Not forgetting those in bondage.

It's 2012, an election year. It is a hard fought scrap we are in, between opposing governing philosophies, and the rhetorical pitch is only going to rise as we head into October and November.

But that is no excuse for us to be oblivious to problems that still sit on the desk, unconsidered and unanswered.

Guantanamo. GITMO.

It's slang. It's a meme. It's like a thing parent's lord over little children's heads to get them to go to bed.

But, we know well enough, it is real. And it is ours.

What use to be our little base in another nation, became our beachhead on a front in the Cold War, and now, it's America's Devil's Island. But we don't seem to care or be interested in what it says of us, or what it makes us. 10 years ago most of us decided to hit snooze on addressing this. And we've continued to just ignore it, waiting for it to just be normalized (like so many shifts in the last decade).

Yes, I'm sure (More of an open legal process would help we say "know.") their are bad people that are being detained there. There are also people who seem to be innocent, or who's culpability seems slight. As a just society this should weigh on us. More than that, it should spur us to act to right things for those wrongly held (Some for around a decade!) and to be sure those that have engaged in criminal or war acts see proper justice.

But worse than the fact people are sitting in limbo for years on now, some are not going to make it to having their grievances fully answered.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was cleared for release in 2009, by a task force set up by the Obama administration. But three years on, he was still waiting. That was on top of the seven years he had already been held before this, coming to nearly a third of his life. But he won't know freedom as he was found dead in his cell this month.

The Justice Department had fought release for years for Latif and others. Then it is proving hard to find countries willing to take even those deemed innocent. The result indefinite detention for the guilty and innocent.

Beyond trying to lay blame on a party, a president, or nation...What do we do with this policy? What do we do now? How do we make things right for those held wrongly? How do we right what accepting these detentions all these years has done to us?

YES, it is an election year. We have an economy to bolster. We have nutters who want to get their hands on our military, and on women's uteri. We have big issues to address and fight over.

But there are also people now sitting for up to a decade in cells, waiting for us to give a damn. At some point we have to get around to giving a damn.