Guantanamo should be closed - now

Former Guantanamo Bay detainees wear black hoods during a protest (Reuters)

Two excellent pieces published in America over the weekend show just what a brutal cost, in both moral and money terms, this prison has inflicted on successive White Houses.

In the Los Angeles Times, Doyle McManus writes: “Reducing [its] population would solve a big chunk of what has become an... insoluble problem. Resuming the transfers, especially for those who have already been offered a ticket out, would offer detainees... a shred of hope Obama and his aides say they are looking at all those remedies now. It’s a shame it took a hunger strike to remind the president of his own convictions.”

And a Baltimore Sun editorial is even more direct: “The cost of maintaining the Guantanamo facility — both in dollars and in diminished moral authority — is simply too great. It must be closed.”