Obama signs order to close Guantanamo Bay  

The SMH reports that Obama is making a good start to erasing the stain of the Bush presidency, ordering the close of the Guantanamo Bay camp - President Barack Obama signs order to close Guantanamo Bay. Obama has also outlawed CIA torture practices and called on Israel to open the border with Gaza to allow humaitarian aid through.

On his second day in office, US President Barack Obama has made good on his campaign promises to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year and end the practice of torture by the spy agency the CIA immediately.

At a ceremony this morning in the Oval Office, witnessed by a dozen former military officers, Mr Obama signed four presidential orders including the much-anticipated order to close the controversial detention facility within 12 months.

The Guantanamo Bay order sets up a commission to look at options for relocating the remaining 245 inmates of Guantanamo Bay. This is likely to include asking allies such as Australia to take inmates.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has already rejected similar overtures from the former president George Bush, but Portugal and Switzerland have indicated they may be willing to take some detainees.

Other options include moving inmates to US military prisons, returning some to their native countries, and finding third countries to take them.

The President also signed an order saying that all interrogations conducted by the United States would abide by the army field manual, effectively banning the CIA from using "enhanced interrogation" techniques including waterboarding.

"The message we are sending around the world is the US intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism but we are going to do so consistent with our values," he said.

"As I said during the inauguration, we are not going to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals," he said. "We are going to win this fight but we will win it on our terms."

The order also sets up a process to review rendition practices, where prisoners are sent to CIA prisons in countries without any human rights protections.

Glenn Greenwald says the signs are encouraging for civil libertarians, even if they have conservative bed-wetters wringing their hands with fear and suffering frequent anxiety attacks - The newest fear-mongering campaign from the Right and the media.

The latest fear-mongering campaign in the U.S. -- this one devoted to scaring Americans that they will be slaughtered if Guantanamo is closed and Terrorism suspects are brought into the U.S. for real trials -- is now in full swing. The New York Times today prints a front-page article claiming that a detainee released from Guantanamo last year has now become "the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch" (it's always amazing how bureaucratically structured Al Qaeda is alleged to be and how well we can discern the structure: "Deputy Leader, Yemen Branch"; do they have business cards and organizational charts?).

But the real fear-mongering is focused on all of the attacks that American communities will suffer if we imprison dangerous Terrorists inside the U.S. rather than in Guantanamo. House Minority Leader John Boehner wants you to be frightened: "I think the first thing we have to remember is that we're talking about terrorists here. Do we bring them into our borders?" GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor warned: "Actively moving terrorists inside our borders weakens our security. Most families neither want nor need hundreds of terrorists seeking to kill Americans in their communities." The always frightened Wall St. Journal Editorial Page shrieks that any place that houses Al Qaeda Terrorists will become a "target" for attack:

The military base [at Ft. Leavenworth] is integrated into the community and, lacking Guantanamo's isolation and defense capacities, would instantly become a potential terror target. Expect similar protests from other states that are involuntarily entered in this sweepstakes.

National Review's Jim Geraghaty spent all day yesterday fantasizing about all the scary things that could happen if we have Al-Qaeda Terrorists in our communities (near nuclear facilities and airports!). Former Bush aide and chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen warned yesterday in The Washington Post that if there is a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Americans will blame Obama because he stopped torturing and closed Guantanamo, and Democrats will be "unelectable for a generation." Today, at National Review, Thiessen, citing yesterday's Executive Orders, declared Obama "to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office." And yesterday, of course, The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt echoed the standard claim that our regular federal courts were inadequate to try dangerous Terrorists.

All of this is pure fear-mongering -- the 2009 version of Condoleezza Rice's mushroom cloud and Jay Rockefeller's "we'll-lose-our-eavesdropping-capabilities" cries. Both before and after 9/11, the U.S. has repeatedly and successfully tried alleged high-level Al Qaeda operatives and other accused Islamic Terrorists in our normal federal courts -- in fact, the record is far more successful than the series of debacles that has taken place in the military commissions system at Guantanamo. Moreover, those convicted Terrorists have been housed in U.S. prisons, inside the U.S., for years without a hint of a problem.

Glenn also notes the polls are showing American citizens (unlike their amoral mass media and a small tribe of conservative blowgards) think that shutting Gitmo and giving terrorism suspects fair trials is a good thing - New poll on torture and investigations negates Beltway conventional wisdom.

One of the most common and most corrosive aspects of our political discourse is the endless assertions -- based on nothing -- about what "Americans believe." It is exceedingly conventional wisdom that Americans generally view the world through the prism of Jack Bauer and therefore want our government to torture, want Guantanamo kept opened, and do not want suspected Terrorists to be tried in civilian courts inside the U.S. It is even more commonly asserted that Americans do not want, and even further, would never tolerate, criminal investigations into the various crimes of Bush officials.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday negates all of those beliefs. Here was the question that was asked about torture -- note that it's phrased in the most pro-torture manner possible, because it is grounded in the ludicrous, 24-clichéd "ticking time bomb" excuse that is the most commonly used argument by torture advocates:

Q. Obama has said that under his administration the United States will not use torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, no matter what the circumstance. Do you support this position not to use torture, or do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects?

By a wide margin -- 58-40% -- Americans say that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances. Let's repeat that: "no matter the circumstance." That margin is enormous among Democrats (71-28%) and substantial among independents (56-43%). As usual these days, Republicans hold the minority view, but even among them there is substantial categorical opposition to torture (42-55%).

Moreover, a majority of Americans (53-42%) favor the closing of Guantanamo, with large support among Democrats (68%) and independents (55%). Even more significantly, a very solid majority of those favoring the closing of Guantanamo recognize exactly what ought to be done with detainees who the government believes are guilty of terrorism-related crimes -- it's exactly what the ACLU and civil libertarians generally urge be done: