A major in the U.S. Army JAG Corps Reserves says President Obama's plan to shut down the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is not only unpopular with the American public, but it puts the president in a "legal pickle."
By a more than a two-to-one margin, Americans are opposed to closing Gitmo, according to a new Gallup poll that also finds that by more than three-to-one, Americans oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states. Kyndra Rotunda is a professor at Chapman Law School and director of the Military Personnel Law Center. She is also the author of the book Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials. Rotunda says the poll sends a clear message that Americans want to know what the U.S. is going to do with the Gitmo detainees. "It's one thing to say we're going to close Gitmo, but you've got to answer the second part of that question -- if you close it, what do you do with them? I think the [Obama] administration sort of came out too early with their ultimate decision," she contends. "They had the what; they just didn't know how to do it, and that's why this has been so difficult. And finally, the American people are saying, 'We don't support closing it if you don't have a plan for how to close it and where to put the detainees.'" The Obama administration has said it plans to transfer some of the Gitmo terror suspects to high-security prison facilities within the United States. However, Rotunda notes that under the Geneva Conventions, countries cannot keep enemy combatants or prisoners of war in a facility with convicted criminals.
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