Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reportedly suggested that the Guantanamo detainees could be brought to the United States. This possibility has been raised before, and then, as now, there has been considerable opposition to the idea. Americans worry, apparently that the suspected terrorists could pose a threat to, in the words of Mitch McConnell, "our neighborhoods." A year ago, the community around Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, responded in horror at the idea of detainees being brought to the maximum security facility there. Then as now, Kansas residents displayed a 'not-in-my-backyard" attitude about the pending moving of the prisoners to a US neighborhood. And today, Montana weighed in. "Not on my watch," U.S. Senate Max Baucus told the AP despite some support for the idea among city council members. Opponents cite the presence of Gitmo detainees as a security risk which these communities are not necessarily equipped for.

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Ali al-Marri's plea deal coming just two months after moving his case to federal district court from his long military detention at the Charleston Naval brig is one clear example that our existing institutions were perfectly capable of dealing with the challenges posed by al Qaeda terrorist suspects. Karen's description of the early days at Guantanamo is another. Even though the mission was somewhat unusual, General Michael Lehnert's selection as the first commander of the detention camp at Guantanamo was based on his experience handling previous migrant crisis operations, upon which the early military plans for the camp were based. It's time we get our institutions back to the tasks they were designed for: prosecuting crimes in federal courts and using military detention only in direct support of battlefield operations.

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Today it looks like the international interest in prosecuting the Bush lawyers is heating up once again. The Spanish central criminal court has apparently decided, notwithstanding the Spanish attorney general's intervention, that it will charge forward in the case against the Bush Six. Indeed, it seems to be reading all the documents that come out of Washington as they break, because the investigating magistrate has expanded his case to take into account and he opinion reflects special attention to the OLC memoranda and to the Senate Intelligence Committee's play-by-play recounting of the steps involved in the creation of the OLC memos. At the same time, Judge Jay Bybee, who has kept quiet up to this point, has decided to answer a series of questions put to him by the New York Times. He wrote those opinions in good faith, he insists to the paper of record. He holds to the same views today.

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I admit that when I first saw the title of Karen Greenberg's The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, I was a bit concerned. I couldn't match the description of Guantanamo as the 'least worst' anything with the images of orange jumpsuit-clad detainees with bags on their heads shackled to the floor of a military cargo plane or them shuffling off to their make-shift wire mesh cells. But displaying the kind of intellectual rigor and analysis that was sorely lacking during the period it portrays, Karen's book challenges our perceptions and greatly adds to our understanding of how we ended up in such a mess.

The most common defense of the Bush administration's policies on detention and interrogation is that the period just after 9/11 was dominated by constant threats of new attacks and top officials were casting around for anything that would keep the country safe. We now know from this and other recent revelations that top Bush officials consciously chose to grasp at straws rather than rely on the established procedures designed for just this mission and fought the existing military and law enforcement leadership to implement their disastrous policies. We got the Guantanamo we know today because that's the way the Bush administration wanted it.

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One thing that comes up in the book and seems to last to this day that I think needs further thought - and I'm wondering if Michael and others have thought about - is the way in which the Public Affairs Office at the Pentagon has had so much control over the Guantanamo story.

Now, here is a story about the uniformed military being opposed by the civilian Pentagon leadership. But all inquiries have to go through the Pentagon Public Affairs Office, and if you contact the uniformed military directly - they say they cannot respond until they clear with Washington. This makes for an absolute control that, along with military protocols about obedience and following the chain of command, successfully keeps the real story hidden. So, while following the rules may have worked to some better effect in these early days, it has also led us down the wrong path time and time again in the detention effort. The PAO office is but one example.

A lot has been written about Guantanamo. But Karen Greenberg's amazing page turner of a book The Least Worst Place on the first 100 days of Guantanamo is unique. No other book describes the struggle by some military people, particularly the head of the Joint Task Force running the camp, Michael Lehnert, to adhere to law and humane treatment. When he was told that the Geneva Conventions, did not protect the detainees he still tried to apply their provisions. When he was told that the detainees were the "worst of the worst," he was still willing to treat them humanly and concluded that many should not have been there at all and were not terrorists. He even brought a Muslim chaplain to the camp. It is not that Guantanamo was so wonderful under his leadership, but within the confines of what was possible once Rumsfeld and others had sent the detainees to an off shore penal colony, he was able to lessen some of its harshness.

The book describes the struggle between Lehnert on the one hand and Rumsfeld, Haynes (DOD counsel) and other DOD personnel who wanted all of the rules thrown out including the Geneva Conventions. This was anathema to many career military people. Sadly, within a few months Lehnart was gone and the genuine brutality we correctly associate with Guantanamo was let loose. Karen's book demonstrates that many within the military were shocked and tried to fight back against the lawlessness. If you want an inside look at Guantanamo from the perspective of those given the job in the first 100 days, read this book.

With President Obama's call for the closing of Guantanamo and his tasking of groups to consider new detention and interrogation policies, the way we got into this mess becomes more and more important. My intention, in researching and writing The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days was to discover, at the on-the-ground level just what occurred when the Pentagon's intentions to deviate from law, policy, custom, training procedures and the like became clear to those who were first given the mission of detainee incarceration. Yet over the course of my interviews - with soldiers and marines, with officers and enlisted men, with the international community represented by human rights advocates and law enforcement officials involved with Guantanamo, with Washington officials, with detainees themselves, and with myriad observers who visited Guantanamo in these early days - I learned much more than I had set out to do.

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