The U.S. basically owns Palau. Our government's been frantically looking for a safe shore on which they can offload the inconvenient Uighurs--all of them innocents and/or small fish caught in the Guantanamo net.

Palau, besides being a de facto U.S. protectorate, has the added advantage of being one of the few "nations" in the world that recognizes Taiwan instead of China--so there will be no messy repatriations of these unfortunate Uighurs.

Slam dunk. Look for increased U.S. aid to Palau in the next fiscal budget. And for the Uighurs, eventually, to be quietly moved from Palau to their own communities in Australia, and even the U.S.

The model for all this was already created by Australia in the "Pacific Solution", which deposited inconvenient Iraqi refugees on the island of Nauru.

Trying to fathom life in the limbo we've put these people in.

I think we at least owe them airfare to Palau for all their kin.

At the price Palau is being offered, I would be surprised if more offers to welcome them aren't received.

The good people of Palau just got an A in Negotiations 101.

Now that a generous rate per prisoner has been established, why wouldn't the Palauans offer to take all prisoners, including the hard-core terrorists? Give each guy a week or two until he drowns/gets shot/hangs himself trying to escape, rinse, repeat.

For a country whose chief virtue in this situation is being out of sight and out of mind, they certainly have found a way to monetize it.

There is a lot of fog (deliberately) about who is getting released, when, where, etc.. It's good to keep track of this. In fact, I posted about these same people starting on Jan. 26. "Some" were upset at the formulation, thinking that I was deliberately trying to undermine our most historically historic president evah, but after nearly 6 months and next to no progress*, I'm saddened to actually believe I may have been prematurely correct.

*and the trend developments are not looking good.