There are ways to prosecute regardless of torture. Confessions given by prisonners while under duress should be excluded. However any independant proof obtained following such confessions should be accepted by the courts.

In any event the former administration's methods were unamerican and fascist and Obama is right to put an immediate stop to torture and unfair prosecution.

Hi, Closing Guantanamo is right, but the "prisoners" must stand trial , to serve time if guilty or excuses and paying them dammage for the "mistake".

We've dropped charges and released people before. Like William Ayers for example.

"The government dropped the case after the Nixon administration’s “illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions,” were exposed, he said."

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/13/nation/na-ayers13

I just don't understand why we tortured these men when according to all voices in the Bush administration they where the worst of the worst. We must have had reams of evidence proving this right? They where there for months, no Jack Bauer ticking timebomb.

Of course if in the course of transporting the detainees... The airplane crashed or the boat sank – no trial would be required – just a funeral with full honors etc... And naturally the offshoot of this for the terrorists is an express 1st class ticket to 'paradise'...

my opinion is not important. But if the detanies are so inicent how are their 1 million more pepole that have not been wrongfully acused? They are not just out walking the dog when they are acused. This war law that we have as canadins and U.S milatary why are we the only pepole that listen to it? I also am wondering how a roade side car bom fits into this law? But if we get answers out of prisoners that may save our own soldiers we are not in the write. They are thier trying to stop the escalading terrists movement. So i think if you say shut down Guantanamo Bay you should join the army send someones family member home and jump on in and see what is rilly going on and over thir.

a very admirable act by Obama. Gitmo should be closed immediately. This is almost like a modern day holocaust runs by US army! guilty or not, people being tortured must be stopped.no one deserves to be tortured. by so doing, US is just giving birth to new terrorists, and a very very angry terrorists...God bless Obama, may he continue to do good for the world.

The detainees of GUANTANAMO are POW's.
They should be treated like "exchange students" for the rest of their time stuck in that hellhole and given 24 hour free internet access, teachers, psychological help, good food, nice pillows, and a chance to reconstruct their lives. Some kind of international humanitarian aid should be organised for POW's, and in the stop-gap, some of that multi-billion dollar bail-out could certainly take care of 250 prisoners, especially if it could create some new jobs at the same time. Anybody who got a piece of the Halliburton pie over the last few years should volunteer some time to pitch in.

Companies (& individuals) who earn profits from anything related to war should have a special humanitarian tax, because they are profiting from the leathal mistakes as well as the brilliant strategies for peace.

Just like death and taxes, you can count on people screwing up during wartime on both sides, and so far, we do pathetically little to amend the collateral damage. We hardly take care of our heros, our own wounded soldiers get dumped in the gutter.

Anyone who was held at GUANTANAMO should have long term free access to education through cyber-universities set up around the world to try and undo the harm that desparation caused in the first place. If we built and funded some decent hospices for POW of international disputes, we might end up establishing better understanding and communication. It's all fine and dandy to spend millions on war tribunals, but where are the millions to help out the surviving victims? Tribunals favour the advocates and the criminals by keeping them in good health til they can be executed. If hard choices must be made, it is time to favour the ordinary people, often innocent, who get stuck in the middle and are the only ones footing the bill for our calculated gambles.

I believe that President Obama understands that the rule of law must govern how we deal with detaines not only for moral reasons, but because Gitmo and places like it has been used by our enemies as
justification inflict atrocities against American military personnel, American contractors and other civilians as well as any and all current
and potential allies and to recruit new terrorists. Given all of this, we do
have the luxury of extracting information from detainees by any means possible and not thinking about how this might impact all the people who
are supporting us in the region. Hundreds of Americans and Thousands
of allies have already died because we were not thinking ahead on this and other issues concerning Iraq and Afghanistan.

Come on! This is a ridicules topic! What does anyone seriously think tha t the President would just say ..." Hay will set you free!1! – Come on down and try again" Well?? This is not "Rocket Science"! Like most criminals
they will be evaluated and go to the prison appropriate for there crimes!!

The question " how do you prosecute terror suspects within the American legal system?" cannot answered within the context of the detainees at GITMO. The administration of justice has been thrown into serious disrepute at GITMO. The standard remedy in civilized countries is to drop the charges at once and set the suspects free. Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to stop the rights violations and then they want to carry on with the charges as if nothing had happened.
Those who "care for the rule of law" know it doesn't work that way, from a moral and legal perspective.
Your next question, how do you keep someone locked up without a conviction or, the suggestion is, without a trial, is simply appalling in its implications.
Marnie Tunay http://fakirscanada.googlepages.com/

given this story in today's NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/middleeast/23yemen.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

and other stories that have come out about similar people going back to fight in Afghanistan, in some cases, they clearly have got the tiger by the tail. Still, this doesn't answer the question of what to do with them if they have been tortured or the only evidence against them was obtained by torture which is consequently inadmissable in a court of law. One option is to extradite them to somewhere like France I suppose where "association with terrorists" is a prosecutable crime – kind of like what the Germans did with Christian Ganczarski.

