 For several years now, this is the 16th year of Guantanamo being used that way. There's 41 people still detained at Guantanamo in addition to the separate military tribunal. And that's the same number that were there when the prison was turned over to the Trump administration from the Obama administration. The 41 people, some of them approved for transfer who simply did not make it before Trump took over the administration. So we're here to discuss both the status of Guantanamo in its 16th year and its first year under the Trump administration as well as the general future of American detention policy in the coming years. To talk about this, we have Karen Greenberg who directs the Center on National Security at Fordham. Andy Worthington who is a co-founder of Close Guantanamo and wrote one of the key books on the Guantanamo files. And Thomas Wilner who's a counsel with German and Sterling and also was the counsel in some of the key court cases establishing the right to habeas for Guantanamo detainees. So that's all I'll say to begin with. We'll turn it over to them to give about five to eight minutes each on where Guantanamo stands today, how we got here and their general thoughts on the future. And then I'll ask them some questions and then we'll turn it over to you for questions. Oh, okay. So, well, thank you. Thank you for doing this. I want to know how many years we got to keep doing this. You know, we have to save January 11th every single year. And what makes me the most angry is people call me and say, could you come to a meeting on something irrelevant on January 11th? I'm like, do you know that January 11th is, and that's part of what I'm going to talk about at the end today is the, I'm going to talk a little bit about what hasn't changed at Guantanamo and what I think there have been significant changes. And we may not see them because they're not happening at Guantanamo. So I will give an overview and then you guys can talk about all the DC details of what's going on there. When I think about Guantanamo, and I don't mean to trivialize what's happened there over the past 16 years, but you know this Child's Game Madness? You know, it's like a pad where they leave out words and then you fill in words and it's supposed to be, it's funny because it just says adjective or food or something like that. Guantanamo now feels to me like Madness. Every single year, there are pages on the exact same thing, but you fill in the blanks. And so I thought I would make a list of what I think the repetitive happenings are at Guantanamo. And then you can see what actually hasn't changed over three presidency over 16 years. And maybe the first thing I would say is, I'm pointing to today's news of course, is the issue of attorney-client privilege has been a problem since day one at Guantanamo. Whether it was, and some version of that. So being able to have your private space where you can talk to your client and the way you need to talk to your client. It was the listening devices that they found years ago on the walls that were smoke detectors. Whether it was the FBI informant that was found as a mole among the defense team. And there are several other issues. Now we have issues of attorney-client privilege raised by the recent event where three civilian defense attorneys decided to quit the case. Because of ethical issues, we don't know what those issues were. Some of us might, but anyway, we don't know what those issues were in the public. And what we know it has something to do with attorney-client privilege. Now we see there are plans for a new facility at Guantanamo, a legal defense facility. And in it, there are plans for a listening room. And the idea of this listening room is there would be some kind of monitor to make sure that nothing classified was talked about. But in other words, it's the same old same old. It's what it was before, you just fill in the blank. Same thing with the legacy of torture. Whether we like it or not, the legacy of torture, whether it's in civilian courts, Article 3 courts here in the United States, or in the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, it makes it impossible for a number of these cases to proceed. When you talk to the Department of Justice years ago, they tried to fight for these Guantanamo cases to come into federal court. And somehow in the past couple of years at the very end of the Obama administration, they gave up. And they went from what Eric Holder said in 2009 when he first decided to bring the 9-11 cases here. The 9-11 case here. He said, I know we can do this. The same thing he said about a trial that did happen, that of Achmed Gailani. Now we hear from DOJ officials, there's not enough evidence. What they mean is there's not enough evidence that isn't tainted by torture. And there are other things, but this is repeated year after year in different ways. And the defense bar exploits it for good reason to try to make a point, to delay the prosecution. But the result is that as it was intended to do in the ban against torture, as what it means by the fruit of the poisonous tree, this is what it means. And so this cannot be tried, and it's year after year. Today something very interesting happened, which was, and I don't know if you've read the news, but did you see this joint habeas petition that was issued today? There was a joint habeas petition issued on behalf of 12 detainees sort of a, and something, when I say, you know, things are same old, same old. We've had many habeas petitions since Razul and Dina Dian, lawyers have been fighting for the right of the detainees at Guantanamo to challenge their detention. But this is a very interesting document, because it does have something somewhat new in it. It might still be a paragraph in the same, you know, habeas page. But instead of arguing about issues related to the courtroom, issues related to detention, issues to the initial detention, issues related to interrogation, and all the things that have been argued inside these habeas petitions, they're arguing on what I think are very interesting and important grounds. One is in anti-Muslim bias, and the other is they're arguing about the, and this is sort of folded into what else is going on, this new issue of growing searches for the 9-11 defendants as they come into court, they are maintaining that this is a form of sexual harassment, it's not sexual abuse. And so you now have two of the issues that are headliners in major, separate from Guantanamo, separate from anything to do with the war on terror and military commissions. One is racism, and the other one is sexual impropriety. Now argued inside cases about Guantanamo, it's a very interesting turn in terms of what's happening that is new and different. So I urge you to go find that petition at maybe 20 pages, it's worth reading. Then there's the category of Guantanamo, of what remains undone, which every year we have a catalog of what remains undone, and then the opposite of it is, I couldn't find the right wording for this, maybe you guys could have it, how much of what's happened at Guantanamo has actually been reversed. So I saw today that a number of people talked about the 9 convictions at Guantanamo, without mentioning the ones that have been overturned and the ones that have been dated. Now we have the conviction of Alcozi that's being contended. What is going to remain at the end of Guantanamo? Who's actually going to stand convicted? So at the same time that Guantanamo continues and goes on and we have a repetition of things, at the same time it's unraveling its own story as it goes on. So which is going to come first? The unraveling of the complete unraveling of the military commission, or some conviction within the military court of any of the 9-11 detainees or all-nachtries. And I think that's a very important thing that we need to look at. And then my final page in the Mad Libs was the page, and I had many but I kind of put this down for a time, was can you believe it category? Because every year there's things that happen at Guantanamo and you're like, that did not happen. One of them is of course, I'm sure this is the first one that comes to your mind, is the detention in contempt of court of the Marine Brigadier General who approved the three lawyer defense attorney saying that they were acquitting the case. But that was just sort of what that's the step forward that the commissions are able to take. But then the one that really gets to me, and I think highlights the unbelievable ability of so much of Guantanamo, was the discussion about burning the art done by the detainees. I don't know how many of you have been in New York or have seen the exhibit or seen pictures. This is an amazing exhibit by the way. When I first went, I was like, I don't want to go there, I don't want to see, it's just going to make me so sad, I don't think I could go, right? And I go, you should see these pictures. First of all, I don't know what colors they gave me. But they are beautiful. They are blue. Have you seen this? It's amazing. It's blues and these delicious colors. And