At a recent conference on the 35th year of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh made the following comments about Guantanamo:

I believe that this administration has tried to make what’s currently at Guantanamo lawful, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. I don’t think that offshore detention of enemies of the state is a good idea, whether it can be brought within legal rules or not. And I think that that has been the challenge that this administration is facing, and I hope that it can be addressed at the start of the next presidential term.

Question: Since when is it the administration’s position that it is engaged at Guantanamo in the “offshore detention of enemies of the state”? And should the State Department Legal Adviser really be talking about American detention operations in such terms?

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