Set it and forget it policy initiatives…Guantanamo

rdan

WAPO reports on Guantanamo:

President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Having had a vague notion that the military commissions might have had a notion of how to proceed to justice, but were going badly, I might become disabused of this notion if the report is accurate. Like many within the commissions process stated, there is nothing resembling a coherent prosecution after so many years.

We can only watch to see if the Obama team can be upfront on this mess.

Update: hilzoy at Obsidian Wings hits a bullseye here.