Gitmo: Seller's Remorse

Campus Report ^ | July 7, 2009 | Brittany Fortier

[bs9021]

Gitmo: Seller’s Remorse

by: Brittany Fortier, July 07, 2009

Photographs that allegedly depict detainee abuse have generated debate in Congress, with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Car.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) saying on June 11, 2009 that “if the House drops the provision [from the Senate bill] that would prevent these photos from being released … American soldiers are going to be subject to increased violent attack...”

The debate has also prompted discussion of how the Obama administration will handle the split among Democrats on this issue. A panel hosted on June 15, 2009, by the Center for American Progress (CAP) discussed the issues surrounding preventive detention at Guantanamo and the need to “restore the credibility” of the United States.

Claudia Hillebrand, a Co-Convenor for the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom discussed the issue of “whether European states are willing to take in Guantanamo detainees or not.” “If those [Guantanamo detainees] are understood to be a security risk to the European Union, the European Union state will not be allowed to take them in,” she said.

Hillebrand noted that “in Europe, there is a slight disappointment about how things are developing” because “the excitement about Obama coming into the Presidency was…very high, and the expectations were probably too high and [Obama] could never fulfill them.”

“The first set of obstacles that the administration faces are administrative and internal,” said Heather Hurlburt, the Executive Director of the National Security Network. “What all of that adds up to is a timetable that is going to go much more slowly than any of us had originally anticipated…”....