You can the terrorists out of Guantanamo...

You realise that virtually no-one would realistically suggest that you are going to change the mind of someone who is already prepared to blow themselves up by closing Gitmo? That's not the point. This kind of hearts and minds stuff is aimed at the large periphery of people around the world who are capable of either helping or at least not hindering the hardcore of nutcases who simply have to be killed or imprisoned.

And it is this kind of hearts and minds stuff that has eventually helped to end many many conflicts. Whether it will work in this case is, of course, unclear.

^ What he said.

I'm not sure I follow this: corruption? In what sense?

First of all, I would disagree with it merely being a PR move. We should do it because it's the right thing to do, regardless of the PR value.

But confining the discussion to the PR value, it's not just aimed at actual terrorists or allies in Europe.

It's also aimed at the vast Muslim population that is in the middle.

Let's say 10 percent of Muslims are either hardcore terrorists or sympathizers, and about 10 percent are progressive, pro-Westerners who would renounce violence. There's still 80 percent of the population that could be swayed to believe us Westerners that we are just defending ourselves, that we're not looking for a crusade or to take their oil, that we stand for democracy, human rights, open-mindedness, etc. Or they can believe that we are hypocrites who want to go to war with Muslims, who mistreat our prisoners, etc.

The more we open ourselves to providing evidence of the latter, the worse it is for us. Things like Gitmo get used as a recruiting tool by terrorists, and in that sense should be eliminated or minimalized.

^But we're still going to be holding them without trials just in a different less secure less safe place. Do you really think this vast hypothetical Middle Muslim population is stupid enough to fall for that?

I don't know if they have fully established the details of how they are going to be held.

The Supreme Court, as I understand it, has said that anyone held will have to have a meaningful chance to challenge their detention. Whether the Obama administration will continue the Bush approach of disputing that or dragging feet on implementing it is unclear.

If it is a question of just relocating where we are going to be waterboarding and using other "enhanced interrogation techniques," then the move doesn't make sense.

My understanding, though, is by relocating the facility here in the States the government is losing arguments about how it is free to treat these prisoners that way.

^ Obama himself has said some of these people will need to be held long term without trials. Bringing them here to try and give them rights has no basis in US law and is stupid to boot. What about the fact that there are different rules of evidence for civilian US crime and enemy combatants is hard to understand.

What most of you miss is how these terror organizations work. To us here they are terrorists, plain and simple. However, most of what they do in the Middle East is social support. They fund schools, hospitals, food etc. Thus they ensure themselves of mass popular support. Even the so called moderate Muslims support them as they are their primary life support in corrupt countries. In the end, closing Gitmo or any other PR stunt is not going to trump the money these guys give away to buy public support. It's a waste of time and a danger to even try it.

I think that most people in the US really believe that after this past terror attack closing Gitmo is a mistake. I think the issue now is Barry's ego and he won't admit he made a mistake and change course. He never does.

Given that until something is done about Israel and Palestine, nothing the US will do - short of nuking Tel Aviv and endorsing a modern Caliphate - is going to sway the angry sections of Islam, hearts and minds is a pointless ploy.

Even then the US makes for an easy target to hate for political reasons.

I've said before, fundie Islam and western society are two expansionist groups with little common ground. One will eventually dominate the other, and on purely selfish grounds I'd rather like that to be western society.

Traditional wars are all about jockeying for advantage for when everyone gets bored of burying people and give negotiations a try, this is more to do with fundamental differences in ideology.

But how many of those people will be held, what sort of hearings they are entitled to, how they will be treated while being held and so forth are all very much in the air.

Like I said, my understanding is at a minimum, the Supreme Court says that a detainee has the right to challenge the status under which the government would hold them indefinitely without trial. That's more than they've traditionally had at Gitmo.

It might be stupid, but the Supreme Court says they have some rights.

It's not hard to understand that the government wants there to be different rules of evidence. There's not much reason why most cases couldn't be tried under the same rules of evidence or similar rules of evidence, other than "We want to torture people and no real court will admit evidence obtained by torture."

If it's a matter of money, I daresay we have more than any given terrorist organization.

Even if we couldn't match them on that front, there's no reason to make their job easier by torturing people, including some who are innocent, and by having suspicious deaths in custody.

Assuming you're correct for argument's sake, the notion that most people believe it a mistake doesn't make it any more true that is an actual mistake.

