Word: guant
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...will be stabilizing the financial system, he said in an interview with CNN shortly before the election, followed by investing in renewable energy, universal health care, middle-class tax cuts and education reform. Then there are the other things he talked about at various points in the campaign: closing Guantánamo, withdrawing from Iraq, renegotiating trade deals, reforming immigration. How quickly those now secondary goals will follow is a major question and source of debate among Obama's advisers. Publicly, they insist that he can do it all, and there is plenty of talk about putting these issues...
...Guantánamo Bay has been seeped in controversy for the greater part of the century. Located on the southeastern tip of Cuba, it is the only U.S base located in a communist country. The 45-square-mile site was originally used as a coaling station for U.S. Navy ships, under a lease drawn up in 1903. U.S. possession of Guantánamo was reaffirmed under former Cuban president Batista in 1934 with a provision that the lease could not be terminated without mutual consent - a provision that was challenged to no avail by Fidel Castro following the Cuban Revolution...
...people detained in Guantánamo since its establishment, many were found to be noncombatants with no ties to either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, many of them mistakenly apprehended or wrongfully turned over by anti-Taliban bounty hunters in Afghanistan. Only around 250 prisoners remain in Gitmo, the majority of whom have either already been cleared or are expected to be cleared of charges due to lack of evidence...
...However, all signs point to the fact that the process of closing Guantánamo once and for all will be exactly that - a process. Housing the remaining detainees on the U.S. mainland to await trial is fraught with issues of its own, including a debate over what type of court would be best equipped to handle such cases, the technical aspects of repatriating and releasing any prisoners cleared of guilt and the question of how or whether to try suspects against whom evidence has been gathered through torture or classified means...
...Either way, it is clear that he will have to come up with a solution quickly. "Guantánamo Bay, for most people, is a lightning rod for everything that's wrong with the United States," says Scott Silliman, a law professor at Duke University and director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "I'm not sure Obama would be able to back away from his campaign pledge...