So much for improving relations between America and Germany. Just days before meeting with the president, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has delivered herself of the opinion that the detention center at Guantanamo should be closed. The money quote (from Sky News):

"An institution such as Guantanamo cannot and should not continue to exist like that in the long term," she said. "Different means of behaving with the prisoners have to be found."  She must mean we should adopt the German method: releasing convicted terrorist murderers as Germany did only a few weeks ago in turning loose Mohammed Ali Hamadi, one of the killers of US navy diver Robert Stetham in the TWA hijacking in the mid-80s.