If you want to understand where the 30% who want to keep Gitmo open come from, you only have to read the following article from the WaPo.
President Obama will meet today with victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the USS Cole bombing and their families as his administration reviews how to handle detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
...
Jim Riches, a retired New York firefighter whose son, Jimmy Riches, died in the Sept. 11 attacks, said in an interview yesterday that he wants to hear from Obama what the government intends to do with the prisoners.
"I want to know, are they going to drop the charges? Are they going to try them in another court?" he said. "I want to let them know that these men are dangerous."
I feel for Jim Riches deeply, however his confusion over the matter is a strong sign of how distorted our news really is. The states, being larger, has a few more news sources, so it is possible to get a better idea of what's really going on. Sadly though, the right-wing echo chamber has solidly placed the idea in his head that all of the prisoners at Gitmo are inherently guilty, or at least have been charged with anything.
Therein lies the entire problem. Habaes Corpus was denied to these prisoners. A significant majority of them have never been charged with anything. There are no charges to drop because there were no charges to begin with. Obama's administration is sorting through the legal nightmare that Bush left and is trying to determine what, if anything, they can charge these people with and, in the end, there will be a handful or so with legitimate charges against them.
However, there will also be hundreds of men, who are angry at the states for stealing, unfairly, many years of their lives -- locking them up and even torturing them when they never did anything wrong. He's right that they are dangerous men... now. After the US's system abused them for such a long time in fear that they could become dangerous. It's amazing how much jailing and torturing someone who is innocent can turn them against you.
Sadly, the echo chamber in the states never got that message out, and so justice needs to fight ignorance every step of the way.
Crossposted at 1337hax0r