Pre-Planning on Closing Gitmo: "The Difference Is That He Tries to Solve It"

As you probably know:

The Pentagon is drawing up plans to shut the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be prepared for any order from President-elect Barack Obama, who has promised to close the controversial facility after he assumes office Jan. 20, a defense official said yesterday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates instructed his staff to have a blueprint in place by the time of the inauguration in case Obama decides the closure of the facility is one of his "first orders of business," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

I read this to mean that Obama told Gates that closing Gitmo would be one of his first orders of business, and make him do this as the condition of him keeping the job. And by "this", I mean not just plan to close Gitmo, but to announce it publicly. It would be both appropriate and Obama-like if he were to announce in his inaugural address that the first executive order he will sign is the one directing Gates to begin the process of closing the prison.

Gates "has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down -- what would be required specifically to close it and move the detainees from that facility while at the same time, of course, ensuring that we protect the American people from some dangerous characters," Morrell said at a news briefing.

Any plan will probably address whether to also abolish the military commission system and, if so, what kind of legal framework can be substituted to put detainees on trial. The U.S. government will have to negotiate homes in third countries for as many as 60 detainees who have been cleared for release but cannot be returned to countries such as Uzbekistan and Libya because of fears they will be tortured. And the next administration will have to find or build appropriate detention facilities in the United States, as well as negotiate with local and state authorities who may not want terrorist suspects housed in prisons in their areas.

So what happens to the people we release?

European nations have begun intensive discussions both within and among their governments on whether to resettle detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a significant overture to the incoming Obama administration, according to senior European officials and U.S. diplomats.

Funny/sad:

The willingness to consider accepting prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries, because of fears they may be tortured there, represents a major change in attitude on the part of European governments. Repeated requests from the Bush administration that European allies accept some Guantanamo Bay detainees received only refusals.

The Bush administration "produced the problem," Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview. "With Obama, the difference is that he tries to solve it."

If goodwill were money, Bush would be history's greatest spendthrift.

Who is considering taking detainees? We don't know exactly:

At least half a dozen countries are considering resettlement, with only Germany and Portugal acknowledging it publicly thus far.

Okay, who else? My guesses are U.K., Spain, France and Poland. Not Italy, I don't think.

This is also well played:

European officials put out tentative feelers to Barack Obama's team to see whether it was willing to discuss the issue, but the incoming administration has rejected holding even informal talks until after the Jan. 20 inauguration, according to European and U.S. officials aware of the outreach.

"President-elect Obama has repeatedly said that he intends to close Guantanamo, and he will follow through on those commitments as president. There is one president at a time, and we intend to respect that," said Brooke Anderson, chief national security spokeswoman for the Obama transition team. ...

"I assume the new administration will have someone on a plane to Europe within minutes of Obama being sworn in," said Sarah E. Mendelson, director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a report on closing Guantanamo Bay.

On a plane? I wouldn't be surprised if the envoy weren't already on the ground in Europe at the moment Obama's hand hits the bible.

So what is Obama willing to do to "solve it"? Again, we don't know, but the Europeans have some things they'd like to see:

The Europeans want a clear commitment to close Guantanamo Bay and an acceptance of common legal principles in the fight against terrorism, including those regarding the treatment of suspects, European officials said. A series of meetings between the United States and the European Union on a legal framework for combating terrorism has considerably narrowed differences on the application of human rights law, refugee law and humanitarian law, said [Portugal's Foreign Minister Luis] Amado and John B. Bellinger III, a legal adviser at the State Department.

Elsewhere in the article, a German official is quoted as saying the U.S. cannot place any restrictions or conditions on how European countries handle the detainees. They saw what happened with David Hicks and the embarrassment Bush caused the Aussie government.

The Europeans also want Obama to agree to transfer a small number of detainees to the United States before they attempt to sell a resettlement program to their own citizens.

"I believe that will happen," Amado said.

Interesting. There have been no talks with the Obama people, but Amado has reason to believe that the new administration will first take some innocent detainess before Europe does. That sounds to me that there have been talks with people close to but not in the transition. Which is how it should be.

One group likely to be settled here is 17 Chinese Uighurs who have been held for years at Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration has acknowledged that the Uighurs are not enemy combatants, and in October a federal judge ordered them released into the United States.

In interagency discussions, the State Department has argued that the Uighurs be brought to the United States to help persuade Europe to resettle other detainees. But a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the departments of Homeland Security and Justice, as well as White House officials, considered resettlement in the United States a "red-line" issue.

Yeah, it's a red-line issue for Bush to have to be confronted with the living, breathing evidence of his incompetence and ideological blinders. I hope some of the Uighurs settle in Dallas.