The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. August 7, 2013 Pentagon Official in Charge of Guantánamo Says Prison Should Never Have Opened -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pentagon official in charge of Guantánamo Bay, who played a key role in creating the prison under President George W. Bush, is now saying it should never have been built. In an interview with Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, William Lietzau said Guantánamo's detainees should have been designated prisoners of war and held in Afghanistan or charged with crimes and jailed in U.S. prisons. Lietzau said the most effective way for President Obama to close the prison now would be to announce an end to the so-called war with al-Qaeda. He said: "Just like you can’t kill your way out of this war, you’re not going to transfer your way out of Gitmo. The really hard question is, how do you end this war?" Lietzau announced late last month he is stepping down from the Pentagon to take a job with the military contractor PAE. .