Obama to close Gitmo despite setbacks from previous administrations

FranchiseBlade · Sep 26, 2009

Unfortunately events in congress, the mess from the previous administration as well as Obama's own lack of diligence may delay the closing of Gitmo.

The good thing is that it will still be closed, and only an idiot like Sarah Palin could believe Obama didn't intend to close it.

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

To address these setbacks, the administration has shifted its leadership team on the issue. White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092404893_pf.html

glynch · Sep 26, 2009

FranchiseBlade said:

Unfortunately events in congress, the mess from the previous administration as well as Obama's own lack of diligence may delay the closing of Gitmo.

The good thing is that it will still be closed, and only an idiot like Sarah Palin could believe Obama didn't intend to close it.

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

To address these setbacks, the administration has shifted its leadership team on the issue. White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092404893_pf.html
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This will be a step in the right direction. Aside from the shame of
Guantanamo which may remain famous for generations, it will be a nothing in terms of somehow making it harder to combat terrorism or hold dangerous prisoners. The US is number one in the world in imprionment and certainly knows how to imprison what may eventually be determined as a couple of dozen dangerous folks. Of course after 7 years of torture and inhumane conditions some of the relatively ordinary guys held there may turn to acts against the US.
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Commodore · Jan 12, 2016

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec">@PressSec</a> is telling <a href="https://twitter.com/BillHemmer">@BillHemmer</a> that Obama will--will--bring some Gitmo prisoners to the US. The law specifically forbids that.</p>— Byron York (@ByronYork) <a href="https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/686913202903478273">January 12, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

SamFisher · Jan 12, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec">@PressSec</a> is telling <a href="https://twitter.com/BillHemmer">@BillHemmer</a> that Obama will--will--bring some Gitmo prisoners to the US. The law specifically forbids that.</p>— Byron York (@ByronYork) <a href="https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/686913202903478273">January 12, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Great news if true, which unfortunately tends not to happen on any random Commodore twitter regurgitation. Obama in beast mode, if true.

Shut that embarrassment down, let all the whiny little pansy babies like Commodore cower in their closets because they're afraid of a bunch of ragtag bums picked up from the desert who have been kept in isolation for a decade are going to bust out of a SuperMax prison El Chapo style and steal their iPhone.

The rest of us will go on with life - but you, and I am speaking to you personally, Commodore, you need to be afraid. VERY. AFRAID.

MojoMan · Jan 12, 2016

When did he first start promising this?

GladiatoRowdy · Jan 12, 2016

MojoMan said: ↑

When did he first start promising this?
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When did the GOP first start blocking his efforts to do so?

Commodore · Jan 12, 2016

GladiatoRowdy said: ↑

When did the GOP first start blocking his efforts to do so?
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the nerve, right?

MojoMan · Jan 12, 2016

GladiatoRowdy said: ↑

When did the GOP first start blocking his efforts to do so?
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As you surely know very well, it has been a massive bipartisan majority in Congress that has blocked this effort. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find very many Democrats at all that support bringing these hardened terrorists onto US soil.

Enough with the responsibility shifting already, OK?

Commodore · Jan 12, 2016

it's not the physical geography so much as it is access to our judicial system

FranchiseBlade · Jan 12, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

it's not the physical geography so much as it is access to our judicial system
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Our judicial system has done a good job of locking up terrorists and keeping them locked up.

The only problems are when we abandoned our justice system and started torturing them and making it hard to use our justice system the second time around with those prisoners.

Northside Storm · Jan 12, 2016

MojoMan said: ↑

In fact, you will be hard pressed to find very many Democrats at all that support bringing these hardened terrorists onto US soil.
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don't forget accidental scoop-ups of innocent people as well!

