Petition to close Guantanamo

Last I looked, an on-line petition titled "President Obama: Close Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay" had 105,553 supporters. As reported yesterday in the Guardian:

A former chief prosecutor for the controversial American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay has called for the prison to be closed, launching an online petition that has gathered some 60,000 signatures in less than 24 hours.  Col Morris Davis served for two years as the chief prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantánamo. He decided to campaign for the closure of the camp in the wake of a hunger strike that now involves more than 100 prisoners, including some 21 who are being force fed to keep them from starving to death.

Davis's petition comes after President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed to make good on a broken 2008 campaign promise to shutter the prison camp, which still houses some 166 prisoners despite more than half having been cleared for release.... In the petition, Davis states: "If any other country were treating prisoners the way we are treating those in Guantánamo we would roundly and rightly criticize that country. We can never retake the legal and moral high ground when we claim the right to do unto others that which we would vehemently condemn if done to one of us." ...

Davis, echoing comments made by Obama, told The Guardian that Guantánamo was not serving any purpose, except for costing millions of tax-payer dollars, depriving prisoners of human rights and damaging America's image abroad. "It is the cost, the stain on the country and the ill will it creates. I cannot think of any logical upside to Guantánamo," Davis said.