Huffington Post: The Guantanamo Mess

Op-ed by Retired Navy Rear Admirals John Hutson and Donald J. Guter.

The fundamental question of whether Guantanamo should even exist as a prison has been lost in the cacophony over hunger strikes, the prosecution’s access to defense client-privileged email, government eavesdropping on attorney-client conferences, and the overall abject failure of military commissions to prosecute alleged terrorists in any meaningful way.

Let’s look at the basic question of whether to keep Gitmo open at all. We stood behind the President on his second day in office along with over a dozen other retired admirals and generals as he signed an executive order directing that Gitmo be closed and the prisoners transferred to prisons in the U.S. That was five long years ago, yet with the support of Congress, it remains open in spite of the direct order of the Commander in Chief.