During his speech, the president made an important point to keep in mind as the "debate" over what to do with Gitmo detainees unfolds: Holding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay was never about "safety". As the president said, "part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law." The point wasn't that U.S. prison facilities were incapable of holding dangerous people -- we know they are capable because we've held them there before, and we continue to do so. The original point of Gitmo was to put terrorist suspects in a location beyond the reach of U.S. law, so they couldn't take advantage of constitutional protections. We know this because after the Boumediene decision, the Bush administration began to transfer detainees out of Gitmo to Bagram. Why? Had Gitmo suddenly become less secure? No -- the Supreme Court had just ruled that holding terrorists offshore didn't mean the Bush administration could simply ignore the law. They were specifically talking about Gitmo however, and it wasn't until recently that a judge ruled, on the basis of Boumediene, that detainees at Bagram who were captured in third countries and transferred there had the same rights. The opposition to closing Gitmo is about, it's not about safety or security. It's about politics. -- A. Serwer