one of them is a flying heart. They are not hopeless in any way. And the idea that they want to burn these just, they came up with a number of reasons. I'm not going to go through, you know what? But the idea that they, even though you know that they were going to destroy these, I don't know if they were going to burn them, that's how I read it. But is another one of those, do you believe this is what's going on? So what I really want to say is there are some things that are different. One is this habeas petition. But another thing that's different is the absence of any kind of movement for, despite this petition, for release of the prisoner. You know that Obama ratcheted up the pace at which he would, thanks to Leo Ossi and others helping him, the pace of individuals getting out of Guantanamo. Trump brought an end to that position. The ambassador at large for the releases. So we no longer even have a person in place to do it. But there's no appetite, no, there's no thinking about it. And another thing that I think has changed, and maybe it hasn't changed, and I'm just idealistic or blind to it, is the fact that no one cares. No one, I mean we care. And a few, and people we know care. And the people we write to and call it care, and you guys care. But the American public does not care about this. The last time, I tried to find this and please tell me if you know other of this. The major polls, Gallup's Q, the CNN polls, and a couple other media polls that would monitor how do people feel about Guantanamo, should it close, should it open. The last one, and it was a single one, was 2016. There's no appetite for this. Although it did come up in the election and the campaign, you know, Trump wanting to put bad dude there, and even the mention that they might, you know, open it up for Americans is not possible. Was yet another sign that it just wasn't part of the myth. Guantanamo securely didn't put in a black box on a distant island exactly as it was intended to be. And so that's, but I do think there's, the interest is decreasing. It's not even staying the same. That's something else. I would say it's different. And then the final thing, and I know we're not talking about the military commission today, but I want to say a few things about what's happening in terms of the larger world that Guantanamo belongs to, which is the world of detention, interrogation, or interviewing for the purpose of intelligence, and prosecution, which are wherever you try them. There doesn't seem to be any appetite going forward for trying to defend international, you know, non-citizens, particularly accused of activities abroad like Abu Patala from Benghazi that was just tried here recently. Any appetite for detaining and bringing terrorism suspects to the United States for court. We have not seen this initiated. I don't know what's going on at NSD, but there haven't been any releases of press announcements or anything like that. And as a footnote, but an important footnote to that, under the Obama administration, largely with energy from things that have been designed in the Bush administration, the CIA, the FBI, DOJ, military, and others set up something called the HIG, which was a high-value interrogation group, I think that's what it stands for, which was an attempt to give all the equities inside the intelligence and law enforcement and military community a way of dealing with somebody who was detained. Here's the guy that we found on the battlefield in Syria. Here's what we're going to talk about this. We're going to talk and then we'll decide what happened to him. When this American citizen was arrested, was detained in Syria in September, and we still don't know very much about him, there was a conscious decision not to send a HIG team. And then there have been discussions, although none of them corroborated, about there isn't going to be anymore a HIG team. And then there were discussions about privatizing this particular part of the American approach to detention and potential trial. So what I would like to say is it's hard to believe, but Guantanamo, because of lack of interest, because of lack of headlines, is very much looks like we're going to be here next year. And I would love not to be here because I don't like you guys. So that's your turn. Thank you, Karen. Thanks to everybody who has turned up here. There is this Groundhog Day element to it. It just seems to get more Groundhog Day. Guantanamo Groundhog Day, welcome. I've been coming over, you know, you can tell from my accent that it's not even inflected with any Americanism. I don't think that I am a Brit. We somehow got into the Guantanamo story 12 long years ago now. I've been working on that ever since. I've been coming here in January. This is my eighth January here. Hence the Groundhog Day. And New America has been so kind as to host us here every year. One year, Tom and I were so exhausted. I think it was in 2014 that we didn't do it, but we've done it every other year. And sometimes when we have other people who join us and Karen is here this year, which is great. And we try and hope that something is going to happen with Guantanamo. Throughout all those years of President Obama, we had the feeling that although we hit some very low points, there was one point at which for a period of nearly three years he sat on his hands and didn't release any prisoners, apart from long food. He didn't release any voluntarily. They had either secured plea deals in military commissions or had been approved or released by the court. He didn't want to take on the Republicans who were cynically using Guantanamo to oppose him. But we, those were the darkest times. Otherwise we pushed them, we pushed them. Everybody who cared about this, little by little, chipped away at it. And we knew that even by the end, there were some people within the administration who cared. There were other people who didn't care as much and there were always the political discussions of people as to is this worth it, is this not worth it politically. But we ended up with this position where just 41 men were held. Now that was not enough. He should have closed it. But the shocking thing nearly a year on is that Donald Trump has done nothing but sealed the prison shut. Now he hasn't fulfilled the wildest and most outrageous claim of what he wanted to do with the prison, which was to send the bad dude there and send Americans there and he wanted to bring back a wholesale U.S. torture program. And none of this has happened. And for very sensible reasons, it's that only when he's surrounded by the most deranged people would that be acceptable because everybody else knows you're going to try people for crimes related to terrorism. You have to put them in federal court. Guantanamo is nothing to do with the law. It's a place that was set up to be beyond the reach of the law where people could be tortured and abused. And, you know, over the years, the way people were treated like Guantanamo chains, over the years, and Tom here fought battles up to the Supreme Court to get rights for those prisoners, they eventually did get habeas for the rights. I mean, this is the ancient history lesson now. In 2004, then Congress took them away again. And in 2008, they got constitutionally guaranteed habeas for the rights. Then it was the golden period when, for a few years, prisoners were actually released from Guantanamo because judges said to the government, you have not made a case that these people had anything to do with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. And then the appeals court changed the rules. They told the lower court, you must believe everything that the government says unless you conclude it otherwise. And no prisoner has since had their habeas for sufficient granted. You can't get out of Guantanamo anymore through the law. So that door shut again. And President Obama then set up a parole-type process, a periodic review board, to sidestep issues of how Republicans were dealing with the detention issues, to say, okay, we're going to say that if you promise to behave well when we leave here and you present a credible case, then we'll let you go. And in the last couple of years, several dozen more people being approved for release, which meant that they ended up with these 41 men. But now here we are. Donald Trump doesn't care that five of the 41 men held were approved for release by the two review processes that President Obama set up. High-level government review processes. He doesn't care about that. He doesn't seem to care about the periodic review boards, which nominally, in some sleepwalking way, are still reviewing the cases of the prisoners. But I think we all feel that it's unlikely that they're going to suggest that any of those people should be released. And then we've got the handful of people facing the broken trial system. But the key thing that we all need to know and say is this acceptable and if this really isn't acceptable, how do we keep pushing it, is that because he shut the door on it, because he doesn't want to release anybody, he's made it abundantly clear again that Guantanamo is what it always was when it started. A place where the rules don't apply. A place beyond the law. You can only get out of that prison at the whim of the President of the United States and look who is now the President of the United States that we all would have to look to to see whether he would dame through his privilege to release any of these people, because the law can't help them. The law cannot release anyone from that prison. There is no end of hostilities that people normally cease to listen to. People normally cease to in wartime would be able to say, this has happened, let me go now. There are no criminal charges that are going to be brought. So we have to find ways this year, those of us who care, to try and at least change the situation that we have to meet in a year's time that we can't let him get away with that and that we have to wake up the American people to an understanding that this is so unacceptable. 