"Sin is a suppurating wound; punishment is the surgeon's knife."
The Bush Administration prisoner, torture and rendition apparatus was effectively dismantled today with four pen strokes. President Obama convened a panel to determine how to closure the Guantanamo Bay detainee prison within a year. He ordered that all intelligence gatherers limit their interrogation techniques to the published Army Field Manual, revoking Executive Order 13440, the now infamous Bush administration gloss on the Geneva Conventions. He directed the Justice Department to request a stay in a critical policy-determining court case. He explicitly rejects the legal advice promulgated by President Bush's legal counsel on interrogation policy. He ordered the government to give the International Committee of the Red Cross immediate access to detainees. Renditions to countries that are known to torture prisoners will be stopped. All CIA "black" detention facilities will be closed. Now -- even as he limited interrogation techniques -- the result of a recommendation from his transition advisers -- he's convening a task force to determine whether these techniques are too restrictive. The intelligence community worries that smart armies will train their soldiers to resist AFM techniques. Basically, Obama's stance is: the AFM will govern intelligence interrogations unless we decide that it won't. It's not entirely clear what the administration wants to do with those held in Gitmo. The GOP introduced legislation today prohibiting detainees from being released into the United States. Previously, Obama advisers have said that when they establish an orderly, public process to determine these prisoners' status, it will buy goodwill with allies who will be pressured to accept their citizens. Fewer than 100 detainees are already designated for repatriation, but many of their home countries -- say, Egypt, Jordan -- aren't known for not tortuting, and other countries don't want to take citizens of other countries. A large number of present detainees will be prosecuted by the military; the Obama administration wants to review and modify the process. What happens when -- if -- there is evidence that these detainees are dangerous but not enough to convict them of a crime -- is unknown. As to the most dangerous detainees, policy is undetermined at this point. They will continue to be detained, and their status won't change. (Republicans ask: what happens when and if Usama Bin Laden is captured? During his campaign, Obama said he'd put UBL on trial in criminal court.) For insight into the perplexities here, check out this interview with Bruce Riedel, a top Al Qaeda observer and Obama adviser, in Der Spiegel; he's asked about which group of prisoners will be the most difficult to release:
The Yemenis. They are the largest group among the remaining detainees. According to the US military, which is holding them, there are now 248 prisoners: 27 of them are al-Qaida leadership cadre; 99 are lower level al-Qaida operatives. A big chunk of those are Yemenis. They cannot go back to Yemen because Yemen can't be trusted to keep dangerous prisoners from rejoining the global jihad. What is left in Guantanamo is the hard core; the easy cases are long gone. Another difficult problem are the Chinese. They cannot go home because China cannot be trusted when it comes to human rights and abuse.
There are Uighur Chinese prisoners in Gitmo.... and China has warned just about every developed country in the world from accepting them.
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