Obama's campaign advisory group on this issue has been disbanded. While there's a transition team in place, it sounds like decisions won't be made until his new "national security and legal" teams are appointed, get up to speed, confer with each other, write advisory opinions to Obama and Obama then makes a decision.

But the advisers, as well as outside national security and legal experts, said the new administration will face a thicket of legal, diplomatic, political and logistical challenges to closing the prison and prosecuting the most serious offenders in the United States -- an effort that could take many months or longer. Among the thorniest issues will be how to build effective cases without using evidence obtained by torture, an issue that attorneys for the detainees will almost certainly seek to exploit.

I don't think it's that complicated. Our federal criminal courts have obtained convictions in more than 100 terrorism cases since 2001. From today's WaPo article:

"The federal criminal courts are capable of handling serious terrorist cases and capable of handling people and evidence seized overseas, without sacrificing the government's need to protect sensitive material, while protecting defendants' rights," said Deborah Colson, a senior associate at Human Rights First.

And Waxman said that "criminal prosecution in federal court is a more potent counterterrorism tool today than it was in 2001," adding that "criminal statutes have been expanded to cover more types of terrorism crimes."

As for where to detain them, our country is filled with high-security civilian and military prisons and we've had pre-trial detention in this country since 1984 when the Bail Reform Act was passed. Pre-trial detention is routine, practically axiomatic in terror cases.

But, pre-trial detention is not the same thing as "preventive detention." Preventive detention is another phrase for holding people before charges have been filed. Which is what they've been doing at Gitmo for six years.

But some experts say the United States still needs some form of preventive detention, albeit one that includes robust defendant rights and ongoing judicial review. "We need a preventative detention regime, very limited, that allows for those few tough cases -- a dozen, two dozen, not a lot -- of future captures," said Charles D. Stimson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.

Charles Stimson? The Charles "Cully" Stimson called "contemptible" in editorials by both the Washington Post and New York Times? The Charles "Cully" Stimson who had to resign over his contemptible comments? Now he's worthy of being quoted as an expert in a Washington Post news article?

At least Obama has debunked the reports he was planning a new national security court. For one thing (from today's WaPo article)

J. Wells Dixon, a staff lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights...[said] "What a national security court is designed for is to hide the use of torture and allow the consideration of evidence that is not reliable," he said.

More source vagueness in today's WaPo article:

Some Obama advisers believe the damage to U.S. interests and image because of the Bush administration's policies is too great to countenance any form of preventive detention. They acknowledge that they do not know how the issue of torture would play out in federal court, even if prosecutors ignore evidence produced by coerced confessions.

"There is always a risk of acquittal, and there is a risk some people who are released will return to the battlefield," said one Obama adviser. "There is no risk-free option."

I hope this adviser remains a current adviser and isn't among the disbanded group.

Yes, torture evidence cannot be used in any federal criminal proceeding. It's called the exclusionary rule. You can look it like "When the constable blunders, the criminal goes free" or you can look it like a necessary response to, and deterrent effect on, law enforcement activity that becomes unbridled and runs amuck.

So, Guantanamo may not be closed on Day One. (See Newsweek, Four Reasons Obama Won't Close the Controversial Prison Soon.) That would be consistent with Obama's modus operandi: He appoints advisers, listens to both sides, weighs what they have to say, considers the pros and cons, and then makes a decision. It's a good policy in general because it avoids "Act in haste, repent at leisure." Only, Guantanamo has been studied to death and reports are out there. This one's a no-brainer. Close Guantanamo, move the detainees facing criminal charges to U.S. prisons, like the ones that housed Zacarias Moussaoui and Jose Padilla and John Walker Lindh, to name a few, and send the rest home or to a country willing to take them.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced it had transferred two Gitmo detainees to Algeria. It provided these numbers:

Since 2002, more than 520 detainees have departed Guantanamo for other countries including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.

There are approximately 250 detainees currently at Guantanamo. ....The Department of Defense has determined – through its comprehensive review processes - that approximately 60 detainees at Guantanamo are eligible for transfer or release. Departure of these detainees is subject to ongoing discussions between the United States and other nations.

President Bush has not been able to find other nations willing to take these detainees. It may be different with Obama, as today's WashPo article says:

The new administration expects that European countries and Persian Gulf states that previously resisted accepting Guantanamo Bay prisoners will be more open to resettling some who are cleared for release or who cannot be sent home because of the risk of torture. Such cooperation is likely to follow a U.S. decision to settle some small group of detainees in the United States, possibly the Chinese Uighurs whom the government has said are not enemy combatants.

One decision Obama could announce on Day One is that he will dismiss the Government's appeal challenging the U.S. District Courts ruling that the Uighurs be released into the United States.

As a former lecturer in constitutional law, Obama knows that the Due Process clause applies to citizens, aliens and undocumented residents , whether here lawfully or unlawfully - so long as they are physically present within the country. The Supreme Court made that clear in Zadvydas v. Davis.

"Once removal of a deportable alien is no longer reasonably foreseeable, continued detention is no longer authorized."

The Uighurs are at Guantanamo. They have been determined not to be enemy combatants. They were sold by bounty hunters to the U.S. They want to stay in the United States. No other country will take them.

The Uighurs should be granted asylum. It's bad enough that we detain those suspected of terrorism for six years without charges. Obama could earn a lot of good will, while his yet- to- be- appointed team is weighing his options on closing Guantanamo, by stating his intention to dismiss the Uighur appeal on Day One and order the immediate release of the Uighurs into the U.S.

Personally, I think Obama will do the right thing with those at Gitmo facing criminal charges. He'll move them to U.S. criminal courts or courts that operate using the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (Another acceptable option is to send them to an International tribunal.)

I'm not so sure what he will decide about detainees the Pentagon claims are dangerous but haven't been charged with crimes because it lacks evidence or because the evidence it does have came through torture. If the only evidence is that obtained through torture, the decision should be easy: Obama should make it clear that evidence obtained through torture is unreliable and therefore not evidence at all. Those detainees should be sent home.