Aides: Obama to Close Guantanamo Via Executive Order

Even after acknowledging this weekend that closing Guantanamo Bay is "more difficult, I think, than a lot of people realize," some aides to Barack Obama are now saying the president-elect plans on trying to close it practically the second he takes office via executive order. Although even Obama realizes it's unlikely to actually happen within his first 100 days in office.

From AP:

"But the order, which one adviser said could be issued as early as Jan. 20, would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held there. Most have not been charged with a crime.

The Guantanamo directive would be one of a series of executive orders Obama is planning to issue shortly after he takes office next Tuesday, according to the two advisers. Also expected is an executive order about certain interrogation methods, but details were not immediately available Monday.

The story has also been confirmed by ABC and CNN.

It seems like Obama is hoping that those nations who have thus far refused to take their own countrymen back, will have a change of heart once he takes office and they no longer have to deal with President Bush. I'm wondering if that will actually happen. They'll still have to take responsibility for their own citizens. Was leaving them here with us some sort of punishment to teach Bush a lesson?

It doesn't exactly seem like we wanted them here just because we took a liking to them.

"When it came for some of those countries to take some of those detainees, they weren't willing to help out," Bush said during his press conference today. A New Zealand human rights group jumped on the bandwagon today of groups calling for the prison to close. The group collected over 200 signatures - on orange jumpsuits - and messages of support for the proposed closure and sent them to Obama. Amnesty International not only wants it closed, but they're also urging other countries to offer humanitarian protection to detainees who cannot be returned to their countries of origin for fear of torture or other human rights violations. (They left out, those detainees whose home countries won't give them the time of day.) Amnesty says countries including Germany and Portugal have voiced support for the idea of accepting detainees in the EU.

"We are going to get it done but part of the challenge you have is of course there are very dangerous people penned up at the facility who haven't had a trial or other legal proceeding," Obama said Sunday. There's evidence against them but it may be tainted somehow - even though it's true.

"How to balance creating a process that adheres to the rule of law, habeous corpus, basic principles of [the] Anglo-American legal system - but doing it in a way that doesn't end up releasing people" who are better off rotting in a cell (i.e. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his ilk), he continued. "It's gonna take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak."

Just to play devil's advocate and poke holes in the options put forth so far ... some lawmakers have discussed putting the prisoners instead at various military facilities. Any takers? Anybody?

At least one senator, Sam Brownback, Kan., has essentially said "Why in Kansas?!"

This would be the beginning of the NIMBYs - the "not on my backyard" excuses - that we no doubt will hear a lot more of. After all, it's sort of akin to trying to curry favor for setting up a nuclear waste dump somewhere - i.e. Yucca Mountain - and look how well that's worked out, and how long that took.

But then Brownback suggested that if Gitmo has to be closed, another should be built to specifically handle detainees.

Right. So we should spend millions of dollars on building another prison when there's a functional one - already far from mainland USA?

Anyone have any better ideas? I hope Obama's team has come up with some creative shuffling to effectively deal with them if he's announcing the camp's shuttering so quickly.

Here's video of some guys starting a nine-day fast to be in "solidarity" with Gitmo detainees and to also "suffer" a bit.