The more I think about it, the more the enemy combatant “problem” can be understood like a toxic waste issue (and, no, I’m not trying to dehumanize these fairly inhuman people — they do that just fine on their own). My understanding is that in Superfund-type clean-ups is that the first 99% or so is pretty easy to take care of. You can process the material in some way or another safely. But that last bit (whether it’s the last 5% or the last .00005%) is very, very expensive to clean-up, often more expensive than the first 95%-99%. The prisoners at Gitmo are rapidly approaching the intractable percentage. Most of the Gitmo detainees have already been processed out. Those were the comparatively easy cases. Now we’re left with the really radioactive prisoners and nobody wants them in their backyard, in America or Europe. Just look at the comical lengths the Obama administration is going to to dump the Uighurs on some tiny pacific island (didn’t we litterally do the same thing with toxic waste for a time? Maybe we still do). And the Uighurs are a much easier case than the rest of the worst of the worst.

I’ve compared Gitmo to Yucca Mountain before, and I think the comparison still works. The difference, however, is that Yucca was never open for business while Gitmo was. Imagine if Yucca was holding tons of hot radioactive waste and a new administration tried to find new homes for the stuff around the country and the world. It would be a daunting political task, needless to say. Well, that’s Obama’s problem now. And he deserves all the trouble he gets for it, since Guantanamo is the right place for these guys.