Khalid El-Masri (also Khaled El-Masri[1] and Khaled Masri,[2] Levantine Arabic pronunciation: [ˈxaːlɪd elˈmɑsˤɾi, -ˈmɑsˤɾe], Arabic: خالد المصري‎) (born June 29, 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police, and handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in a black site, interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other inhuman and degrading treatment, which at times escalated to torture.[3][4][5][6][7] After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest and torture were a mistake and released him.[8] He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees whom the CIA has abducted from 2001–2005.[2]
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hard to know when you hold people without charges, even when they're cleared

Northside Storm · Jan 12, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

it's not the physical geography so much as it is access to our judicial system
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irrelevant argument

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush

On June 12, 2008, Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority, holding that the prisoners had a right to the habeas corpus under the United States Constitution and that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was an unconstitutional suspension of that right. The Court applied the Insular Cases, by the fact that the United States, by virtue of its complete jurisdiction and control, maintains "de facto" sovereignty over this territory, while Cuba retained ultimate sovereignty over the territory, to hold that the aliens detained as enemy combatants on that territory were entitled to the writ of habeas corpus protected in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. The lower court had expressly indicated that no constitutional rights (not merely the right to habeas) extend to the Guantanamo detainees, rejecting petitioners' arguments, but the Supreme Court held that fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution extend to the Guantanamo detainees as well.
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whether those rights have been well-defended de facto is another question, but if you were fearing access to American justice de jure, well, that's already happened.

Major · Jan 12, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

it's not the physical geography so much as it is access to our judicial system
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What is bad about people having access to our judicial system? Do you not trust it?

Commodore · Jan 12, 2016

Northside Storm said: ↑

irrelevant argument

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush

whether those rights have been well-defended de facto is another question, but if you were fearing access to American justice de jure, well, that's already happened.
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point being Eric Holder wanted to try KSM in a federal criminal court in NY, and Congress stopped him

Northside Storm · Jan 12, 2016

Major said: ↑

What is bad about people having access to our judicial system? Do you not trust it?
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"The Constitution is life!"
"Torture those terrorist scum held without charge! Don't listen to the Supreme Court."

FranchiseBlade · Jan 12, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

point being Eric Holder wanted to try KSM in a federal criminal court in NY, and Congress stopped him
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Would have been find to lock up KSM for life. I don't see a problem with that at all.

Northside Storm · Jan 12, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

point being Eric Holder wanted to try KSM in a federal criminal court in NY, and Congress stopped him
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yeah, because Congress was pandering for idiotic symbolism rather than anything of substance.

By your own admission, it's not about access to justice, it's about stupidly pandering to notions of contested legal geography.

After September 11, al-Qaeda operative Richard Reid was held at a county correctional facility in Plymouth, Massachusetts, after his arrest for attempting to blow up a passenger airliner in mid-air. The municipal detention center in Alexandria, Virginia -- located only a few miles from the White House and U.S. Capitol -- has housed both Zacarias Moussaoui, who trained to fly commercial aircraft in connection with the September 11 plot, and Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an American citizen who joined an al-Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia and conspired to commit various terrorist attacks in the United States, including the assassination of President George W. Bush.

None of these facilities was ever attacked while a defendant was incarcerated there on terrorism-related charges, and no such detainee has ever escaped. Moreover, most of these terrorists are now safely serving their sentences at the impregnable "Supermax" facility operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons in Florence, Colorado.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-laufman/guantnamo-detainees-in-us_b_228679.html

GladiatoRowdy · Jan 12, 2016

MojoMan said: ↑

As you surely know very well, it has been a massive bipartisan majority in Congress that has blocked this effort. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find very many Democrats at all that support bringing these hardened terrorists onto US soil.

Enough with the responsibility shifting already, OK?
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo-idUSBRE95D12F20130614

In this particular vote, half of the Democrats voted to provide the funds necessary to close Gitmo. How many Republicans have ever voted to allow Obama to do so? None, not one, ever.

I'm not "shifting" anything, I'm placing responsibility squarely where it belongs.

Bobbythegreat · Jan 12, 2016

GladiatoRowdy said: ↑

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo-idUSBRE95D12F20130614

In this particular vote, half of the Democrats voted to provide the funds necessary to close Gitmo. How many Republicans have ever voted to allow Obama to do so? None, not one, ever.

I'm not "shifting" anything, I'm placing responsibility squarely where it belongs.
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So another vote where Obama couldn't even get more than half of his own party to support it? He can't get his own party to go along, but you wonder why the other party won't support it.....

MojoMan · Jan 12, 2016

GladiatoRowdy said: ↑

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo-idUSBRE95D12F20130614

In this particular vote, half of the Democrats voted to provide the funds necessary to close Gitmo. How many Republicans have ever voted to allow Obama to do so? None, not one, ever.

I'm not "shifting" anything, I'm placing responsibility squarely where it belongs.
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If half did, then half didn't, right?

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