November 11, 2008
Barack Obama will move swiftly to close Guantanamo Bay as soon as he takes office, his aides said yesterday, in a clear and early sign of how determined he is to break with President Bush.
Mr Obama is planning to ship dozens of terrorist suspects from the camp to face criminal trial in the US. It is a controversial move but one that demonstrates how abruptly he plans to change Washington in terms of policy, personnel and tone the moment he enters the Oval Office.
Mr Obama has said that he wants to hit the ground running, and, already, details of his ambitious agenda are becoming clear as he seeks to turn his back on the Bush era. He has vowed to start removing combat troops from Iraq immediately, although in recent weeks he has become more opaque about the speed of withdrawal.
Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obamas choice for White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that the President-elect would also waste no time in pushing ahead with a tax cut for the middle classes, and a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans a sharp break with Mr Bush.
Mr Emanuel added that Mr Obama would act quickly to expand health insurance coverage and reverse Mr Bushs energy policy, although such an agenda is hugely expensive and could be imperilled by the worsening economy and a rapidly increasing budget deficit.
One of Mr Obamas first acts could be to use the power of executive authority which enables presidents to take action without an Act of Congress to block the expansion of oil drilling in the Utah wilderness authorised by Mr Bush. He is also looking to use the same power to lift the limits on stem cell research imposed by the current Administration.
Yet it is the closure of Guantanamo Bay that Mr Obama believes would provide one of the starkest demonstrations of how he intends to effect immediate change.
He is looking at creating a new terrorism court on the US mainland to try up to 80 terror suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed September 11 master-mind. Mr Obama said last week that he would close the camp as quickly as we can do prudently.
The move will face stiff opposition from many Republicans on Capitol Hill and a substantial number of Americans who strongly oppose bringing terror suspects to US soil with traditional rules of evidence that give those being prosecuted the presumption of innocence.
Mr Bush refused to countenance trials on the mainland and was finally forced by the US Supreme Court this year to allow prisoners the right to have the legality of their detention adjudicated in a federal court.
Closing the detention camp on the US naval base in Cuba could also create myriad other problems.
Of the 255 detainees still being held there, experts believe that more than 100 will probably never be charged, because there is little or no evidence linking them to terrorism.
Yet a number of their home countries have said that they would refuse to take them back, leaving Mr Obama with the problem of what to do with them if they were released. Housing them in the US, or giving them asylum, would prove to be highly controversial.
The legal team advising Mr Obama on Guantanamo believes that prosecuting the high-value terror suspects such as Mr Mohammed a group of about 30 will require the creation of a court designed to handle highly sensitive intelligence material, a cross between a military tribunal and a federal court.
After meeting Mr Bush yesterday, Mr Obama was due to return home to Chicago, where he is putting together his administration.