16 years is such a long time. My son turned 18 just before Christmas. He was two when John Panama opened. So there are teenagers in this country all around the world who have not known any other life apart from a world where the United States and in many ways my country, the United Kingdom are permanently at war, permanently at war. And the United States has set up a prison where if an American was held there for one day under those circumstances there would be outrage. But these are Muslim men held there and it's 16 years. This is how many days 16 years is. 5,845. That's how long Guantanamo has been open today. And I'd like you if you would to think, how long would it take me to think of 5,845 different things one for each of those days that this wretched place has been open. It's going to take you a very, very long time. It's such a huge amount of time It's such a huge amount of time. This is a poster campaign for the campaign that Tom and I set up on the 10th anniversary of the Guantanamo, 6 years ago. And this is one that we're running this year. I invite you if you go to the closed Guantanamo website and they're interested, take a photo with it, send it to us. It's part, we set a gitmo clock to go with it. It's counting as we speak how many days, hours, minutes and seconds the prison has been open. And if you print that it will freeze exactly how much time has it left. And it's just part of a small gesture. We're all still, all of us trying through various ways. This submission, the lawsuit today, I hope that at least gets media interested. We can get talking about this again. But that's primarily, I think, what we need to do. I think we spent a year being bamboozled. I think we spent a year in distress, in unable to really work out how we can cope with such an ill-disciplined and crazy regime that we've all ended up waking up every morning going, what has he tweeted now? How do you take on that kind of government? But we need to find a way to get Guantanamo back on the radar and point out that it is as abominable now as it was today. It was open 16 years ago. Thank you. Well, first of all, I apologize. I don't know, I have my hearing aids on and this thing, I can't turn it off for some of you. I wish there was something terribly profound to say. Let me say one thing in looking at Guantanamo and then I just want to give some impressions I had because I, with my colleague Kim Ferguson and Shelby made it in Shelby Sullivan that is from Reprieve. We're down there last week and I haven't been down there in five years. I want to give just some impressions of the absurdity of it. Let me say, and I forget, so there are 41 people there. The real story of Guantanamo one story is the military commission how silly they are but you've got to remember that's for the few people who have ever been charged with any war crimes and the question there is should they be tried in the United States or a civilian corridor in these silly military commissions. Military commissions haven't worked but the real story of Guantanamo is not those people who have been charged. It's the people who are held without charge forever. I mean in our system we really shouldn't be imprisoned. It's the basic thing unless you're charged with a crime and you can have a trial. To hold somebody without charge and without any ability to really test the basis for their imprisonment is so fundamentally wrong. So fundamentally against the Anglo-American system of justice and Karen I've got to say to think that the New habeas petition might connect to people because it talks about sexual harassment or something. I don't know but let me just say I mean those are terrible things but what's happening in Guantanamo is so much fundamentally worse that we can't connect on that is disgraceful to me. Now let me just give some impressions of Guantanamo and you know I want to give visceral things. First of all it's just so damn difficult to get there. We had a one day meeting scheduled on Thursday of last week with our client a new client for us an old client for Shelby and by the way what we're trying to do is change the system through this case so the laws will once again release Court of Appeals decision that's deprived everyone of a legal remedy and get it back on but anyway so to do that getting down there we need to schedule a way in advance so we're no commercial planes to go there the military did have a plane that goes from Norfolk it leaves at 6am on Wednesday morning 6am in the morning from Norfolk and comes back takes all day on Friday so we had to go Tuesday night to Norfolk to get there to catch a 6am flight on the way there are the three of us in our car in a taxi going to the military air base as we get the air base they wouldn't let us in now we had everything from the military up here of why we can get in all the authorization and the guy on the other end of the phone at 5.15 or something said well you need to have an escort we don't need to have an escort or it's talking in all this military gobbledygook what the hell is that he said sir you're with the military that's the way we talk but they had no idea what they were talking about finally thank God at the last minute some guy came on and he said well I'll let you in I may get in trouble for it so we almost mystified to get there it's this military arbitrary inflexible rule so we get in there get on the plane we spend Wednesday night go over Thursday meet with this guy come back plane's supposed to come back finally the plane's canceled so for a one day meeting it's a four or five day trip that you need to schedule before just the difficulty of that then as I said dealing with the military changing rules that are absolutely arbitrary with absolutely inflexible people it's maddening then you go to the base itself I forgot the base I don't know how many people here have been to Guantanamo will you probably think of Guantanamo as a prison unit what not it's a big base it's 45 square miles 45 square miles big thing with berries and buses and all that and you get the sense of a thing with the prison on the side you Kim said it very well it's like a a cheap tourist cruise ship because they have their fake irish bar there and other little things there's an absurdity to the whole place that's crazy and you're struck also by how extraordinarily expensive it is you've got these military there you've got facilities you've got a water desalification plant or whatever it is all these massive things and all these things for these people going around it and you say why why is this place even there Shelby told me that she had conversations from people down there on all her recent trips and they said it was absolutely necessary for us protecting American security against what against Cuba can you think that Cuba is a threat to the United States but the absurdity of this it cost billions of dollars to keep Guantanamo open then I haven't talked about it this way before but you get to the prison which is you need to cross the ferry and then you take a 10 minute car ride and you get to the prison which is over the hills overlooking the sea which would probably be beautiful Trump might turn it into a hotel sometime who knows it's a prison built for what 770 people which is largely empty now but it has the same things as before as I remember you go in huge fences with guard posts and everything with razor wire all around it you finally get in to see the you go through all these things they check you in they do all this and you go into these little huts where they bring the prisoners to meet you 14 years ago when I first went there and kept going on the poor guy comes in here and he's still shamed by his ankles to an iron ring in the floor I haven't met this guy before he's been there since May 2002 May 1st 2002 the very day we first brought the first petition for Habeas Corpus on behalf of the Kuwaitis of it so he's been there 15 and a half years more than or about half of his life why is he there it's classified but I can tell in general he's there because he attended or he stated places where they say Taliban state Taliban or Al-Qaeda