President Obama is a prisoner of the Guantanamo prison.

Unveiling a new plan to close it, he elicited modest attention Tuesday. Political media are immersed in the campaign to find his successor, while his own air of melancholy pragmatism implied he knows he's pissing in the wind.

It's a shame, of course, since it's all so shameful.

The math I last saw came at a U.S. Senate hearing, where it was asserted that the detention camp costs us about $554 million a year, or about $2.67 million per detainee. You know those ominous federal "supermax" prisons across the U.S? They cost us about $78,000 per inmate.

It's all quite amazing. At one point or another, 780 prisoners have been in Guantanamo, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. President George W. Bush transferred 534 and Obama 146. Nine have died there.

Obama pledged during his 2008 campaign that he would close the prison and reiterated that position right after he was elected. But there are 91 detainees left, with 35 of those recommended for transfer if various security conditions can be attained. (We've got countries lined up but are bollixed up by seeming bureaucratic dysfunctions.) Ten of the 91 have been charged or convicted before a military tribunal system, while the other 46 just sit there with no charges or no approval to be transferred.

Obama's latest plan "is such utter bullshit, it irritates the hell out of me, " says Thomas Sullivan, a Chicago attorney.

Those are strong words. Now realize they're coming from one of Chicago's most prominent civil and criminal trial attorneys since the 1950s. He's a hallowed partner at a major firm, Jenner & Block, who's won major civil rights and corporate cases – along with being a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He oversaw Operation Greylord, probably the biggest probe ever of judicial corruption in the U.S.

And, oh, yes, he's a strong Obama backer.

"I was and remain an Obama supporter," says Sullivan. "A disappointed supporter but a supporter. If he were to run again, I would vote for him. I like him as a person and admire him as president. But his conduct in relation to this issue is disappointing. He has lost his way."

Sullivan is just not voicing idle punditry. His own involvement in Guantanamo can be traced to his work on the notorious Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight) conspiracy trial that alleged famous activists of the time conspired to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

His work back then with activist New York attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, among others, on the rancorous and nationally watched trial explains knowing about the Center for Constitutional Rights that the New Yorkers helped to co-found. It oversees 500 volunteer lawyers nationwide representing Guantanamo prisoners, including prominent partners at elite firms like Sullivan's.

Sullivan was assigned inmates from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen, among others. Everybody he's handled has been sent back home. (The Libyan was originally freed to Georgia but is now back in Libya with family.) All he's got left is one inmate from Yemen who, like the others from Yemen, is truly stuck due to the dangers of sending anyone back there these days.

In Sullivan's mind, Obama has complicated what should be a pretty simple legal process that could circumvent congressional intransigence and unwillingness to fund transfers of detainees or allow trials in U.S. courts. "Despite Obama claiming he wants to close it, his Department of Justice under both [Eric] Holder and [Loretta] Lynch, as recently as this week is opposing my requests for transfers out of Guantanamo via the court system," he says.

He's written Obama, Holder (at the time attorney general) and Lynch telling them how they could deal with this in just five minutes. Just file a petition for habeas corpus with the chief judge of the federal court in Washington.

"I've told them, 'Give me the names of those you want out of there, I will take my petition to the chief judge and nobody would have legal standing to oppose. The government would be presenting the writ of habeas. Just contact countries where you could send them and have those bring a boat to take them away," he says.

"But, as with Obama's latest proposal, I just don't get it," says Sullivan. "It's like he's got no balls and nobody there is willing to take a real stand. And he acts as if he's got to get congressional approval to do this [close it down], which he does not."

Wells Dixon, who runs the New York center and thus supervises all those volunteers, concedes that Obama at least further memorialized the administration's views Tuesday. But, he says, the latest plan is not sufficient to achieve closure. There was, with one small exception, nothing really new: "We'd heard this all before."

He was surprised only by the president's informal remarks Tuesday in acknowledging that the military commission system had failed. After all, it's 15 years since the World Trade Center bombings and the commission has failed to reach a verdict in any of the important cases brought as a result. It's also why he was "utterly speechless" when he read the latest plan and saw a provision to theoretically bring that same military commission system to the U.S. to handle the detainees.

"So here is the president saying the system has failed, 15 years after 9/11, and, on the other hand, announcing a plan that doubles down on the system by bringing it to the United States! You take a secondary system of justice, and uncharted legal territory, and rather than wind it down and bring these men to federal courts, you want to add further uncertainty to an already uncertain system," says Dixon.

Dixon and others find the talk of working with Congress not just politically unlikely (it's "naïve to the point of self-delusion") but, more important, unnecessary. They argue that Obama's got all the legal authority he needs already to close down the prison.

You can get lost in some legal weeds in discussing this issue and forget broad stroke realities. They're pretty straightforward and override the political posturing by politicians in both parties who are fearful of somehow looking like pro-terrorist weenies (especially in an election year).

"Guantanamo is a human tragedy," says Dixon. "We've been holding men and boys, all of whom are Muslim, for 15 years. Almost none has been charged with crimes. Many have been approved for transfer for years."

And no matter your partisan political views, or sentiments toward Obama himself, you can acknowledge what Obama reiterated again Tuesday: the continuing existence of the detention camp reflects poorly on the nation and stains our reputation. It is obviously a terrorist recruiting tool and makes us less safe.

It perhaps can't be underscored enough: Every time the Islamic State group beheads captives, that victim is invariably dress in an orange jumpsuit as a reminder of Guantanamo.

Dixon can reflect on his experiences and be appalled at how after 15 years, we're holding people whom we've not charged with a crime and are approved for transfer. But he was trained by a prominent criminal defense lawyer who taught him to step back and look at every situation dispassionately and objectively. So after representing detainees for more than a decade, he's got to view this all as a marathon, not a sprint or 5K race.