The Obama DOJ has repeatedly argued that the Boumediene ruling [requiring habeas corpus procedures for military detainees] should not apply to Bagram, where - the Obama administration insists - it has the power to imprison people with no due process, not even a habeas hearing; the Obama DOJ has succeeded in having that power enshrined. Obama has proposed a law to vest him with powers of "prolonged detention" to allow Terrorist suspects to be imprisoned with no trials. His plan for closing Guantanamo entailed the mere re-location of its indefinite detention system to U.S. soil, where dozens of detainees, at least, would continue to be imprisoned with no trial. And, of course, the President just signed into law the NDAA which contains - as the ACLU put it - "a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision," meaning - as Human Rights Watch put it - that "President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law." Those held at Guantanamo will continue to receive at least a habeas hearing, but those held in other American War on Terror prisons will not. [my emphasis]

Gitmo has come to embody many things in this country over the last decade: Bush’s incompetence and criminality, our bigotry and inhumanity, and – as most would like to treat it now – a big political tussle between Obama and Republicans.

But at every turn – from the Bush Administration grasping claiming the piece of land existed outside the rule of law, to the corrupt legal process that created memos authorizing torture there, to Jim Haynes' insistence that "we can’t have acquittals," to the DC Circuit's continued efforts to make sure detainees get no meaningful review of their detention–Gitmo has been about shedding the rule of law. It has been about finding ways for America to defy the law even while maintaining the pretense we still uphold it. [my emphasis]