According to press accounts, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told a Senate hearing today that the Obama administration has identified 116 Guantanamo detainees (out of the remaining 211) who can be transferred. That’s an incredibly high number – much higher than the numbers that were reported earlier this year. And given the Obama administration’s past transfer decisions (see here, here, and here), there are undoubtedly some very questionable detainees in that lot. An analysis of the Gitmo population makes it very difficult to see how the administration could have possibly reached that number, unless it is willing to transfer some very dangerous individuals just for the sake of closing Guantanamo. The number one problem here is that there is no transparency in any of this. How did the Obama administration decide these 116 detainees were suitable for transfer? We don’t know. It is highly unlikely that the military has cleared all 116 detainees. As of last year, we knew that almost all (if not all) of these 211 detainees were found to still be threats after having been initially classified enemy combatants. Right now, Republicans on the Hill and journalists should be asking the following questions for the sake of transparency and debate:
