White House officials say it could be months before they get the appropriations for Thomson, and only then would the conversion process begin.

However, there is another way, as my colleague Spencer Ackerman explains. The primary objective of the Thomson facility is to house detainees who cannot be tried in civilian courts or released to their home countries. The only thing the Administration has confirmed is that they would be used to house military commissions and the prisoners who await trial under them. So the answer, as Ackerman puts it, would be to either try detainees in criminal courts or release them, and not use the third category of military commissions (or, for that matter, the other potential category of indefinite detention, which does violence to American values and violates Constitutional protections and international conventions).

David Kris and Jeh Johnson, the senior Justice and Pentagon officials responsible for the contours of the Obama administration’s detainee policies, haven’t provided a clear set of criteria for who gets charged in civilian courts and who gets charged in the commissions. And they’ve had, at this point, a year to review the Guantanamo cases! Johnson told a Senate panel in July, “Where feasible, we would seek to prosecute detainees in [federal civilian] courts.”

Well, that just got a whole lot more feasible with the Thomson Snag, didn’t it? The federal government’s difficulties in purchasing Thomson are only problematic if you’re a fan of the military commissions. If you prefer trying detainees in federal courts or sending them to the custody of their home countries, then this isn’t problematic at all. And my colleague Daphne Eviatar documented just yesterday all the persistent and structural problems with the military commissions.

Bottom line: this is an opportunity for civil libertarians to relitigate their case with the administration that tinkering around the edges of a baroque and neither-fish-nor-fowl justice system is a mistake, and one that carries needless and substantial political risk for the administration.

Justice officials are actually making progress in returning detainees who will not be charged with a crime. The return of 6 detainees to Yemen, if successful, could lead to almost half of the 200-odd prisoners remaining at Guantanamo, all Yemenis, and many not considered “high value” suspects, being released. You could try the rest in civilian courts or release them. Problem solved. And the federal Treasury saves $200 million in the process.

This line of reasoning only makes sense, of course, if you think Thomson will only be used as a new staging ground for military commissions, and not a Gitmo North for indefinite detentions.