A poll released by the Washington Post and ABC News provided another opportunity to discuss how important civil liberties and national security issues are to liberals. The poll results showed majority support among liberals for President Barack Obama’s handling of “counterterrorism,” including his use of drone strikes and failure to close Guantanamo Bay prison.

A new poll shows that the lack of forceful opposition to Administration counter-terrorism policies, especially from Congressional Democrats, has led to them becoming broadly popular. This is true even for controversial policies like the continued presence of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, or drone strikes abroad.

The focus on Guantanamo over the past couple years has hidden the fact that the number of detainees there has been dissipating somewhat. The number of detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan has exploded, with detainees captured throughout the world moved over to Bagram and shielded from any habeas proceedings. Bagram has become the black hole. So it’s good news, on its face, that the Administration wants to repatriate non-Afghan detainees out of Bagram.

Seven hundred and seventy-five people have been imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. One hundred and seventy-one people remain in the American military detention and interrogation facility. On the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo, here are some stories from detainees who have been freed from Guantanamo.

Edwin Meese III, who served as Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, has written a defense of the military detention and interrogation facility at Guantanamo. He asserts it continues to serve an “important role in the war against terrorists.” But Gitmo continues to be and be seen by the international community as a blot on the US and legal and moral black hole.

Estimates of detainees who were never terrorists range from 70 to 90 percent. Not one of the more than 700 who enjoyed the hospitality of Gitmo has been able to collect compensation for being held, often in solitary confinement and some for as long as ten years, before being released without ever being charged.

The Taliban has agreed to open an office in Qatar, seen as a precursor to peace talks in Afghanistan. The Taliban want release of their prisoners from Guantanamo as part of a goodwill gesture preparatory to peace talks. Congress is going ballistic, and because of the NDAA and other bills, the process for getting clearance to release Guantanamo detainees is almost impossibly complex.

The President signed the defense authorization bill today, appending a signing statement expressing concerns with the detainee measures in the bill.

The release of Fazl and other Taliban may just be a Hail Mary pass, however. Talks have been suspended at the request of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President. Though asking for a prisoner release previously , Karzai doesn’t favor it now. We may get the establishment of a Taliban office in a neutral third country, with talks continuing there on a reconciliation. But Karzai stopped the talks when he found out that the US was negotiating directly with Taliban officers to use Qatar as the third country, recalling the Afghan ambassador there.

Two major year-end pieces of legislation were readied yesterday, and in this case, House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on the measures, expecting to pass them by the end of the week. First, appropriators agreed to a $1 trillion omnibus spending bill covering the rest of the fiscal year (to September 30 of next year) on domestic spending. They also agreed on the defense spending bill, which still allows indefinite detention of suspects.