I was happy to read the news today that Obama plans to close Guantánamo Bay prison camp. This is good news for America, and should be good news for the prisoners there.

As I read up on it though, I was saddened to hear that the prisoners are just being moved to other countries. This is rather frustrating because as Noam Chomsky puts it — and I'm paraphrasing — there's only one reason to have off-site torture prison camps: to go around American law.

I'm really not sure what the point is in closing Guantánamo if it just means moving the prisoners elsewhere. Pretty stupid use of resources.

Here's a juicy quote from the article:

People who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration has insisted that such a measure is necessary to close the Guantánamo camp and bring some detainees to the United States.

In other words, we could bring the prisoners to a camp in the U.S., but that would mean we couldn't hold them in tiny cells indefinitely, and that American law would be necessary. Wow. Can't have that, can we?