Guantánamo and the Taint of Torture

On the same day President Barack Obama formally launched his re-election campaign, his attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that key suspects in the 9/11 attacks would be tried not in federal court, but through controversial military commissions at Guantánamo. Holder blamed members of Congress, who, he said, “have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantánamo detainees to trial in the United States.” Nevertheless, one Guantánamo case will be tried in New York.