Andrew Sullivan holds up this video as one reason he’s not a Republican. He then links to Hilzoy who articulates the conclusion that any semi-intelligent adult should be able to reach: “If we can’t have dangerous people living among us, then we are going to have a whole lot of extra prisons sitting around empty.” (Not to mention all the job losses among prison security personnel.)
I’m actually (enthusiastically) in favor of putting the members of the Gitmo gang into maximum security prisons in the Continental U.S., as long as we inform the inmates already housed in those prisons exactly what the Gitmo-ites are suspected of doing or plotting to do. At that point, I imagine “prison justice” would run its course and we wouldn’t have much else to worry about.
Granted, that’s not a lovely thought — and there would, of course, have to be a number of caveats attached to this “plan” (e.g., we might first, God forbid, have to trust a jury of American citizens to convict the Gitmo-ites of crimes) — but all in all, the “prison justice” scenario strikes me as a much better idea than some of the other options already tried.