Ex post Gitmo

Read all those books about the horrors Gitmo? Me neither. But the hand-wringing over Gitmo is already in full force (maybe torture isn't so bad after all...):

By prodding the nation’s conscience, these books, and many, many newspaper and magazine stories as well, have been in the finest tradition of American journalism. And yet, oddly, for the most part they weren’t wholly satisfying. They tended to be long on reporting, short on analysis. They relied on an implicit agreement between writer and reader that the rights and wrongs of Guantánamo were clear, so that all readers needed were the facts the writers offered. The horrors spoke for themselves.

OMG right? No, JK!

But did they? What if the Bush administration provided brutal and clumsy answers to questions that still needed to be resolved? What if Gitmo’s closing is merely symbolic, not a policy but a temporary substitute for a policy?

The nytimes blog post goes on to bemoan all the complications of releasing the prisoners... Wait a minute, let's go back to the source (I think I'll go with Ross Douthat on this one: “the Bush administration’s broader record on detainee policy looks like a moral fiasco." To put it MILDLY.)

Give them a chance, please. A month or two, perhaps, as the Adminsitration confronts myriad, intertwining issues. Then, by all means, light up the torches. Until then.