Well, This Complicates Things...

The New York Times reports that Said Ali al-Shihri, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee that was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007, has become al-Qaeda's head honcho on Yemen. Yikes. Maybe the closing of Gitmo really isn't going to be as simple as most of us want it to be. There are some undeniably bad people down there, people that are our enemies and that should be either put in prison or otherwise neutralized.

So Bush/Cheney was right about one thing - we are being threatened by nasty, potentially unreformable people. But by torturing the detainees and leaving them in legal limbo, Bush/Cheney jeopardized the very thing that they were trying to protect: our safety. As more Guantanamo and other secret prison torture cases come to light and more of them are thrown out of court, like this one, you have the potential that really dangerous guys get put out on the street and end up as al-Qaeda commanders.

Now that Obama wants to close Guantanamo, the thorny question of what to do with these prisoners becomes a real problem. The Bush administration refused to deal with the question, as it refused to deal with all other questions, and was happy to hold the men indefinitely. It's not going to be that easy for Obama. Do you let these guys out on the street and cross your fingers that they don't become terrorists? Do you try them in civilian court and risk losing? What if you "know" that someone is a terrorist but, due to torture or other evidence problems, you can't "prove" it. Then what?

These are tough questions and they make me glad that I'm not in Obama's shoes right now.