Obama: I should've "closed Guantanamo on the first day"
Mar 18, 2015 19:52:49 GMT -6
dirkgently, Glencairn, and 2 more like this
Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2015 19:52:49 GMT -6
Hmmm... Well, you have to give this man one thing. One thing I really DO credit him for, by the way, and the compliment is sincere. He is a master showman, with an impeccable and nearly spooky sense of timing to deliver what people want or will be distracted by hearing. (sigh)
..and somewhere back in the ad space, runs the little column about Israel having a free election with a less than US-Friendly outcome. Ahh well... Off again on another of his ...mental meanderings, I suppose.
What a creative re-writer of history he is. He couldn't do it then because the place was still a busy center of activity with a couple (Including KSM) having just indicated a willingness to plead guilty, no less, before Obama came to office and it became clear that was a suckers bet compared to the new 'understanding nature'.
--- My own tangent
Did Gitmo get a lot of people who didn't belong in custody, let alone a throw away place like that was meant to be? Hell yes. Terrible mistakes were made and very serious damage to individuals was done by pure American ignorance, not maliciousness, in initial programs giving bounty for the delivery of terrorists, in a still-breathing condition, for shipment back in hoods and some quality alone time.
Innocent people who just pissed someone off to get accused and delivered for a paycheck ended up there, and that is a tragedy, although a measured one, since none of them actually died there. Obama has had those at Gitmo reviewed at direct order to look for a way to clear them for transfer as the whole goal, enough times, that no one but the worst of the worst are still there now. (Cryptome has carried some of the leaked documents and the whole Gitmo file cabinet of prisoner specific files for that last reference to be a statement, not an opinion)
U.S. Forces also got a good number of those people in situations where guilt wasn't even debatable, but a technical issue of depth and detail. People that could have been, justifiably in many cases, shot and killed in the field and never captured at all. In hindsight, I really wish we had simply failed to go 'that extra mile' to attempt to disarm or disable instead of killing VIPs.
More MOABS should have been used, and less SEALS or Green Beanies on helicopter snatch and grabs for Gitmo interrogators. No one saw the allies trying to capture Goebbels, after all. We just broke their whole will to fight until THEY sued US for peace on OUR terms. As war should be...and the enemy IS planning to do to us, if ever faced with the opportunity.
--- Hops off soapbox
Now this was the other reason he couldn't close it.
I recall the Illinois prison brainfart. I was trucking hard back then and was reasonably familiar with the area in question, in fact. That was the whole problem with closing Gitmo tho.... You literally needed ANOTHER "Gitmo", because the human problem didn't change and I've NEVER understood the aversion to the physical facility.
It coddles them, pampers them, builds them $750,000 Soccer fields, contracts full dietary staffs to cater to the Muslim diet, and people specifically there to handle and insure nothing untoward happens to a precious Quran being delivered or otherwise not in possession of a detainee. It even sports at least one full size courtroom WITH accomodations for journalists and observers for the duration, if ever so ordered.
Now maybe they hate the OTHER attributes, of course. It's escape proof, with a full compliment of some of the most serious combat marines left on an active garrison anywhere in the world on one side, one of the last active U.S. minefields in the world on the other and water just brimming with hungry marine life in the final direction. Better than Alcatraz for perhaps being comfy, but also being forever with no hope beyond what command and the President bestow.
Source
Now if Holder or Obama really cared and had more than lip service for the concept of law and the rule of law? Their first priority wouldn't have been to close a physical facility, and by its visibility, the best of a bad and rough bunch. They would have done what Bush refused to do and even people like me strongly disliked about that President's policy.
If they'd have cared, they would have made categorizing them in a binding LEGAL way as POW, criminal combatant, or small fish to toss back with a 'sorry 'bout that' to follow 'em, the absolute priority to just get DONE. That? I would have even been 100% behind...and still would be for that matter.
The ONLY thing un-american, in my opinion, about Gitmo, is the fact those men have no legal status, and so, don't even have the consideration of a Civil War POW (and any Union or Confederate prisoner would think of Gitmo as some royal palace of luxury...but then...so would most Middle Eastern and Central Asian fighters compared to local equivalents).
Ahh..but closing the camps themselves, just to say they were, means so much more, it seems. (sigh)
..and somewhere back in the ad space, runs the little column about Israel having a free election with a less than US-Friendly outcome. Ahh well... Off again on another of his ...mental meanderings, I suppose.
