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Our modern Guantanamo torturers used the same tools that were used during the Spanish Inquisition in the 13th and 14th centuries, such as stress positions and, yes, even waterboarding! The inquisition continued for 600 years, and in the January/February issue of The Atlantic, Cullen Murphy writes: "It has never quite ended–the office charged today with safeguarding doctrine and meting out discipline occupies the Inquisition’s old palazzo at the Vatican." What’s more, there’s evidence that US covert agencies looked at old papal documents in order to discover these nefarious techniques.
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Not everyone realizes that a new law has been passed that allows the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial, the way it sends foreigners to Guantanamo now. Even though the military and covert agencies say they don’t want this kind of power, congress passed the bill anyway. Obama threatened to veto it, but let it pass with some modifications. We could be refilling Guantanamo at the same time we are trying to empty it.

On the Wired website, Spencer Ackerman writes: "So despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial, the Senate bill would let the government lock up any citizen it swears is a terrorist, without the burden of proving its case to an independent judge."
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…but no one will take the prisoners! – If Obama follows up on his promise to close Guantanamo prison in Cuba, what will he do with the detainees? 225 prisoners are still being held there, 60 of whom have already been cleared for release. The Bush administration has asked Australia to take some of them in?two times in one year?but has been refused both times.

BBC News quotes deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard as saying, “Assessing those requests from a case-by-case basis, they had not met our stringent national security and immigration criteria and have been rejected.” The State Department has asked about 100 other countries to accept prisoners as well. They want to clear Guantanamo over the next two years.
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