Detainees Like The Accommodations At Club Gitmo

Congressman Peter King once said that the only scandal at the Guantanamo Bay prison is that the detainees are treated too well. In an article about the "new pessimism" that the Gauntanamo Bay prison will ever be closed, Newsweek suggests that the detainees agree:

But the final irony is that many of the detainees may not even want to be transferred to Thomson and could conceivably even raise their own legal roadblocks to allow them to stay at Gitmo.

Marc Falkoff [a lawyer who represents some of the Yemeni detainees at Gitmo] notes that many of his clients, while they clearly want to go home, are at least being held under Geneva Convention conditions in Guantánamo. At Thomson, he notes, the plans call for them to be thrown into the equivalent of a "supermax" security prison under near-lockdown conditions.

"As far as our clients are concerned, it's probably preferable for them to remain at Guantánamo," he says.

Separately, Bloomberg.com reports more recidivism from released Gitmo detainees:

As many as one in five former Guantanamo Bay detainees are suspected of or confirmed to have engaged in terrorist activity after their release, U.S. officials said, citing the latest government statistics.

The 20 percent rate is an increase over the 14 percent of former inmates that an April Pentagon report said were thought to have joined terrorist efforts, said the officials, who requested anonymity. The officials didn’t provide the numbers on which the 20 percent is based.

Gitmo Detainees Headed to Illinois Prison

According to BigGovernment.com, the Justice Department has drafted plans to send the enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay to the Thomson (Illinois) Correctional Center, a maximum security prison. As we've asked over and over, how does bringing these individuals to the mainland make America more safer and secure? And will it turn out that some fat-cat local real estate mogul and various other operatives in the "Chicago Way" foodchain get to cash in in some manner? Just asking.

9/11 Detainees: Tried In Manhattan

According to various media outlets, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on his way to the Big Apple--the city he tried to destroy:

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.

The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

...Holder will also announce that a major suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, will face justice before a military commission, as will a handful of other detainees to be identified at the same announcement, the official said.

It was not immediately clear where commission-bound detainees like al-Nashiri might be sent, but a military brig in South Carolina has been high on the list of considered sites.

In the meantime, the White House official who bungled the Gitmo closing (or is taking the rap for doing so) is leaving the administration:

The White House's top lawyer is announcing his resignation on Friday, senior administration officials said.

White House counsel Greg Craig has been the subject of questions about his future since late summer, dogged by talk that President Barack Obama's promise to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay military prison by January went awry under Craig's leadership.

Craig also oversaw the president's revamping of U.S. policy on terrorism interrogations and detentions, including a ban on torture, and was at the center of administration moves to release many documents relating to the treatment of terror suspects under the Bush administration - and to oppose the release of photos of abuse of detainees overseas by U.S. personnel. All those decisions earned Obama considerable criticism, some from the right and some from the left.

Anita Dunn, the White House staffer with a crush on Mao Tse Tung, is also moving on.