Editorial: The Pentagon’s Insubordination on Guantánamo

January 2, 2016
New York Times

In recent years, Congress and the Pentagon have stood in the way of President Obama’s goal of shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The legislative hurdles have been predictable in a Republican-led Congress that so often opposes Mr. Obama’s initiatives reflexively. The stalling at the Defense Department, where officials have used every bureaucratic trick in the book to slow down the release of inmates, is startling, though, and basically amounts to insubordination.

A Reuters article on Tuesday shed new light on the Pentagon’s obstinance on Guantánamo and the extent to which the department has sought to keep detainees locked away for years without due process in a prison established to sidestep the Constitution and international law.

Officials at the Pentagon, Reuters reported, scuttled a potential plan to resettleTariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni detainee who has been imprisoned since 2002 and was cleared for release in 2009. He is now severely malnourished from having been on a hunger strike for almost nine years. ...

Read the full editorial here.

Last modified 

January 4, 2016