Gitmo's "compliant" detainees have access to recreational activity for as much as 20 hours a day - including soccer, basketball, foosball, ping-pong and gardening. "Noncompliant" detainees are confined to individual cells, about 10 feet long by 8 feet wide, for 22 hours a day, with two hours of daily recreation. That's an hour more than most civilian prisoners get in American maximum-security prisons, officers pointed out - but then, American civilian prisoners have been tried and convicted of crimes.
This is the real problem with Gitmo: the fact that most of the detainees have not been charged with terrorism or any other crime. Satellite TV is all well and good, but not if you're being held indefinitely without trial.
Ending the detainees' legal limbo and ensuring them due process is far more important than closing down the prison they're being held in. Yet there is little difference between Mr. Obama and his predecessor on some of the key due-process issues. Not only has Mr. Obama embraced George W. Bush's notion of military commissions to try some detainees, with ostensibly bolstered rights for the defendants, but he has endorsed Mr. Bush's position on "renditions" to countries with suspect human rights records.
While the administration ponders the detainees' legal fate, it seems pointless to spend more money and energy moving them to "Gitmo North" - maximum-security prisons in the United States where they may be far more harshly treated.
It's time for the Obama administration to acknowledge that Gitmo, or another center like it, will be needed as long as the war on terrorism - no matter what our commander in chief calls it - endures. But to ensure that such places do not become legal black holes, detainees should be assured of some kind of periodic, independent review of the allegations against them. They should have not only decent physical treatment but the legal right to challenge their detention in a way that does not jeopardize intelligence sources and methods.
Several legal experts have proposed legal compromises that would authorize preventive detention for terrorism suspects but with bolstered rights and a guaranteed, periodic, impartial review of the allegations that led to their detention. These schemes may not be perfect. But they may be the most effective way to protect American values while we continue fighting a war that we cannot afford to abandon.
Judith Miller is a contributing editor of City Journal, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Fox News contributor. This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
