老澳门开奖结果

A bad idea doesn鈥檛 somehow become a good idea just because five years have gone by. But the Obama White House and Sen. John McCain seem ready to recycle a proposal that was overwhelmingly rejected in 2010.

President Obama his commitment to closing Guant谩namo before he leaves office, and McCain (R-Ariz.) said he might be able to support closure. However, there has always been a right way and a wrong way to close Guant谩namo. The restrictions the Senate , along with the floated by the White House to move some detainees to the United States for indefinite detention without charge or trial, is the wrong way.

Guant谩namo has never been just about the prison. Instead, Guant谩namo has been about our government violating the rule of law and ducking American values. From torture and abuse during the Bush administration to indefinite detention and defective military commissions extending through the Bush and Obama administrations, Guant谩namo has been a place where our government behaves like a human rights pariah instead of a human rights beacon.

The solution can never be to simply pack up both the detainees and bad policies at Guant谩namo and ship them to some new prison here in the United States. No. The only meaningful solution is to close Guant谩namo by ending indefinite detention without charge or trial, transferring the detainees who have been cleared for transfer, and trying detainees for whom there is evidence of wrongdoing in our federal criminal courts in the U.S., which regularly try terrorism suspects, including high-profile ones.

But instead of doing the hard work of closing Guant谩namo the right way, the Obama White House is reportedly dusting off the same plan that Congress overwhelmingly rejected in 2010. The 鈥減lan鈥� would involve transferring overseas all cleared detainees (an excellent idea, but one that actually needs to be completed now, not when this 鈥減lan鈥� goes into effect), but then setting up prisons in the U.S. to continue the indefinite detention of men who have been imprisoned for more than a decade without ever being charged with any crime. Other detainees would be put on trial 鈥� but some of them would be tried before the same unfair military commissions used at Guant谩namo. The result would be moving Guantanamo, not closing it.

McCain has a hand in it too. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he sponsored the Senate鈥檚 National Defense Authorization Act, which would allow indefinite detention and military commissions to be brought to the U.S. as part of closing Guant谩namo 鈥� but only if both houses of Congress approve the president鈥檚 plan. Of course, anything requiring both houses of Congress to approve almost anything from the president is a political non-starter. But this provision is still being sold as a step towards closing Guant谩namo.

A particularly bizarre bit of news about the White House plan this week came in a that said that the White House was considering setting up a nearly empty prison in Thomson, Illinois, as a site for indefinite detention of Guant谩namo detainees. This exact same plan, with the exact same prison in Illinois, was by a House vote of 353-69 in 2010. Then Attorney General Eric Holder later that the Thomson prison would never be used for that purpose.

The 老澳门开奖结果 said back in 2009 that shipping indefinite detention north was the wrong way to close Guant谩namo, and it still is the wrong way to close Guant谩namo. Bad ideas don鈥檛 get better by just sitting on the shelf. It鈥檚 time to close Guant谩namo the right way, by charging in federal court any detainee who can be charged and ending indefinite detention for everyone else. If a prosecutor can鈥檛 put together a case against someone who has been sitting in prison for as long as 13 years, there is no reason that person should continue to sit in prison, whether in Guant谩namo or someplace else.

Let鈥檚 close it the right way.