I've said repeatedly that I think the decision to close Gitmo was ill considered. It does not matter where the physical prison is located. Whats important is what policies apply there. Those questions have been resolved by the Supreme Court. Focusing on closing the physical prison instead of exalting what we believe to be the correct policy result is a mistake. It holds symbols over substance.

This is Republican Rep. John Boehner:

The American people don’t want dangerous terrorists imported on to U.S. soil, and time after time the House and Senate have reaffirmed this position with bipartisan votes rejecting the Administration’s plan. Yet this Administration is defying the will of the American people and importing them anyway. What’s worse, this decision is completely unnecessary considering that these terrorists were already being tried by military commissions, which were specifically designed under the law to prosecute such heinous acts.

That sounds about right. There is no policy difference so its not necessary to move the prisoners. The terrorists will use our detention of their "brothers" for propaganda purposes regardless of where they are detained or how humanely they are treated.

But wait, he makes the mistake of going on:

The American people deserve to know how importing these dangerous terrorists and giving them the same rights as U.S. citizens will make us any safer.

The same rights as U.S. Citizens? So he is suggesting that there is a policy difference between holding the terrorists in Gitmo and holding them in Illinois. Boehner went on about this point in his Congressional statement which I heard on CSPAN but can't find. Liz Cheney also repeated this talking point:

Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. “When you bring these terrorists onto U.S. soil, you give them all the rights of US citizens.”

The Supreme Court has held that there is no policy difference between holding these people at Gitmo and holding them in Illinois. The Republicans were wrong to try to create one in the first place and they are wrong to maintain that one should exist today.

Note this badly titled CSM article:

“The main argument the government has had as to why these men don’t have rights is that they are held outside the sovereign territory of the United States,” says David Remes, legal director of the Washington-based group Appeal for Justice and who represents 20 Guantánamo detainees.

“The Supreme Court rejected that,” he says. “But the government is still arguing that the detainees have no constitutional rights beyond habeas rights because they are offshore.”

Mr. Remes adds, “If the men are brought to the US, the government will no longer have that argument, and it will be possible for the detainees to raise a wider set of constitutional claims.”

The Government's argument is wrong and the Supreme Court has rejected it. Gitmo is United States Territory. Whatever the law is here the law is there. The problem with Gitmo from the beginning was the attempt to create a legal black hole - an insane project in which ignorance and arrogance combine to have us kicking away at the very foundations of western civilization. By physically moving the prisoners to the US Obama is doing more than just putting the people of Illinois at risk - he is retreating from the legal battlefield, leaving Conservatives with the continuing impression that black holes can exist in our civilization, and furthermore, that they ought to exist and that the American people want them to exist.

This is what I have to choose between? A party that doesn't have any respect for the Constitution and Western legal history and a party that doesn't think the substantive argument really matters so much as idea of it and its symbolic trappings? You're both utterly wrong and your failure represents a great weakness.

GitMo - Both parties have it wrong!