Essential

Guantánamo to Stay Open For Business

Bush won't close prison.

A big story buried in today's Times: President Bush has decided to keep Guantánamo Bay open, despite having said publicly he wants to close it, and actually never even considered State Department and Pentagon proposals for transferring the detainees to other prisons. “The effect of Mr. Bush’s stance,” the Times reports, “is to leave in place a prison that has become a reviled symbol of the administration’s fight against terrorism, and to leave another contentious foreign policy decision for the next president.” Both Barack Obama and John McCain have called to close Guantánamo, but neither has outlined how they would deal with the legal repercussions. Dick Cheney and his legal mini-me, David Addington, hope the next president keeps it open in order to validate Bush’s policy.