http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/the-challenges-of-closing-guantanamo/?hp
I particulary put faith in the words of Andrew McCarthy, as his points align with what I hope will become true. I'll paste his part, as the entire article is pretty long. He puts nicely the concept of how BO has blown a lot of smoke up the 6 O'clocks of a lot of people, and in reality it won't amount to nearly as much action being taken.
I hope that works out to be the case.
Quote:
So What Has Changed?
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is legal affairs editor at National Review.
It is impossible for someone who has demagogued a complex problem, as President-elect Obama has, to move from overheated rhetoric into responsible governing. So, he has begun trying to control the inevitable damage. Reports about his imminent executive order represent stage two of that effort.
Unfortunately, what Mr. Obama is saying is meaningless where it is not wrong-headed. The Guantánamo “executive” order should instead be called a “symbolic” order since it is not intended to execute anything. Guantanamo will continue operating just as it has. Mr. Obama’s stated desire to close it at some future point is the same desire members of the Bush administration have been stating for some time.
“Guantanamo will continue operating just as it has.”
In fact, the promise to make diplomatic efforts to repatriate alleged combatants is the same effort Bush has been pursuing for years — which is why over 500 detainees (two-thirds of the detainees) have already been transferred out of Guantanamo.
Mr. Obama falters in his premises. First, his spokesperson says, “the legal framework at Guantánamo has failed to successfully and swiftly prosecute terrorists.” But the purpose of holding enemy combatants in wartime (which the Supreme Court has repeatedly validated, as recently as the 2004 Hamdi case) is not to prosecute them but to remove them from the battlefield and derive intelligence. Prosecution is incidental to that purpose, and often not practical. If your first imperative in detaining people is the right one (i.e., to defeat the enemy and protect Americans), you are going to detain many people who cannot be prosecuted at all, let alone “swiftly.”
Mr. Obama has said that evidence proving detainee dangerousness, though possibly “true,” could be “tainted.” That misstates the problem. The intelligence at issue was not collected for prosecution purposes; it may not be usable in court because it is too sensitive or its acquisition was not attended by routine law-enforcement protocols (like Miranda warnings). That doesn’t make it “tainted.” It reflects the fundamental difference between investigating a criminal and fighting a combatant.