state I'm sure I've stated hotels where some bad people have been to but this is really the evidence why he is there nice guy when you talk about the human spirit how people their paintings he is one who has had many paintings and some of the best it's extraordinary to me the resilience of the human spirit because he still survives he goes on and he has hope but you ask him what it's like and I hope I'm not saying classified things and if these fools think it's classified let them try to prosecute me the difficulty of living here is living in a system and think of what I confronted with the military trying to get on the plane he said it's the arbitrariness of the rules the fact that there are no transparent rules that they change all the time there is no clear discretion so you can have one guard unit which allows you to have tweezers and then the next guard unit comes up and they take it away they change all the time so you are absolutely at the whim of these people it's so much different and more difficult than being in a prison in a real prison in a prison as tough as it is you abide by them and the guards need to abide by them no maybe other prisoners don't but that's not so here and also in a prison even if it happens wrongly you're convicted you've had your day in court and you're convicted these are guys who proclaim, I mean our guy absolutely proclaims his innocence he never did anything wrong he was down there and he's there without reason, without an ability to test it so we centered on leaving it's so absurd and disgraceful this guy if he admitted that he had done something wrong if he admitted that he had provided material support to terrorism he would have gone in five years in prison he's been there 16 years he would have been out of there by now and he said his son is 18 over Christmas I spent the Christmas with my grandkids my oldest grandkids my oldest grandkids I know you won't believe I could have grandkids that is 13 her entire life Guantanamo has been in the district it can be there 30 years from now the absurdity of this place is just terrible what are we going to do about it I don't know it shows the failure of our democracy you know Obama to my mind and I'll say it Obama was a total joke on this he could have closed Guantanamo he could have restored the rule of law there he was afraid to do it because he didn't want to offend people in Congress Trump's not going to do it because his base doesn't want to do it how does our democracy deal with this issue the way it's normally dealt with it is through the law and the law has not applied to Guantanamo because the DC circuit has taken it away our plan is to count on useless politicians or public opinions which doesn't give a damn about it as a matter of fact when I get back people say why do you go there who cares about Guantanamo it's really still open it's out of sight out of mind so there that's it thanks so I want to pull us back a little bit from the focus on Guantanamo which we'll return to Guantanamo is just one part of the larger American detention policy and as you noted it's one that has continued but has somewhat been stymied with the refusal to send anyone new to Guantanamo in recent years despite Trump's claims that he was going to do it or wanted to so I want to throw two questions to you about the broader detention policy one is whether we're seeing an era where the US is now refusing to detain people itself and to what extent the United States is engaged in detention operations and we've seen and the second one is to what extent the United States' cooperation with partner organizations is posing its own threat of many of the very practices that worried people so much about Guantanamo given who some of our partners are and allegations of torture and long-term detention and atrocities beyond detention on the part of US counterterrorism partners from East Africa and Syria and Iraq and of relevance to those is that really an American being held who the administration claims they can't bring the US to charge really it won't bring the US to charge and that's now given the courts of that they can't continue to detain them without giving them some sort of legal aspect or now seeking to transfer to a third party country so I'd like to throw that to all three of you where do we stand outside of Guantanamo with this last guy and person who's been designated an enemy to combat and person with designation that hasn't been used in that way for a long time he's a dual citizen I'm not sure he'd be transferred to a third country but to his other country a citizenship I think that's what it is but what's interesting about that if you go back in time to look at how individuals capture the blood, how fair this issue has come up, what to do with them you know, Hamdi was a dual citizenship by mistake taken to Yasser Hamdi by mistake taken to Guantanamo early on dual Saudi which is I think what this guy is this new guy and eventually through a long series moved from Guantanamo then here to as an enemy combatant and then eventually released the court didn't really want to deal with it but now you have but John Walker Lin who captured at the same time held on the same ship not brought to Guantanamo brought into the federal system not declared an enemy combatant a U.S. citizen, not a dual national is still in prison so it's interesting how this issue of dual nationality is going to play out also your issue about going to detain when President Obama gave his famous executive orders when he first took office he said we're not going to torture anymore he was going to find a way to crush Guantanamo but he also said that there was going to be a detention policy set up and I've never been able to figure out and I know people in Washington will say that there's some kind of detention policy but what is it what we saw instead running away from having to deal with what were just intractable political issues and the institutionalization of a much way larger targeted killing program than we'd ever see and what some people I think legitimately wrote was we had exchanged the complexities of the detention policies for a drone killing without due process and I think there is a relationship between these two things now the White House has been talking about issuing this White House issuing an executive order on Guantanamo for quite some time and then it just sort of stole it never came out and it makes perfect sense to me why bother I don't have to do anything as Tom said the rules can change anytime it's there as a black hole nobody really cares about it so to my knowledge we don't have a detention policy as you've asked I'm not sure it would look like I'm not sure that if we had one it would be I think it would be incredibly satisfying to at least three of us sitting here so we've just run away from this as a country and Guantanamo is the symbol of our running away from it I think you're absolutely right about how the drone program largely replaced detention which turned out to be very messy I remember under Obama hearing about how in battlefield areas people who were countries that the U.S. was in war with who were captured, who were foreign nationals who were being sent back to those countries but it was never a story that became a major story it was never officially explained as to exactly what the policy was I think it's a small area between things that's under discussion because they were still bringing people to face trial in the United States has a long history of working throughout the whole Guantanamo period that's what's happened I think that for some of us it's always been dubious that first phase of capturing and moving somebody to bring them to justice in the United States was at least as a recognisable end destination so I do wonder about exactly where they think they're going with this and there's a very troubling story from the U.S. about dual nationals that I think may be relevant which most people in Britain don't know and I'm not sure how many people in the United States know but it seems that when our current colossally incompetent prime minister she shares the same adjectival word was the home secretary when she was a virulently racist home secretary it seems that she on a couple of occasions found that there were dual national British citizens out in Syria who completely extra-judicially the intelligence people decided were terrorists so she stripped them of their British nationality told the Americans where they were and then had them killed in drone attacks it's kind of shocking isn't it I mean it really is shocking and um I think the issue of citizenship I brought that up as part of something else I've been talking about in public has been the issue of changing the notion of how you no longer have your citizens is changing and there is a very early memo that was written by the Department of Justice early on about rethinking how you give up your citizenship to factor when you start with dual nationals and then you end up wanting to strip single national people of their nationality and we should all watch out who's