Just posted to our homepage, the editors on the plight of the Guantnamo prisoners:

Reviewing the establishment and operation of the prison at Guantnamo Bay, which was intended to keep detainees outside the reach of U.S. law, the report [released by the bipartisan Constitution Projects Task Force on Detainee Treatment].finds that Guantnamo became a symbol of the willingness of the United States to detain significant numbers of innocent people (along with the guilty) and subject them to serious and prolonged privation and mistreatment, even torture.President Obama has resisted attempts to expose government wrongdoing in these matters, saying he prefers to look forward and not back. Even looking forward, however, requires acknowledging the plight of those still held at Guantnamo, many of whom have been there for more than a decade without facing any charges. In that time, the prison has changed from offshore interrogation site to warehouse for those swept up in the post-9/11 panic. Of the hundred sixty-six people currently held in the prison, the government has said it plans to hold forty-six indefinitely without charges: a review ordered by Obama found that they are dangerous but cannot be tried, often because abusive treatment has tainted the evidence against them. Another eighty-six have been approved for release since 2010 but remain in custodythe report calls them victims of the complex legal and geopolitical politics the detention situation has produced.

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Dominic Preziosi is Commonweal’s editor. Follow him on Twitter.

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