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Still there. Guantanamo revisited

Gitmo, that blot on America, continues - seemingly, without end, notwithstanding Obama having promised closing the facility down within 12 months when he took office.

The New York Review of Books has a review of a 2 books on Guantanamo, one entitled "The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law".

"President Bush himself ultimately recognized that the image of Guantánamo was disastrous for American foreign policy, and admitted that he would have liked to close the prison there. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only Cabinet official to serve in both the Bush and Obama administrations, agrees. President Obama, on his second day in office, vowed to close the prison within one year. Yet more than a year and a half later, Guantánamo remains open, with no end in sight. One hundred seventy-six men remain imprisoned there, without trial and in most cases without criminal charges. Many if not most have been the victims of torture and cruel and degrading treatment at US hands. Some six hundred have been released, many because there was not sufficient evidence to justify their detention in the first place. Yet not a single inmate has received an apology, or an accounting, or justice for his brutal mistreatment."

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