“Some people have said, we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.” — Mitt Romney, Republican presidential debate, May 15, 2007
Take a breath, Mitt. Whatever you may think, your bravado statements about doubling the size of Guantanamo — part of your bid to lead the American people faster and farther into the Global War on Terror — are by no means completely off-the-wall. True, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Gates have both stated that closing Guantanamo might be the best way out of the legal limbo we’ve been in ever since that facility opened five and half years ago as the crown jewel of the administration’s offshore network of secret prisons. But forget what they say. Check out what they’re doing. The closing of Guantanamo — and a winding down of the administration’s detention and interrogation policies — may be farther away than most of us think. As elsewhere in this administration’s record, casual talk of refashioning a failed policy masks an inflexible commitment to “staying the course.” [complete article]
