How to Fix Guantanamo

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The Supreme Court made it clear that the Geneva conventions afford Gitmo detainees certain trial rights. Less certain is whether Geneva rights should now extend to cover interrogations at the camp. The White House has held that unlawful combatants are to be treated humanely but are not covered by Geneva, which prohibits "humiliating and degrading treatment." Some techniques, like shackling prisoners for 24 hours and leaving them in their own excrement, are known to have been used at Gitmo and would certainly fall under that definition. Regardless of what the prevailing interpretations of the Hamdan decision are, the government would do well to read the tea leaves and begin envisioning a world in which officials will be forced by a future ruling similar to Hamdan to gather crucial intelligence while conforming to Geneva. Gitmo has always been a laboratory for the Bush Administration's edgiest ideas about how to fight the war on terrorism. Why not make it a testing ground for an interrogation policy that is both humane and clearly legal under the Geneva conventions?

The era of Guantánamo as a fount of intelligence may already be ending, however. There is only so much intel you can glean from a man who has been interrogated for four years. The base commander, Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris Jr., told TIME shortly before the Hamdan decision that 75% of detainees held at Gitmo no longer face regular questioning, and some haven't faced it in six months or longer. So, as with many of the other issues raised by the Hamdan case, perhaps the interrogation debate should move away from Gitmo and focus on other places around the world where the U.S. is holding enemy combatants.

5. Lift the veil of secrecy

Guantánamo has long since ceased being just a detention center for terrorism suspects. It's a symbol, and it shapes how the world views America and how Americans view themselves. While all three branches of government need to work in concert to balance the strategic and legal imperatives involved in fighting terrorism, the White House can take a huge step toward removing the discomfort about Gitmo by opening the operation to the outside world. A few journalists have been granted access to the facility following the coordinated suicides of three inmates last month, but camera crews and reporters are often hemmed in by minders and shepherded past buildings that have been the site of Guantánamo's harsher realities--the force-fed hunger strikers, the suicide attempts. If Guantánamo is legal and effective, now is the time for the government to prove it.

With reporting by Reported by Brian Bennett, Massimo Calabresi, Adam Zagorin/Washington

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