According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is planning to “launch a review of the classified files of the approximately 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately after taking office, as part of an intensive effort to close the U.S. prison in Cuba.” Obama hopes to close GITMO quickly but, like so many of his other promises, reality will pose a problem. WaPo continues: “But the advisers, as well as outside national security and legal experts, said the new administration will face a thicket of legal, diplomatic, political and logistical …
The Pentagon’s decision to charge six Guantanamo Bay detainees with murder and war crimes for the 9/11 attacks is definitely unprecedented, but no less so then the situation the United States faced after repeated attack by al-Qaeda. Never before had the U.S. faced prolonged and coordinated conflict with a non-state actor. Since the existing legal framework for the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions, only applied to state actors, any action the U.S. took in regards to treatment of al-Qaeda prisoners would have set new precedent. To help guide those …
