The Afghan air base is to undergo a $60 million expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as remain at Gitmo.
Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo."
In a single-sentence answer filed with a Washington court, the administration dashed hopes that it would immediately rip up Bush-era policies that have kept more than 600 prisoners in legal limbo and in rudimentary conditions at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
While Peacenik watches the world economy crumble, Peacenik also unfortunately is watching Obama adopt more and more of Bush's policies. Obama gets props for saying he will close Guantanamo, then he blythly turns Bagram air base into a new Guantanamo. And remember, no one really knows who the enemy is in Afghanistan. The enemy is anyone unlucky enough to get picked up by the U.S. or its allies, which unfortunately includes Canada. Is due process being followed? What kind of interrogations are taking place at Bagram? Afghanistan is a quagmire. It is time for Canada to bring the troops home.