I don't understand why we'd close down this prison. If someone commits a crime in the US, you are prosecuted in the US under our laws. If you start a war or are in prison for war crimes, you would/should fall under a different jurisdiction (doesn't have to be US Military, could be France for example). If you commit both (like 9/11 for example) you should have two trials.

Now, being tortured into a confession is totally wrong. So, does the prison need shut down? No, but the system/process needs revamped.

However if you have enough association to be put in Gitmo anyway, then, um, hmmmm. Should you really be set loose back into the world? If you think so, then maybe they should live next door to you for awhile. Just like a serial killer, when they get released from prison, do you want them moving next door to you and your kids? I didn't think so.

The torturing is wrong. So is suicide bombing, plane hijacking, embassy bombing, World Trade Center bombing etc. If we torture someone into confession that is innocent, we still don't move forward in the process anyway, so what is the point? Releasing terrorists back into the world though?!?!?!?!?!? C'mon!

The problem lies with our new president who will, most likely, take actions that improve our world opinion (which stinks right now) versus make our nation more secure.

The funniest part is on One side pakistan fighting for terrorism although not a great amount, and thereby getting funds and other favours from western countries, on the other side pakistan is sponsoring terrorism, not by curbing hate preaching imams and hard core islamists there by sowing the seeds of hatred among generations of pakistani youths and childern. Doing so pakistan can make sure they are getting enoguh funds and flowing it uninterruptedly in the name sake of fighting for terrorism.

Obama should assess pakstans’ role in this context.

If there remains a belief that some of the Gitmo detainees are indeed deserving of further prosecution, would it be possible to use, for instance, existing domestic hate laws to prosecute? Are the penalties severe enough under those laws to match the offenses, if a person is convicted under them?

There's talk of the possibility of creating a new legal set-up for Gitmo detainees deemed prosecutable. However, what implications does this have for our legal principle of not allowing ex post facto prosecution, i.e., if something was not already an offense at the time it was done, we can't use a later law to go after those offenders. Is there a legal - and, more importantly, moral - way to work this out?

I don't pretend to know the answers. Like anyone else, I don't want to see a person released from Gitmo to then show up somewhere or the other engaging in violence against us (or our allies). On the other hand, neither do I want to see us lowering ourselves to the level of jungle savagery of terrorists - though I recognize a great many Americans are supportive of doing exactly that.

Perhaps the closest comparison to Gitmo is to the internment camps we set up for Japanese, on American soil, during WWII, even multi-generational Americans who happened to be of Japanese descent. Most of us today are at the very least embarrassed by that dark episode in history, especially since we didn't do the same to Americans of German and Italian heritage.

I do have a specific suggestion regarding the dismissal of evidence obtained by the newly-banned interrogation techniques such as water-boarding: interrogate the prisoners again, within the new guidelines, in a transparent way. There are dangers with that approach as well, I know.

I live abroad, and the locals have often asked me how my country could have ever gotten into this mess in the first place. My response, of necessity, is silence, since I don't know.

There are two separate issues here. One is whether the Guantanamo Prison and torture interrogation center should remain open. The answer to that is clearly NO. Close the thing. That and Abu Garaib (we all surely remember that) has done more damage to America than its occupants did. Its existence is multiplying the hatred for America all over the world. Those who used to hate us now hate us a lot more. Those who used to like us now like us a lot less. Americans set a high standard for dealing with war crimes after WWII under Truman's leadership. All that prestige is now gone.

The second issue is what to do with these men when the prison is closed. I say, bring them here to the USA, put them in a high security federal detention facility and try them. I, for one, do not believe anything the Bush Administration has said about them. We don't know who is incarcerated at Guantanamo and we don't know why. All we know is what the Bush Administration has said, and that is not a credible source.

Please do not threaten the moderator.

worry about political correctness after the war. prisoners of war don't deserve the same rights as american citizens. period.

cmon ppl. its war............MikeC is rite he said

Of course if in the course of transporting the detainees… The airplane crashed or the boat sank – no trial would be required – just a funeral with full honors etc… And naturally the offshoot of this for the terrorists is an express 1st class ticket to ‘paradise’
get over it .....

makes me sad to read that we are still not sure, if we should close gitmo... what happened there- i mean torture- is a shame for the usa and a war-crime, by the geneva convention.. and will allways be!!! no mather if we prosecute bush or not..
... you do`t have to study law to realize that anyone will state anything under torture and according to law, such statements cannot be used in a fair trial!! maybe hitler and other dictators did that, and many ppl still talk like, these were "terrorists" without realizing, that themselves would have confessed to be a "terrorist" under torture.
.. and by protecting them from torture, we protect ourselves from beeing one day tortured!!! under the "patriot act" anyone can be made a terrorist.
.. i just take some words out of context, from most coments written here and can make it look like the person who wrote that, is a suspected terrorist... than with "waterbording" and no lawyer allowed, we get a first class statement... and conviction...

I think the important question is are we sure that the guys we have at Gitmo are the culprits? No we don't! at least by law we don't! so should we ensure of the fact by any means necessary including torture? No we shouldn't! for the sake of those who may actually innocent, no we Shouldn't! for in doing so we will have become exactly like those we wish to fight, causing anguish, apprehension & insecurity to innocent people.

We will have become Terrorists!