With policies like these, they might as well just keep Guantanamo open.

As TPM is reporting, Obama has once again mimicked the Bush administration on its "War on Terror" policy.  He's now issued an order legalizing the indefinite incarceration of terrorism suspects.

This is exactly what we didn't want.

This is exactly what we were promised would be over following the closing of Guantanamo.

We were led to believe that the closure of Gitmo meant an end to the suspension of habeus corpus, to the crimes of the Military Commissions Act, to throwing people in jail for life without charging them with a thing.

And in a politically expedient move (questionable, considering how much this will anger liberals), the Obama administration has assured us that even if Guantanamo is closed, we can still sit on detainees for eternity, even if we don't know what they've done.  Even if waterboarding them dozens of times yields no critical, or accurate, information.

Perhaps Obama is trying to appease the NIMBY's-- that's Not In My BackYard: the rallying cry for Republicans who caution that putting an end to the abuse and lawlessness at Guantanamo would precipitate an influx of actual terrorists menacingly licking their lips in state prisons across the country, plotting their next attack.  Evil Muslims-- coming to a correctional institute near you!

I say YIMBY.  Yes in my backyard.  Please.  Why not?  Most of these guys, like the adorable uighurs who've been lounging in Bermuda following their release, are pretty harmless, anyway.  We know that a lot of the prisoners accumulated at Gitmo were simply swept up in the Bush White House's racist, post-9/11 fervor.  They were victims of 'wrong place, wrong time syndrome,' people like Moazzam Begg, author of "Enemy Combatant," who happened to have been in a Muslim country when U.S. forces were less than discriminate in determining what a terrorist was.

What's so insidious about this decree is that it purports to support his larger effort to close Gitmo.  Sure, Republicans will be less squeamish if you say that yes, we will shut it down, but we can also still keep doing the same thing to these prisoners until the end of time.  Don't worry, they won't be released into the actual justice system, or even to a military justice system that's remotely fair (see the testimony of former military officers who have spoken out about the lack of fairness in the military court system, especially for so-called 'enemy combatants.'  Military brass apparently advocated convictions no matter what the cost.)

Of course, closing Guantanamo is pointless if they rubber stamp the continued execution of the Cuban prison's biggest sin: the unconstitutional detainment of these people.

Yes in my backyard, Obama.  In my backyard, people are treated equally under the law.  So whether or not someone once trained to be a suicide bomber, or they had lunch with Khalid Sheik Mohammad, or they were simply a British person of Middle Eastern descent who had the misfortune to be captured by American forces, they still deserve a fair trial.