The Pentagon’s Insubordination on Guantánamo

"In recent years, Congress and the Pentagon have stood in the way of President Obama’s goal of shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The legislative hurdles have been predictable in a Republican-led Congress that so often opposes Mr. Obama’s initiatives reflexively. The stalling at the Defense Department, where officials have used every bureaucratic trick in the book to slow down the release of inmates, is startling, though, and basically amounts to insubordination.

A Reuters article on Tuesday shed new light on the Pentagon’s obstinance on Guantánamo and the extent to which the department has sought to keep detainees locked away for years without due process in a prison established to sidestep the Constitution and international law.

Officials at the Pentagon, Reuters reported, scuttled a potential plan to resettle Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni detainee who has been imprisoned since 2002 and was cleared for release in 2009. He is now severely malnourished from having been on a hunger strike for almost nine years. After officials at the State Department persuaded officials from a foreign government to consider taking Mr. Ba Odah in September, those officials made the reasonable request to examine his medical records. Mr. Ba Odah’s lawyer approved the request. The Pentagon, however, stalled for six weeks, preposterously arguing that it was protecting Mr. Ba Odah’s privacy. Mr. Ba Odah remains locked up, raising the likelihood that he will die in detention."