attention to top under the law it's clear if you're the way you can get away with a lot of things is that people don't have constitutional rights they have constitutional rights US constitutional rights and that's what the whole debate has always been about then you can't torture you need to give them you can't hold them without the process facing the charges and everything else okay so if you're a US citizen you have US constitutional rights if you're a US citizen even abroad you have constitutional rights if you're a US citizen you have constitutional rights in the United States the question is then what constitutional rights do non-citizens have outside the United States the boomedian decision which is the last one we won said that at least in a place like Guantanamo which is under the control of the United States a non-citizen there has the right at least constitutional right to habeas corpus what that would mean if somebody in this and this worries people if the US had a plan before Guantanamo get these little grease spaces around the world where they'd have total control but not have sovereignty and there they can treat suspect without any constitutional rights I think boomedian changed that they can't do that so they do it under cover now and if you do it in a place let's say in a war zone where the United States really doesn't control the place but you can do it you probably have flexibility but that's the legal problems that they deal with so now they're doing it under the table you know now our next hopefully we can extend constitutional rights all people should have the constitutional right not to be abused by US officials wherever they are so one of the big changes in politics in the US that surrounds the Trump victory is the collapse of a lot of different political categories that had previously defined our politics in terms of two parties so I'm wondering for the movement to close Guantanamo how does that change the political field of who can be appealed to is the rise and dominance of Trump and people who are traditionally at the forefront of the Republican Party opening possibilities in different parts of the Republican Party for appeals to close Guantanamo and similarly in the Democratic Party is closing Guantanamo going to become an issue where people close in around it or will there be a continued tension where even within the Democratic Party there's advocacy for keeping Guantanamo or not moving fast enough to close I think the problem is really not the Republican Party I think the problem is that the Democrats or at least the Democrats in old time middle the road Republicans who when we grew up really had a strong moral sense about what the United States stood for have dropped back Trump and Trumpism was empowered by the failure of the other side to articulate the clear principles for what this country stands and that are not tolerated to be violated you know this country doesn't stand for smashing other people and being lousy and doing that you know getting on my soap opera but we are not a place the United States is an ideal it's an ideal of individual rights and liberty protected by the rule of law and that's what we stand for and that's what we're great about I mean Democrats and Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower stood very clearly for that when people are afraid to articulate that and stand for that and fight for that that's what happened we need the old to stand up and tell people that they should be proud of being Americans not because they're white but because we have a principle that has been the hope of the world so we don't do that that's the problem Tom and I discussed how not Trump himself or even Elements of the Administration but that somehow if establishment in some way might listen to criticism from other places so what we did recently was that we spoke to MPs in the UK and we got a cross party group of MPs to write a letter to the government today calling for the prisoners of proof to be released calling for the prison to be closed and we also as Tom was pointing out not just directing this at Trump it just goes straight in the bin but to send it to John McCain he's the chair of the Armed Services Committee because John McCain took an interest in the case of Shaka Arma several years ago when four British MPs came over in 2015 to call for his release and the other guy is the head of which other... So that's what the MPs have done today they've also issued an early day motion in the British Parliament but as far as I know this is really the first time that it's starting to come back on the international radar as I said earlier I think we've all been in a fog for the last year because trying to cope with what Trump and Bannon and all the terrible stuff that's been coming out all the time a year ago when we were doing Guantanamo we were between Obama and Trump and nobody knew what to do about anything this is the first year that we can say clearly this is Donald Trump's Guantanamo he owns it so we can start trying to find these ways and so hopefully we'll get more interest I'm hoping that the European Parliament will want to get involved in trying to say something because if we remember back to the Bush days a lot of this was how it started as well a lot of it started with murmurings and then bigger movements among international allies to say you can't do this and that's the problem of the domestic political situation here I would not have any idea how to provide a solution to that but I think there's been a failure of the leadership on the part of the Democrats the Democrats and some of the Bush people who contended at the time that they wanted to do it differently I would hold them to that and I think they really do this would be their moment so I think it could be both of them Before we throw it out to you two questions I want to bring us back to this question of the future of citizenship and detention policy and more broadly how the idea of citizenship may be under itself these days and I'd like to be framed up with sort of two issue areas that relate to it and the rise of groups like ISIS and the rise of a significant foreign fighter problem which didn't exist before in the same way maybe raising these detention challenges once again but also when the travel ban originally came out how it initially tried or seemed to at least include people with green cards which then got smacked down by the court so are we in an age where citizenship is the self under challenge and citizenship and permanent residency connected to that as a particularly vulnerable step between citizens and those with no protection so I don't think it's anything specific under challenge so I mean yes but I think it's a larger question of national identity and I think that there is a lot of identity fluid identity issues in the world at large and that there is a national identity issue here and when Tom speaks about what the United States isn't a place it's an idea and an ideal this is up for play now it's in discussion and part of that is what does it mean as a citizen and how are we defining citizen and how are we cherishing open doors to other people becoming citizens and I think it's all under discussion and in a way it's incredibly distasteful but I think the only way to respond to it is to say okay do you want to talk about it we'll talk about it here's you know here are the ideals we think this country is about and here's what we're willing to do to protect them, preserve them I think one of the really problematic things in all of this is that those of us who are embracing the constitution fighting for like these two gentlemen have been for so long is that this is the old guard you know they're the conservative look at the constitution look at what we have look at who we are and yet there's this sense that we're in a new century a new age and that so much is in transition so we have to be bigger than we've been now in terms of our our intellectual capacity to deal with very large issues of national identity of maybe not being so rooted in the world as we saw it but figuring out ways to make that world the bigger world for now and I don't think we have the intellectual direction or anywhere for that but I think that's really important we have to say the same thing about the UK as well you're a colonial you know you're very different when you need to come spend a bit more time at the moment Tom I don't think I don't think citizenship is under question I think it would be very difficult to do that but I think Karen might be more subtle clearly permanent than anyone who's not a citizen who's under question I think Karen's right the real debate in the United States which no one is articulating I think Trump is very clearly articulating that it's a sort of xenophobic racial complaint that the United States is an old thing and everybody else is intruding on it and the idea of the United States as an idea is under attack and I you know I was struck even in the in the criticisms of the NFL and other athletes kneeling during the national anthem which I think is