How to Close Guantanamo

For those who want to know how, here is one plan to do so:

" Phase One: Immediately change the dynamic at Guantánamo by announcing a hard 18-month timetable to close the prison, and for the remainder of its existence, making it as transparent as possible. These are meaningful actions that signal real change from the Bush administration, yet allow appropriate time to work through all the challenges of getting the Guantánamo population down to zero.

Phase Two: Bring a small number of detainees into the United States to stand trial in regular federal or military courts. Scrapping the flawed Military Commissions and rejecting any effort to establish National Security Courts in favor of established U.S. courts will get trials moving faster and is a major step to restore confidence in the legitimacy of America’s actions.

Phase Three: Create a resettlement and rehabilitation program in partnership with allied countries and international organizations to find homes for detainees that can’t be returned to their home countries and to smooth the re-integration of detainees into society. This program should be based on similar programs currently used by the U.S. military in Iraq and the Saudi Arabian government to assist in the transition of militants from detention to release.

Phase Four: After U.S. courts demonstrate their effectiveness and legitimacy, transfer those remaining detainees selected to stand trial into the United States. These detainees should be held at either the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, also known as the “Supermax,” at Florence, Colorado, or at the U.S. Military Detention Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, depending on whether they are slated for trial in federal or military courts.

Phase Five: Some detainees will remain at Guantánamo who are not candidates for trial, but who were captured during military operations in Afghanistan and may represent a threat to coalition forces still fighting in that country if they are released. Transfer this group back to Afghanistan and hold them in a NATO-controlled detention program along with prisoners captured by coalition forces during ongoing military operations.

This program can reduce the population of Guantánamo to zero within 18 months, but problems could arise in one or more of the steps, and the next administration should be prepared for the only two choices available for any remaining detainees: create a preventive detention regime and hold them indefinitely in the United States, or release them.

Choosing the preventive detention route would mean falling at the last hurdle in the long effort to eradicate the festering sore of Guantánamo. Any move to release even what is likely to be only a handful of detainees carries some genuine security threat and will be politically difficult, but it is an acceptable level of risk when measured against the significant strategic gains of the permanent closure of Guantánamo. "

- rest at www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/guantanamo.html