The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

This Sunday Barack Obama repeated his promise to close Guantanamo. Since the media is still coddling their favorite son, CBS’s Steve Kroft did not bother to ask how. As Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Charles Stimson tells the Christian Science Monitor, it is the how that is the hard part:

“It is easy to criticize. It is much harder to lead when you are accountable for the security of the country,” says Charles “Cully” Stimson, who served as deputy assistant Defense secretary for detainee affairs in the Bush administration.

Mr. Stimson says he has personally reviewed every Guantanamo detainee file several times. “The incoming administration will see that there are some very dangerous people [at Guantanamo] who were appropriately detained and need to continue to be out of circulation in the world terrorism market,” he says. “What you do with them is the $100,000 question.”

Stimson says, “Certainly there are a number of them who could be tried in federal district court, and that should happen. Others probably are better suited for a national -security court.” He adds, “There are a very small number that may be appropriate for a preventative detention regime – a baker’s dozen or less.”