a sign of respect but the criticisms of them I was struck and I shouldn't I tried to get it published as an op-ed and nobody cared but in 1943 Justice Jackson who was just on the court of 44 wrote a terrific opinion that was about it was all past I can't remember the state I wish you know it requiring teachers and citizens to pledge allegiance to the flag and some people religiously and they were not going to do that and went up and for example they got to its fair and everything and Jackson wrote just a brilliant about the strength of the United States with the diversity of opinions and that we are really not threatened by different people I mean here's what we stand for and it was so well articulated nobody has said that today it's I don't know what's happened to it you know I really seem like an old guy losing it but when I was a kid we had a firmer sense of that we were different you know you could have a good economy in Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy but the country's about more than a good economy it's about believing in certain ideals and nobody stands up for them they're afraid to and that's why I say the real problem is the Democrats and I thought Obama's in this lousy about it standing up and bringing people together patriotically about what we stand for and why we're different and I think that is the debate now the other side is not there I think on just one of the things you mentioned which is the travel ban on mainly Muslim countries which I thought was so appalling and I think the Trump administration did find out that actually a lot of courts thought so as well and there has been a pushback against that which I really hope in the end will be successful because there's something so profoundly shameful about having a president who decides that he's going to ban everybody from a country that very notion that you're not letting anyone in that's the kind of we had that at Guantanamo when none of the Yemenis got released which happened for years and years and years the most difficult place for them to get sent back to none of them do get sent back there actually now they had to find other countries for them but at that time quite a lot of us working on Guantanamo called it guilt by nationality that was how it worked in Guantanamo and to have as a national policy this kind of travel ban I just found so appalling and I really hope that the courts persist in challenging it and actually bringing it down Thanks we'll take questions now we have a mic that will come to you it should be a question not a comment also keep it short and it should add and with the question mark let's start right up in the front the fact that a prisoner even with medical problems cannot come to the United States for care a law passed by congress was signed by the president what's also can you all identify I'm Jim Kobe I'm a surgeon so the question is the fact that a patient who needs medical care can't come to the US for that care that a law passed by congress was signed by the president let me just say I went to high school with me although he's much older than I and I'm so impressed because he's a well-known surgeon who has devoted the last 6, 7 or 8 years to the human rights causes and you Jim just to tell the story because he told me before there's a Guantanamo prisoner who's been suffering from terrible black needs surgery they won't take him to Miami so Jim consults with him from here they take him and our machines and Guantanamo badly and improperly and Jim say why can't he come to Miami it's not all it's because he has no rights and the military is in charge of him and they said we're not letting him out anywhere and they're afraid by the way if he comes to the United States that some lawyer like I will say he's got rights now so give him rights so they want to keep him out of the United States and it's military bureaucracy too so I should have said nothing when we got out from seeing our clients last week there's a little nice guy who's lots who've been on hunger strike is down 50% in his weight outside waiting to take him back we're 6 military guys in battle gear with plastic mats and everything I said the absurdity but that's it it's the same thing they're not letting him out not a law it's the military that's it so my name is Todd Pierce I'm a retired Army JAG officer I represented a couple three Guantanamo prisoners actually so I got a lot of firsthand experience both with Guantanamo but also with the military mind how the military thinks of things and with a lot of research into the law of war which is a separate sphere of the rule of law as you guys know that and there's a Supreme Court as routinely said in the Marshall law etc in Hawaii and Japanese American removal is that Marshall law is merely the arbitrary will of the military commander and I think if I may trying to make this short but what we have failed to do and why with all respect to Karen and Andy you only have mentioned symptoms but the deeper problem is the extreme deference that we have given to the military ever since 2001 Trump is an odious man of course but he's got the generals around him and the military overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump he's not an outlier with the military he represents that militaristic viewpoint back in the 40s the United States took it more seriously I'm getting there but I haven't heard anybody mention the war now you don't have to mention that we're losing the global war in terror all you have to do is look at a situation map of today in 2001 but walking in here New America they published books like The Generals by Thomas Ricks celebrating Petraeus and as Petraeus, rather Ricks readily conceded when challenged it was a failure, the surge of the failure but yet there's a cottage industry built upon celebrating the military, the militaristic values the warrior etc and my question I guess is perhaps we need to look deeper and get beyond the symptoms of a guy who just happens to be a very repulsive man in office today and look at how the system itself, how the psychology under this constant threat of perpetual war or what we see as a threat has changed the American people to where we do we turn to the military in demand that they protect us and put aside constitutional rights in favor of the law of war etc so perhaps you can comment on how we actually stop collaborating with the militarists and perhaps work at rejecting their worldview so that we can get back to constitutional rights and international law. Let's get the thoughts on difference than militarism more broadly Right and wrong and all this and you know it's an interesting thing because as you know some of our greatest allies in this battle were military guys John Hudson, Don Guter a number of four star army generals who just said this is what we stand for and this is wrong and Mattis stood up did he not on torture well but so well no but I mean so there is a sense I mean I would like to see you know one of the fascinating stories when we were kids and McCarthyism was going on the guy who really brought down McCarthy was Dwight Eisenhower he said this is just so fundamentally against what I stand for as an American I remember it was interesting even you know what happened Orrin Hatch who I'm not that fond of all that said you know during the Charlottesville thing you remember during the Ku Klux Klan in the Nazis and Trump wasn't condemning him and Hatch said you know I fought against Nazis I'm not going to tolerate them here but we need more of that education you know I don't know what we do but you know it's a good point I've been always confused about it because I see some good people and some crazy people can I say one more thing about that gotta remember what really happened the real guys who caused the war weren't the military guys it was people in the White House it was right wing people in the White House Addington and Gonzalez who didn't look at it they were the ones who reversed you know the torture policy who wrote things you know justifying torture even the first year dumbest first year law student would have said oh my god nobody could write that they did I just wasn't so I think we'll take a I think we'll take I hear all of that you know that I wrote a book on how the military the better military was taken over by Rumsfeld during the first hundred days of Guantanamo but I think something else I think it's a bigger thing again I think the distinction between military and civilian is being erased on a lot of fronts I think the distinction between war and crime you know like why aren't we talking about war has been erased on a lot of fronts I think the distinction between guilt and innocence has been erased on a lot of fronts or initially in the name of the war on terror now I see it in a lot of other places so I take your point but as a beginning point I think it's a different discussion that I think we need to start having I also if I could just say Todd I think any any in-depth analysis of Guantanamo and the war on terror needs two fundamental questions about the basis under which