Gitmo and how to fix the mess

Gitmo is a mess. We have held prisoners at Guantanamo for many years without trial, admitting that almost all are innocent of any crime but don’t know what to do with them.

President Obama has resolved the problem with catching more and more people in the Middle East and sending them to Gitmo. He now drones them all, resolving the housing issue and ongoing expenses of dealing with new prisoners. This is how his “brought to justice” statements actually manifests.

The recent Gitmo prisoner hunger strikes was newsworthy as it illustrated the plight of almost all of the remaining men at Gitmo. We won’t release most of these 165 men to their home countries as allegedly “they don’t want them.” From our perspective, they are an enormous expense to the taxpayer and an international embarrassment. That expense is over $800,000 a year for each prisoner! That’s about $2,200 a day for each.

Here’s what we should do. For the vast majority of the prisoners who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, we give each some money (even $100,000 is cheap compared to keeping them) and secretly release them inside of their home countries. While our government claims that they don’t want them, sufficient bribes (similar to what we are openly doing in Afghanistan) will change the officials minds. If not, we just use our military to release them inside the countries anyway.

As our government has little or no respect for sovereign borders, it won’t make any difference to their opinion of us.

For the few prisoners left who we believe have committed crimes, and even though the Senate has “blocked” transfer, President Obama could order them secretly flown to New York. It’s called a fait-accompli. They can be tried in a court and sent to SuperMax in Colorado when convicted.

As President Obama cannot be reelected, he can do what he wants. His repeated claims to close down Gitmo can become a reality if he has any sense and nerve. Does he?