary

WNU Editor: This commentary is from 2004. Hat tip to Small Wars Journal

To Fight Another Day -- Slate

The real reason Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield.

New battlefield reports indicate that at least eight and as many as 25 of the 202 prisoners paroled by the Pentagon from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have rejoined the fight as members of the pro-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, or as part of al-Qaida. One of the now-free prisoners fighting in Afghanistan proudly proclaimed that he won his parole simply by lying through his teeth throughout the time he was at Gitmo. And the Pentagon blames fibbing prisoners and inadequate screening systems—driven by this summer's Supreme Court terrorism decisions—for allowing these men to escape from captivity.

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Obama’s 250 Tough Calls -- A Commentary

From Newsweek:

He should not be stampeded into appeasing his global constituencies on Guantánamo Bay.

What should Barack Obama do with the 250 men who are still locked up in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp? Of the many problems the new president will face, this is one of the most difficult, and one he must get right. Along with it, he must answer equally tough questions about how his administration will deal with suspected terrorists in the future: Where will they be held and what legal rights will they have? Which interrogation methods will President Obama allow—and which will he forbid?

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