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Gates admits rift over Guantánamo
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Updated: 3:12 a.m. ET Oct 2, 2007
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.


Robert Gates, US defence secretary, recently did something that Bush administration cabinet officials rarely do. He aired an inter-agency dispute in public by conceding that he had yet to overcome opposition to closing the controversial US prison at Guantánamo Bay.

When Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, asked Mr Gates - who in March advocated closing Guantánamo - why the Pentagon had not presented Congress with a plan to close the Cuba-based detention facility, the defence secretary was candid. "I would say that I was unable to achieve agreement within the executive branch on how to proceed in this respect," Mr Gates responded. "Quite frankly, I've run into some obstacles from a variety of lawyers and I'm still trying to get past that."

Some officials were surprised that Mr Gates would "show so much leg" in public. It was widely assumed that he was referring to justice department attorneys and David Addington, chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, who opposes closing Guantánamo.

The debate over Guantánamo has intensified since Mr Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in December. Along with Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, Mr Gates believes closing the prison would help repair some of the damage it has done to the US image around the world. But he faces opposition from some quarters as officials battle over the options that Stephen Hadley, national security adviser, is preparing for George W. Bush, who himself in June 2006 expressed a desire to close Guantánamo.

The Pentagon plans to bring 80 of the 330 detainees at Guantánamo before military commissions, but legal challenges have hampered the trials from proceeding. While 70 detainees have been slated for release, the Pentagon has had difficulty repatriating them, sometimes because of concern they would be tortured in their home countries and at other times because the home countries will not accept them. One of the biggest challenges is posed by detainees who are considered too dangerous for release, but where there is insufficient evidence for trial.

Most experts assume that the only way the US could close Guantánamo in the near future was by transferring many of the detainees to the US, a process fraught with political and legal issues.
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While the administration continues to consider its options, it is trying to reduce the population at Guantánamo by repatriating as many detainees as possible. US officials hope that European Union countries that have criticised the facility will do more to help. "European governments privately acknowledge that there are many dangerous individuals in Guantánamo who they don't want to see walking free," said one senior US official.

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Jennifer Daskal, Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, says that, while the US has created the problem, the international community "could go a long way towards helping Washington by coupling its calls for closure of Guantánamo with concrete actions like a willingness to accept some of the Uighurs or other detainees who cannot be returned to their home countries but are cleared for release".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21087330/
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ugh what a mess. Shoulda just stored these mujuhafooks in some third world hole to begin with. By keeping them off US property, the US govt would have had plausible deniability.