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October 21, 2008

Report: President Bush Has No Plan to Close Guantanamo
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The New York Times reports President Bush has privately decided not to
close the US military prison at Guantanamo and has never even considered
State Department and Pentagon proposals to transfer the prisoners
elsewhere. Both of the major presidential candidates, John Mc Cain and
Barack Obama, have called for closing Guantanamo, but neither has
spelled out how this would take place or what would happen to the 250
prisoners currently at Guantanamo. On Monday, a federal appeals court
blocked the release of seventeen Chinese Muslims into the United States
from Guantanamo. The Uighurs have been held for seven years, even though
the US acknowledges they are not enemy combatants. This comes as the
Bush administration is also seeking to extend the sentence of Osama bin
Laden’s former driver Salim Hamdan.



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