He changes course all the time, just like any other politician. Obama the candidate was opposed to holding people indefinitely without trial, for instance. Obama the president has a scheme of indefinite detention.

You do understand that people on the battlefield cannot and are not read their Miranda Rights? You do understand they are interrogated without lawyers? You do understand that are held beyond 48 hours without being charged?

Any defense lawyer with an internet law degree should be able to get these guys out of civilian court in 15 minutes. If these laws are not upheld by the US courts, that is even worse and means that rule of law means nothing.

How EXACTLY can that work when the ME gets it's news from Al-Jazeera. AJ basicly trumpets the message of the terrorists. So no matter how well we treat POWs, the middle of the road muslims are still being told daily by AJ and radical clerics that we're Satan and that Bin Laden and the Jihadis are the righteous defenders of Islam. So if there's no other reason besides "PR", I think it's a stupid move. It gains us nothing, and it might hurt intelligence gathering and open up the mistreatment lawsuits. If our federal inmates can clog up the system complaining about bad prison meatloaf, imagine what you'd get from jihadis suing from prison.

Not to mention that there would be more places to escape to in Illinois than in Gitmo, and that if there are any inside guys living in the states, they'll be able to get messages back and forth, possibly weapons and intelligence. There will be the cost of trials and so on.

So we've made things worse to give us "PR" that the people the "PR" is aimed at will never see at the cost of intelligence, the enemy being able to pass messages and possibly weapons, and costing 1,000,000x more to house them. Not to mention the greater possiblility of escape. Yes, fecking brilliant. I think with this approach they'll have a fireworks display for us -- inside an airplane.

No court has held that people caught on the battlefield need to be read their Miranda rights, or that they must be interrogated with lawyers, or that they have to be charged within a certain amount of time.

There's a huge range of possibilities between saying that people accused of being terrorists are entitled to every single right that a standard criminal defendant is on the one hand and that they are entitled to no rights whatsoever.

I believe, and the Supreme Court has held, that such people should have at a minimum the right to challenge their detention.

Whether they are entitled to full-blown trials in civilian courts in all cases, or some cases, or what is not as clearcut.

On what basis?

If it's so easy, why hasn't it happened in all the cases in which we have tried suspected terrorists in civilian courts? Some we lost, some we won, but it never was something where the defendant managed to get things kicked out of court just like that. (At least, not as far as I know of).

I think you misunderstand how the law works and evolves. Cases get brought and judges rule, based on statutes, precedent and so forth as applied to particular circumstances.

No judge has ruled in depth about how the law would apply to terrorist suspects tried in civilian courts. Assuming judges ruled that the law doesn't apply fully to them, that doesn't implicate how the law applies to the rest of us.

First of all AJ isn't the only news source for the ME. There's Voice of America, the Internet, etc.

Second, I don't think AJ is that in the pocket of the terrorists.

Sure, call me naive. But at least glancing at the front page of its English edition, I don't see any headlines or stories that scream "Death to the West!"

http://english.aljazeera.net/

Third, even if AJ were just a propaganda tool, it would be better to not hand them ready-made propaganda about how we torture people.

As I said, there is the reason that it's the right thing to do.

There's no reason to think that security in Illinois will be substantially more lax than security in Gitmo was. Sure, any prison can be escaped from. But we're talking about the difference between, say, a .006 percent chance of escape from Gitmo and a .1 percent chance of escape.

There's the chance that having the prison here will cause those inside guys to expose themselves, and the cost of trials (assuming that these people are entitled to them) is something that was going to have to be borne anyway.

Let's be real: the cost of housing people in the U.S. isn't going to be substantially higher. The chance of getting weapons to people in this prison isn't going to be substantial.

There's some possibility that a bonafide terrorist could transmit information from inside to an outsider, but careful screening would limit that possibility. And that possibility exists if the prison is in Cuba or wherever.

^Are you suggesting that US Federal Courts operate without upholding US laws??? The only terrorists we've tried in civilian court have either been arrested in the US or taken into custody by law enforcement agents such as the FBI. On what basis do you claim US courts can operate outside of US law?

As to why they have not been let off? Simply cases such as these have never reached court before. I will bet motions to dismiss on these bases will be among the first motions filed in NY. It will be very interesting to see what if any legal grounds the gov't will against these motions. If the judge follows the law and dismisses the cases what then???