Headline Problem

The AP writes a story called "Bush Open to Possibly Closing Gitmo Camp" wherein their only evidence of this new policy is this quote:

"We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America," Bush said when asked in an interview with Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto if he would close the detention center.

I don't see the connection. But this other quote, further down the story, is what I see as the problem with how cavalier the Administration's attitude is about Guantanamo:

Amnesty International also recently called for Guantanamo's closure, saying the facility is the "the gulag of our time" a characterization Bush dismissed again Wednesday.

"It's just absurd to equate Gitmo and Guantanamo with a Soviet gulag," he said. "Just not even close."

And it SHOULDN'T be close. The fact that you need to make a comparison is bad enough.

Look, nobody (at least not me) is asking you to let all the prisoners at Guantanamo free (though charging them with something instead of holding them indefinitely would be, I don't know, in keeping with Constitutional principles). But the reputation of the camp, and similarly our reputation, has been sullied. It is, as Joe Biden said on "This Week" last Sunday, a major recruitment tool for terrorists. Shut it down and scatter the prisoners to other bases and get this giant stain expunged from our human rights record. Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have turned our moral high ground into a molehill, and I fear we've lost the moderate Muslim as a result, a group whose help and support we badly need against extremists. This is serious business, and it's not an admission of defeat or weakness to simply shut down the camp and move the prisoners offsite. But that's what the above quote says to me. While Bush and others parry characterizations of "gulag," billions see the American rhetoric of spreading freedom and democracy as empty.

We need American ideals to mean something. They can't mean one thing for Americans and another for the rest of the world.