Naturally, Dick Cheney — I’ll leave his ABC News interview alone after this post, I promise — wants to pretend closing Guantanamo Bay is harder than it is. ("I don’t know very many congressmen, for example, who are eager to have 200 al Qaeda terrorists deposited in their district," he says, revealing how much domestic politics is the actual consideration here.) But Amnesty International, in a just-released proposal, wants to go further than just closing the facility.

The international human-rights organization put out a four-stage plan for shuttering the symbol of lawlessness for good. Well, sort of. Bizarrely, Amnesty doesn’t actually deal with any of the actual suggestions for how to close the facility — move the detainees to Ft. Leavenworth? A different federal prison? The group doesn’t say. What its proposal, emailed to reporters a couple minutes ago, actually concerns is empaneling an investigation into

abuses which may have been committed by U.S. officials or agents in connection with the U.S. response to the events of September 11, 2001, or in relation to alleged acts or threats against national security, and which at a minimum will investigate detentions, renditions and the alleged use of torture and other mistreatment of detainees.

The proposal is really a timeline for investigating abuse. Amnesty wants an inquiry wrapped up by July 2010, with an update provided to the public in the January 2010 State of the Union address.

There is, of course, the difficult question of prosecutions. Amnesty says the transition team should consider a task force in the Attorney General’s office or a special prosecutor. If not, the investigating commission could give recommendations on how to proceed following its report.

Still, I’d sort of like to know when and how one of the most important human-rights groups on the planet thinks the actual facility ought to be closed, and the absence of that guidance is kind of conspicuous.

Crossposted to The Streak.