Prairie Prison

President Obama announced that some Guantanamo Bay detainees in the war against al-Qaeda will be housed in an empty prison that the government plans to purchase. The prison is in Thomson, Illinois, a village on the Mississippi River due west of Chicago. Republicans who represent states in Congress nowhere near Illinois - plus a few G.O.P. members of Illinois's House delegation, in fairness - complained about the move, saying it brings terrorists to the homeland and endangers Americans.

What - terror suspects locked up inside a prison a threat to Americans? They won't even be a threat to the people of Thomson, who by and large welcome the move because of the jobs it will generate - three thousand jobs, a big deal for a little town like Thomson. So do Illinois's governor, Pat Quinn, and Illinois's senior senator, Richard Durbin, for the same reasons. If the people of Thomson are on board, and if the governor of Illinois and the state's senior senator (and possibly its junior senator, Roland Burris), and President Obama is putting his money where his mouth is buy willing to have the combatants incarcerated in his home state, what's the problem?

Oh, the law - that's right. There's a law on the books making it illegal to house Guantanamo prisoners on U.S. soil unless they are to be prosecuted. The Obama administration is likely to seek a change in the laws, and whether or not they seek further prosecutions is unclear. One thing that is clear is that the Defense Department will take over the portion of the prison the al-Qaeda inmates will be kept in once the transfer of prisoners is made.

The inmates are likely to be treated more fairly in Illinois than in the makeshift center at Guantanamo, and Obama is sincere in closing the odious Gitmo facility, but human rights activists shouldn't feel good about it yet; Guantanamo won't be close by next month as planned or hoped for, and there are still the questions of how long to keep these inmates and whether to prosecute them. But Obama is making a sincere effort to close Gitmo, which everyone agrees should be closed.

Even George Walker Bush.

Really.

Trying Trial

Late word from Washington is that Attorney General Eric Holder will have 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and four other al-Qaeda operatives tried for the World Trade Center attacks in federal court in New York - literally in the shadow of Ground Zero.

Republicans have inevitably cried foul over this, but it took guts for Holder to go ahead with this. Although 9/11 was seen as an act of war, the current situation in Afghanistan finds al-Qaeda practically gone from that country after eight years of American and NATO involvement there in response to 9/11, yet that effort has apparently been as successful as it's going to get. The Taliban remain difficult foes. Al-Qaeda has resettled elsewhere, mainly in Pakistan. The best way to stand up against terrorist acts is to treat it as a law enforcement issue. Law enforcement should investigate and stop potential plots. That's how the British found that cell of terrorists hoping to blow up airliners over the Atlantic in 2006. Any plot that succeeds should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, and the punishment should fit the crime.

Also, putting Muhammad and his confederates on trial in the federal judicial system, we have the opportunity to show the world that our judicial system works and can bring the kind of justice that Muhammad and the others deserve without torture or indefinite imprisonment without a trial. Mayor Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said New York can handle the trial.

One bugaboo that remains is the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Although Holder says it won't be done by January 22, 2010 as planned, he thinks he can still have it done shortly thereafter. That would compensate for the resignation of White House counsel Gregory Craig, whose difficulties with closing Guantanamo supposedly forced his departure. The Justice Department claim Craig's resignation and the delayed Guantanamo closing are not related, but others see it as an abandonment and a scapegoating of Craig, one of Washington's best legal experts.

Will Dick Cheney Ever Shut Up?

For weeks, Dick Cheney, the former - underline former - Vice President, has been criticizing and sometimes just blasting President Obama for his policies toward terror suspects, saying that Obama's misguided policies (respect for the Constitution, understanding of the law, valuing human rights) have made us less safe and more prone to a terrorist attack. Today President Obama reiterated his position on his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, insisting that no detainees will be released in the continental U.S. and that all of them would be jailed in maximum security prisons where the number of escapees can be counted on zero fingers. As for how to proceed with prosecuting and handling these detainees, Obama said that George Walker Bush left a mess by setting up this detainment system in the first place and not thinking it out properly.

That didn't stop Cheney from bringing up all of the red-herring arguments that the Bush White House never tortured anyone, that the previous administration got information on terror plots that were foiled (none of which were realistic or plausible), and that Bush saved American lives (except for the five thousand service personnel or so killed in Iraq). Cheney even suggested anew that Saddam Hussein had connections to "Mideast terrorists," letting people assume he meant there was a connection the Iraqi dictator had with Osama bin Laden (there was none) and that bin Laden's organization has been deterred from planning another terrorist attack (though we've been deterred from capturing bin Laden after letting him go at Tora Bora in Afghanistan).

However, the advantage has been to Cheney and the Republicans, who got the Senate to reject funds for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison while Obama tries to work out a plan for handling the detainees. Obama hasn't gotten support from his base, either, as he has chosen to revive military tribunals for some terror suspects (although he is revamping how they would work), oppose a truth commission to investigate past treatment of the Gitmo prisoners, and has even used the previous administration's "state secrets" doctrine that claims unchecked presidential power to prevent information disclosure in court.

Obama, in a word, won no friends. He tried to stay in the middle, but there is no middle ground on this issue.

The Gitmo issue won't go away any time soon. Alas, neither will Cheney.