those wars were undertaken really thoroughly so you know simple things like soldiers going out to the battlefield and wondering why they didn't have the Geneva Conventions hanging up on the wall because Rumsfeld had told him that that didn't apply simple things like competent tribunals the battlefield tribunals to assess whether the guy who said he was a farmer or not the civilians who were caught up in the fog of war who traditionally you hold a tribunal as near to the place and time of capture as you can they were allowed to call witnesses so that you cannot take to your military prison the civilians who were caught up in war time they expected that when they went to Afghanistan in 2001 guess what that got done away with as well by the way Todd so you know and that was huge the United States had done this in the Gulf War in Iraq in 1991 and the figures of those people were that it was something like two thirds of the people they shouldn't have sent to prison so they let them go but with Guantanamo they had none of that screening but you see other problems as well what you see with any kind of study of the Guantanamo story they went into Afghanistan many of the players were in Afghanistan they start cutting deals with dodgy warlords and then people that they're cutting deals with are ending up sending people to Guantanamo because these people are using the Americans to get rid of their local rivals you know what I mean Todd at every level that you start analyzing the story of why the detention is such a fiasco in the war on terror and why Guantanamo is such a disgraceful place is because of all these errors none of which reflects well on the way that the military is operated so thanks but we have a bunch of people let's get in the tack thank you my name is Maha Hilal and I just have a couple questions one you know I've been to many Guantanamo panels discussions, talks, etc and it seems that the role of Islamophobia is often de-centered in much of these discussions so we're not talking about a prison for white Christians, we're talking about a prison for non-white Muslims so I'm curious to hear more about you know the strategy of incorporating this system of oppression and secondly when I think about the questions that were posed about citizenship you know I'm a Muslim American and I can tell you I have very much fear that my citizenship could be revoked maybe it's not a realistic fear but given what just happened with the citizen who's been detained in Iraq the assassination of Anwar al-Avnaki in 2010 I mean I think we have to think about when we're talking about questions of national identity this administration in particular is crafting a white supremacist national identity so I think we really need to talk about you know what is this national identity how does it correspond to white supremacy and what are the policies that are doing it and just to add on that point three South Asians were recently stripped of their citizenship in the last couple days they were naturalized citizens so it's clear that there is a very distinct concept of national identity and citizenship that the Trump administration is promoting of course these people were held by the Bush administration too and the Obama administration so I wouldn't you know I think the problem is I don't think the policy was adopted to be anti-Muslim I think it's because these people are Muslim from other countries they don't have a base in a democracy that's failed to advocate on their behalf it is without cost to the politicians who do it and there's not enough in it for the weak politicians who won't stand up on their behalf so it's the worst problem of being a minority without political voice or power now with Trump it might have shifted to be anti-Muslim bias but it just happened and nobody cared because they were Muslims I absolutely know what you're saying Mara and I frequently have pointed out to get audiences to understand that can you imagine if Rantanamo was full of Christians or Jewish people, can you imagine the outrage and it follows on from that that when people get that homophobic agenda and that's indicative of some serious problems with racism and Islam that we have in our countries, this is in Britain as well it wasn't originally why Rantanamo was set up, it's just that because they were going to capture Muslims and then when they did capture Muslims it suddenly turns out that racism was in a particularly horrible way your issues about national identity are absolutely simplified to do and I really hope that people whatever their background are going to keep fighting on this because that was really my point of throwing in that stripping the dual nationality anecdote from the UK from the woman who now pretends to be our Prime Minister who has extrajudicially facilitated the assassination of people who were joined British nationals and I think everybody needs to worry and I think those of us my family appears to be British going back as long as as I know I'm not a dual national in British in Britain, there's no other country that anybody didn't like me could say why are you here and why are we not sending him back there but I think the obligation on all of us is to think about what's happening to people who have been put in a more vulnerable position by governments that are veering towards very very dangerous racism one little detail that's not such a good detail but just one little thing you might want to think about is that it's even more pernicious in a way than you've identified because one of the reasons that the racism becomes part of the national security state and the elements of it is this perpetual idea that we don't know who's attacking us we don't really know who it is why, how can we profile we can't profile so instead and Guantanamo is very much this to 800 people of which you know at 700 and more had to be let out because they were the wrong guys this idea that more is better and that find the biggest category you can find whether it's in surveillance or initially in the way the targeted killing is done or in detention is to me a sign of a lack of confidence in our ability to know what's to hurt us and why and so I think it's a I think it's a problem with some deep philosophical issues as well as the more visceral one to identify you know the idea that happens in Trump and Peter people aren't standing up for it is that they're not us and the us is a white group of people they're not us and people need to understand they say us isn't certain people are placed the concepts so when someone who's a citizen is the most and they can all be it's a xenophobic racial fear then the middle here Thank you, my name is Ilhan Cagry and I want to thank you personally for the work that you do my question is about this idea of no one cares does the media not have any responsibility at all it seems to me that caring is manufactured and the more we talk about something the more the media talks about it the more people start caring about it and I think that the media is complicit in making sure that we don't care about certain things and that we do care about other things and I'm not thinking about Fox News but I'm thinking about more responsible supposedly more responsible media outlets and in addition to that they would take in this whole idea of who our enemies are in fact it's true that 50% of Americans think they're going to be killed in a terrorist attack when the possibility of that is so small compared to what the FBI statistics say which is that in right wing white supremacist extremism violent extremism is actually a problem in this country and we don't talk about that and people don't think about that because again the media is not doing its job in correcting our misperceptions and getting us to think about things in a different way I think that's such a great question but it's something that particularly annoys me because I think that the right wing media doesn't have any problem with pumping out hate relentlessly day after day to brainwash people into thinking what they want them to think and the liberal media the establishment left media does not do that and I think that they're failing to understand where the battlefield is in terms of how people think and I think one of the things that we can see with Trump's America is that failure one of the things that we can see with Brexit Britain is that failure now I remember when the Iraq war started the Daily Mirror newspaper which at the time was edited by a man who I don't generally have much time for called Piers Morgan who eventually I have to say sadly because of detainee abuse in Iraq ever sat but before that happened what he did which I thought was remarkable was that for the first few months of the illegal invasion of Iraq he published the WMDometer on the front page of the Daily Mirror which every day said these are how many days it is that the WMD that we went into Iraq for haven't been found that's the kind of campaigning that we should see I don't know I don't see why there isn't a clock on the top of one of the main newspapers in this country telling