Editorial: Make good on promise to close Guantánamo prison
One of Guantanamo Bay's two courthouses is seen through a broken window in Camp Justice at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, Friday, Aug. 23, 2013. Credit: AP Photo Michelle Shephard
President Barack Obama will try again to make good on a moldy promise to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba as soon as he figures out what to do with the 46 detainees considered too dangerous to release, but impossible to put on trial.
The 166 men at Gitmo were captured as suspected terrorists, but have been locked up for a decade without trials. More than 80 are on a hunger strike, and some of them have been strapped into chairs and force-fed through tubes in their noses. Congress nixed bringing detainees to the United States and made it practically impossible to transfer any to other nations.
Those detainees judged no longer a threat must be released. And Obama must end the unconscionable imprisonment of the dangerous but untriable. We were once above locking people up for life without trial; the nation must regain that moral high ground.