Asked what advice he'd give himself if he could go back to his first day in office, President Obama said Wednesday, "I would've closed Guantanamo on the first day."
"I didn't because at that time we had a bipartisan agreement that it should be closed," Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style event in Cleveland, Ohio. "I thought that we had a consensus there that we could do it [in a deliberate] fashion."
"I didn't because at that time we had a bipartisan agreement that it should be closed," Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style event in Cleveland, Ohio. "I thought that we had a consensus there that we could do it [in a deliberate] fashion."
What a creative re-writer of history he is. He couldn't do it then because the place was still a busy center of activity with a couple (Including KSM) having just indicated a willingness to plead guilty, no less, before Obama came to office and it became clear that was a suckers bet compared to the new 'understanding nature'.
--- My own tangent
Did Gitmo get a lot of people who didn't belong in custody, let alone a throw away place like that was meant to be? Hell yes. Terrible mistakes were made and very serious damage to individuals was done by pure American ignorance, not maliciousness, in initial programs giving bounty for the delivery of terrorists, in a still-breathing condition, for shipment back in hoods and some quality alone time.
Innocent people who just pissed someone off to get accused and delivered for a paycheck ended up there, and that is a tragedy, although a measured one, since none of them actually died there. Obama has had those at Gitmo reviewed at direct order to look for a way to clear them for transfer as the whole goal, enough times, that no one but the worst of the worst are still there now. (Cryptome has carried some of the leaked documents and the whole Gitmo file cabinet of prisoner specific files for that last reference to be a statement, not an opinion)
U.S. Forces also got a good number of those people in situations where guilt wasn't even debatable, but a technical issue of depth and detail. People that could have been, justifiably in many cases, shot and killed in the field and never captured at all. In hindsight, I really wish we had simply failed to go 'that extra mile' to attempt to disarm or disable instead of killing VIPs.
More MOABS should have been used, and less SEALS or Green Beanies on helicopter snatch and grabs for Gitmo interrogators. No one saw the allies trying to capture Goebbels, after all. We just broke their whole will to fight until THEY sued US for peace on OUR terms. As war should be...and the enemy IS planning to do to us, if ever faced with the opportunity.
--- Hops off soapbox
Now this was the other reason he couldn't close it.
Closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay was one of Mr. Obama's central 2008 campaign promises. In his very first days in office, he did, in fact, sign an executive order to close the prison within a year. Later in 2009, he issued a memo that called for a prison in Illinois to be prepared for the transfer of the Guantanamo detainees.
I recall the Illinois prison brainfart. I was trucking hard back then and was reasonably familiar with the area in question, in fact. That was the whole problem with closing Gitmo tho.... You literally needed ANOTHER "Gitmo", because the human problem didn't change and I've NEVER understood the aversion to the physical facility.
It coddles them, pampers them, builds them $750,000 Soccer fields, contracts full dietary staffs to cater to the Muslim diet, and people specifically there to handle and insure nothing untoward happens to a precious Quran being delivered or otherwise not in possession of a detainee. It even sports at least one full size courtroom WITH accomodations for journalists and observers for the duration, if ever so ordered.
Now maybe they hate the OTHER attributes, of course. It's escape proof, with a full compliment of some of the most serious combat marines left on an active garrison anywhere in the world on one side, one of the last active U.S. minefields in the world on the other and water just brimming with hungry marine life in the final direction. Better than Alcatraz for perhaps being comfy, but also being forever with no hope beyond what command and the President bestow.
Last month, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder said there's still a "realistic possibility" that the detention center could close before the end of the Obama administration.
Now if Holder or Obama really cared and had more than lip service for the concept of law and the rule of law? Their first priority wouldn't have been to close a physical facility, and by its visibility, the best of a bad and rough bunch. They would have done what Bush refused to do and even people like me strongly disliked about that President's policy.
If they'd have cared, they would have made categorizing them in a binding LEGAL way as POW, criminal combatant, or small fish to toss back with a 'sorry 'bout that' to follow 'em, the absolute priority to just get DONE. That? I would have even been 100% behind...and still would be for that matter.
The ONLY thing un-american, in my opinion, about Gitmo, is the fact those men have no legal status, and so, don't even have the consideration of a Civil War POW (and any Union or Confederate prisoner would think of Gitmo as some royal palace of luxury...but then...so would most Middle Eastern and Central Asian fighters compared to local equivalents).
Ahh..but closing the camps themselves, just to say they were, means so much more, it seems. (sigh)
]