Barack Obama has been adamant about his plan to close the Guantanamo detention facility. During his 60 Minutes interview:

“I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I’ve said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”

Obama’s position is based – as are the rest of the left – on his belief that the people there are the innocent victims of the Bush/Cheney regime.

But of course that simply isn’t true. Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard writes:

“This perception, however, was always skewed. The new administration will soon discover from its review of the Guantánamo files what motivated its predecessor: The scope of the terrorist threat was far greater than anyone knew on September 11, 2001. But for the Bush administration’s efforts, many more Americans surely would have perished.

This conclusion is based on a careful review of the thousands of pages of documents released from Guantánamo, as well as other publicly available evidence. In 2006, the Department of Defense began to release the documents to the public via its website.

The files had been created during the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) hearings held for nearly 600 detainees. This unclassified cache includes both the government’s allegations against each detainee and summarized transcripts of the detainees’ testimony. Although the documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Associated Press, the intelligence contained in the files was largely ignored by the mainstream press for more than two years. Thus, the New York Times reported only the day before the recent presidential election that the files contain “sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees.

The most dangerous men currently incarcerated at Guantánamo are the 14 “high value” detainees. The Bush administration gave them this designation because they are uniquely lethal, having planned and participated in the most devastating terrorist attacks in history. Their collective dossier includes, among other attacks, 9/11, the American embassy bombings (August 7, 1998), the USS Cole bombing (October 12, 2000), and the Bali bombings (October 12, 2002). They are responsible for murdering thousands of civilians around the globe, from the eastern United States to Southeast Asia. Had they not been captured, they surely would have murdered thousands more.

The 14 were originally held not at Guantánamo, but at even more controversial black sites. And the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that have sparked international outrage were principally designed for them. One may doubt the necessity and morality of these techniques, including waterboarding, while still recognizing a fundamentally important point: The 14 high value detainees are not ordinary criminals, but perpetrators of an entirely different order of evil.

It is because of these men, in particular, that the Bush administration initiated the preventive detention regime of which Guantánamo is a part. Processing them as mere lawbreakers would not have advanced the war on terror. To read them their rights and provide them lawyers would have been to throw away their intelligence value. It would have allowed them to carry to the grave many details of still active terrorist plots.”

You’ll remember during 2005 several delegations of congressional representatives visited Gitmo. Many of these were the most vocal critics of the war and the facility. Yet after their visit they had really not much to say, having first seen 1) The type of detainee there, and 2) The good conditions they were kept in.

The larger reason is that each of these congressional visitors received high level briefings on the detainees, their crimes, danger to the US, etc. If you think back much of the “close Gitmo” talk died out – for a time – after this. Congressman Dick Durbin – who had referred to our soldiers as “Nazis”, had this to say after his visit:

“The men and women in uniform who are serving us in Guantanamo have been the best –steadfast, professional, often heroic, working in a very difficult place — bleak and barren, hotter than the hinges of hell. They go to work every day to watch these detainees and try to derive information.”

And added: “They’re not using torture”.

It only revived during the 2006 midterms and of course during the Democratic race for President.

The left has hated Gitmo merely because of the idea that Bush opened it and thus – it’s evil, but the fact is that America has not been attacked since 9/11. This is due to the efforts of the Bush Administration and the tools they put in place.

The question now is whether Obama will in fact order the closing of Gitmo against all the advise of the intelligence and national security officials. If so he alone will bear the responsibility of the inevitable outcome.