Why in the world would President Obama temper his disdain of the military tribunals (kangaroo courts) created for the Guantanamo Bay Show Trials? Why would he renege on his commitment to remand the prisoners in Gitmo to regular military courts under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) or perfectly capable U.S. civilian criminal courts? Why would his administration try to dramatically relax the rules on hearsay for these remodeled military commissions?
The answer is yet more of the Bush "legacy" that will take years to clean up. Even then, it will leave a stain that can never be expunged. Much of the evidence required to convict the "worst of the worst" was obtained by methods considered illegal under U.S. criminal law and the UCMJ, or is hearsay inadmissible in most courts. In U.S. courts and standard Courts Martial you can't send someone to jail for the rest of his life based on what he said under torture or because someone said he is a bad guy. You need empirical evidence. And the evidence obtained by the DOD, the CIA, and who knows what civilian "contractors" is so tainted that no convictions could be obtained. That would leave the Obama administration with these choices: set them free in the U.S.; set them free where we found them; turn them over to some nation who will do the dirty work for us; continue to hold them illegally. None are practically or politically viable.
And Bush's team of Trust Fund Patriots knew that. Hence the offshore and nominally legal "commissions." Now that full bucket of shit sits in the middle of Obama's white carpet. How does he get rid of it without making a mess? Even if he were to publicly explain the problem, it would not remove the conundrum.
Thank you, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. Our never-ending journey of discovery will be uncovering all the ways you fucked us in the longest eight years of our nation's history.