every American citizen how long Guantanamo has been open I think the question you raise is why we don't care I think it's it's wrong to blame it on the media in part because the media is not going to change that the media reports what's going on and Trump has been terribly successful in being so crazy that it's hard for the media to stay away from everything he says every day that other things get lost and they're going to be reported I really think the failure is more it's not for the media to do campaigns I mean Fox News does it and maybe somebody else but good media should report and go on and have good commentary I think it's more the fault of lack of political leadership I really do we don't have what politician has talked about Guantanamo who's talked about other things they don't I mean I don't mean entertainment like it's entertaining but the amount of Hulu series that are about Al Qaeda wait till you see what's coming out this spring in terms of what caused 9-11 who caused 9-11 what happened where's Guantanamo's story now we've seen so many pieces of this war on terror dramatized not Guantanamo I don't know if that's media but there's some lack of wanting to tell this story to the larger public I'm Dave Kiasper I'm a filmmaker and I've been following the whole culture issue for all these years it still sort of baffles me that the people who who did this who authorized it the people who carried it out there's no question that what they did is illegal domestic law, international law these are crimes serious crimes and how is it that these laws are not enforced how is it that they've gotten totally away from it, totally off without any accountability and is this likely to ever change there is one sentence answer to that which is what President Obama said the week before he took office which is about looking forward and not back but you know but on the other hand I think that what the American people need to be aware of the Senate's then is that the Senate's intelligence committee spent four years investigating the CIA's torture program and produced a report now I think it's very sad that we haven't seen the unredacted but full version of the report and that all we got was a redacted executive summary but that was nearly that was around 500 pages there was a lot of devastating information there and actually the conclusions of that report showing how brutal it was how it exceeded even the lines that have been set how the CIA lied repeatedly about its success absolutely damaging I have to say there is not for a single moment could I imagine that happening in the weekend we have from the top a situation of almost complete secrecy over anything that they don't want anyone to know about it this was something to do with checks and balances that certainly still exists in some ways and what worries me that I've been talking about just the last few days is the continuing privatization of elements of the military and the intelligence because of course they're not going to be accountable to anybody under any basis but I think that report went a certain way but where it left it was in a territory that was more like a truth and reconciliation process as like we've aired in the public what we did wrong we know that the people who did it have told us they won't do it again and in fact you saw that when Trump said let's bring back torture who didn't jump on it and say don't be an idiot who didn't jump on it let me tell you the majority of American people today believe, no Andy I take issue with it your question Diane Feinstein released this report didn't matter a damn she did a great courageous thing it's an extraordinary thing the majority of American people today believe in torture now you know partly I mean I'd like to see a filmmaker you know I have not seen a seminar out here it says does torture work is it right have we ever examined it no we have people yelling back and forth but somebody should do it I'd like a film on it you know I really I mean it's a terrible thing that when we grew up we were the guys who did the torture they were the North Koreans and everything we would never touch it now this country believes in torture the release of that report meant nothing except courage on by Diane Feinstein and people weren't held accountable and they should have been can they in the future I don't know these were gross crimes against humanity and it was really right in the White House David Addington they purpose and John Yu who's now a professor at Stanford you know purposely misinterpreted the law to allow torture and this country has never come to account of it and those people are heroes to a whole group of people and Obama didn't allow anybody to be held accountable for the investigation to you and Bybee which was going to conclude that they were guilty of professional misconduct was allowed to be awarded there so you know I don't disagree that someone should be held accountable and I think that remains an objective but you're a filmmaker I think films can have more of an impact than reporters and the media and everything and I'd like to see some good films on this that can talk about this about this poor kid who is there I mean you know Slahi's book My Guantanamo Diary is going to come out in a movie and maybe it will catch on to this so people need to relate to what's wrong one of the best movies I saw in Guantanamo years ago was a wonderful movie interviewing a detainee at the end and you felt the horror of what it was like to be caught up in a regime of torture and lawlessness but if people can feel some of those things and see them it would make a difference not just news stories and everything not talking heads but a visual where you can relate to people one depressing January visit a few years ago though that's what was opening across the country Zero Dark Thirty how much damage did that do don't go and see any films by Catherine Bigelow by the way I think that would be an effective kind of point so we have to wrap up the event but first I'd like to just get a yes or no from all three of you on what I think are two important questions looking forward the first is do you think there's any chance that Guantanamo will close in the next four years or eight years if Trump is re-elected and the second is in the future if there's a presidency that is more willing to close Guantanamo or willing to make steps towards closing it are we at the point where you think there's political will to deal with the set of prisoners who have been termed the forever prisoners and who are not among those who have been considered or even cleared for release but have historically been separated off as many of them we do know we're part of Alcada are we set to get to a point where we can release them and not hold them forever or put them through a civilian process I don't know I've always thought that when we get to the numbers get smaller and smaller we get to some very difficult issues about what do you do with Abba's evaders who state this but we're still not there and at the moment we're still dealing which nobody seems to know or care about with a guy that Tom went to who's only held because he hasn't behaved well in the US and it's not about what he did before he ended up in the US there's a prisoner at Guantanamo who isn't even who they think he is they have a photo of him and it's not him they've called him a forever prisoner and they don't know who he is how can this still be happening? let me set for you two questions though because to come back I think if our case works and we restore the law there maybe we can close it but otherwise no in four years I don't want to contemplate Trump being re-elected the only thing and the other thing you're assuming and what Andy said is really relevant a lot of these forever prisoners they're not held because they know they were al-Qaeda or anything it's because they've misbehaved in Guantanamo or because these are people who they do not they do not have proof to bring to trial and it's not because oh they know they did it because they admit it under torture torture so it's not don't think there are people who are al-Qaeda there and we just can't try them it's just bullshit it's a legal term so yes I think we've got to have somebody as the guts to do it and if they want to try other people let them try I think it's like we're back in some ways in the early days of the Bush administration that we have to work out that it's us that has to fight our own government you and the United States to keep finding ways to say yet again and in a big way this is wrong and it needs foreign intervention as well it needs other countries to say to the United States well I'm always the person that posts I think it's going to take some death political leadership to happen it's not just a big deal the realities of the things that threaten this country are so far off the mark from what's housed at Guantanamo that it is not even a non-starter and that somebody will try and release these guys and it'll be over but that's the right and competition well with that thanks to our speaker