This is DEFCON-3

By KT McFarland

What do to about Guantanamo Prison is President Obama's first big national security test and it looks like he's failed it - or has he?

He's halted the military tribunals the Bush administration set up to deal with terrorists. He's decided to close Guantanamo within a year. But he's not said what he's going to do about the hundred or so prisoners still there.

What are his options? He can't just release them - they would rejoin Al Qaeda the moment they were free - which is exactly what three Guantanamo alums recently.

He can't transfer them to other countries - no one wants them, and the countries that do will torture them or, like Yemen, look the other way while they escape.

It would be difficult to try them in American courts, with the full rights of American citizens. Most were captured on the battlefront by military personnel who didn't read them Miranda rights while bullets were flying overhead. The US military are not CSI Miami. In all likelihood the terrorists would get off on technicalities, even if we knew they were guilty.

But Guantanamo, and the excesses of Abu Ghraib weigh heavily in the court of public opinion. They've been great recruitment tools for Al Qaeda. So closing them makes sense, too.

Maybe Obama is crazy like a fox. He's kept a campaign promise, made a clear break with Bush's policies, and thrown a bone to his left wing base. He's earned PR points abroad, especially in Europe and the Muslim world. But he's still got a year to figure out what to do - and there's nothing to prevent him from pouring old wine into new bottles by creating new national security courts to try them and a new prison to hold them.

One this is for sure - Obama had better figure out what to do soon because the hundred or so prisoners left in Guantanamo will soon be joined by hundreds if not thousands of prisoners once the Afghanistan war heats up. [more on KT...]