Guantanamo Bay

The answer I think it that he did this to satisfy some of his supporters. I don't think the president will want any terrorist to cause problems on his watch. Where to put the residents of GITMO: I say Alcatraz---Let Mrs. Pelosi watch them 4 days a week!

The answer I think it that he did this to satisfy some of his supporters. I don't think the president will want any terrorist to cause problems on his watch. Where to put the residents of GITMO: I say Alcatraz---Let Mrs. Pelosi watch them 4 days a week!

Ilene, perhaps you have a point: Alcatraz is the most escape-proof place in the Continental US.  Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is ideal to house those animals, but as Obama closes the Naval Base, as a cost cutting measure, we'll need a suitable place to maintain them.

Only one escape occurred from Alcatraz: the Anglin Brothers got loose.  That is about all. 

Perhaps we could raze the existing prison, pour a new one made of reinforced 10,000 PSI concrete with a plate steel lining, and instead of bars that the prisoners could hurl disgusting things through at the guards, install 2" thick bullet-proof glass.  24-7 armed guards, hypermax security, and when they die in custody, so much the better.

The more you discuss it, the better it seems.

How President Obama cane to this conclusion is potentially quite disturbing. To date none of the detainees held at Guantanamo have been tried on any charge relating to September 11th, 2001.

This is almost inconcievable as it has now been eight years since the crime occured.

Americans have a right to see these people placed on trial and to see and hear the evidence the government has linking them to the crime and to see and hear any evidence that the defendants might have that could prove them innocent or implicate others in the attacks.

I feel our government is not being entirely honest with us and that most Americans are happy to brake our own founding principal that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

We have litterally bankrupted our great nation fighting this war on terror and presuming that we are doing so correctly yet the reality is we don't know. Justice has not had its day.

The trials which were about to move forward finally have been stopped at President Obama's orders, even though he is giving himself and the Government a year to decide where to house the detainees instead.

I find it very disturbing and suspicious that for 7 years under President Bush these men were not brought to public trial and one of President Obama's first acts was to make sure they will not come to trial for another year.

I feel the government is hiding something by not housing these detainees in our own Federal Prison system. No one has ever exscaped from one of the new super max penitaries and those men should have all been brought here in the first place and given access to American Lawyers from day one.

Americans have a right to know the truth about the September 11th attacks and all I see is yet another President and Administration deliberately hiding the defendants and the evidence from us in a crime where no one has yet to be charged and no evidence has yet to be presented except in the media.

This in itself is a crime against us the American people who are being made to foot the bill for the war on terrorism in money and lives of our fine young men and women all based on the court of public oppinion for a crime so serious that it should have long ago been settled in a Court of Law.

As I have said for many months now. Barrack Obama is four more years of George Bush.

Very interesting. I heard a retired general speaking about this. His feeling about moving these detainees within the borders of the USA poses a security problem. All terrorists need is the fact that these bumbs are near cities and you can figure out the rest.

Something that's being forgotten is, Guantanomo is staying open as far as I've heard, it's Gitmo that's being closed.

As far as these individuals recieving a "fair" trial, it has been argued that these are POW's, not subject (nor deserving) of our Constitutional guaruntee's.  While it's possible that there are at least some who have not comitted a crime against the US, there are many who have, including some of Sadam's henchmen and those who belong to Al Queda.

It was the terrorists that began the war on terror with the attacks on 9/11 of '01, and it is those same terrorists, with help from Iran that continue to plague our troops in Iraq.  The thought of those associated with them who are currently being held in Gitmo receiving our rights, and at taxpayer expense, is repulsive.

You don't trust the government, fine, don't.  But don't give the scumbags the benefits of our society, when it is that same society that they are trying to destroy.  I think we should be benevolent when possible and practicle, but these thoughts promoted are neither.

T

Monique926,

I think he was concerned that operating a prison outside the country gave the appearance,if not in fact of circumventing the Constitution and therefore the undermining of the rule of law.

I for one never understood the Bush administrations need for a prison in Cuba nor the designation of "enemy combatants".Unless he and like minded people believed our national laws were inhibiting our defense. That is very possible.

My understanding of POWs in the conventional sense was that if they were captured they could be incarcerated until the end of the war without lawyers or the application of civilian law.

The only thing that would have applied to POWs was the Geneva Convention which outlaws torture and designated waterboarding as "torture". That may have influenced Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney in that they may have felt the immanent threat after 9/11 required extraordinary interrogation techniques, like torture.

the bruce