Close Guantanamo.

Byline: The Register-Guard

When a car won't start and pieces of the transmission fall off every time you close the driver's door, you know it's time to get some new wheels.

When two military judges throw out separate war crimes charges against two Guantanamo Bay inmates because of the Bush administration's fundamentally flawed military tribunal system, then you know it's time to get a new legal system - and to shutter the Guantanamo prison camp as soon as possible.

Last week, the military judges dismissed charges against a Yemeni detainee accused of being Osama bin Laden's driver and a Canadian citizen who was 15 when arrested in a firefight five years ago with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Both decisions hinged on military prosecutors' failure to declare that the two detainees were "unlawful enemy combatants" - a designation specifically required by the military commission trial law that the Bush administration rammed through a compliant Congress last year.

The rulings will stall the already hideously overdue trials of all 380 detainees still held at Guantanamo, because all were designated "enemy combatants" and not "unlawful enemy combatants" during 2004 tribunal reviews.

As for the prospects of appeals of last week's rulings, it turns out Pentagon officials haven't gotten around to setting up the special military appeals court that would hear the cases.

From the wrongheaded establishment of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp five years ago to the current legal quagmire, the Bush administration has mismanaged the handling of terrorism suspects captured in Afghanistan.

Congress has been complicit in this travesty, at first for failing to exercise its constitutional obligation to rein in an overreaching executive branch and then last year for passing the retrograde Military Commissions Act, which established a dual tribunal system to judge detainees.

It's time to abandon this junker and get a new model that not only works, but that fully incorporates bedrock American rights starting with habeas corpus and due process.

Congress should take advantage of the opening created by last week's rulings and revise the Military Commissions Act. A good starting point would be passage of a bill sponsored by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that would reinstate habeas rights for detainees and allow them to appeal their detentions to U.S. federal courts.

Also meriting consideration is a bill introduced by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., which would reform the military tribunal process by requiring that detainees be represented by lawyers and be able to see evidence presented against them. Levin's bill also would bar the use of evidence obtained by coercion and torture and require that tribunals be headed by qualified judges, not military officers.

Congress should also close the Guantanamo prison, which has done incalculable damage to America's reputation and conscience. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has introduced legislation that would shutter Gitmo and transfer its detainees to more conventional detention facilities, either for trial in the United States or repatriation to their home countries, with assurances that they would not be tortured and would receive due process.

Better yet, the Bush administration should close Guantanamo on its own. Even administration officials now concede many of its detainees are not dangerous terrorists, but people who had little or no involvement with the Taliban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Most have been held for more than five years with no criminal charges placed against them, many of them rotting in isolation that has led to mental and physical deterioration - and several suicides.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is a strong proponent of shutting Guantanamo. Many other administration officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, agree with Gates that the prison has a "taint" that cannot be removed.

President Bush should close Guantanamo, sooner rather than later. If he won't, then Congress should do it for him.