Obama is going to keep the prison at Gitmo open at least a little while longer:
You have to read the whole piece to appreciate just how much humble pie the administration is eating on this one. Craig dutifully throws himself under the bus and, per the Post, will be rewarded with a plum diplomatic assignment in the very near future. Meanwhile, the real blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Republicans in Congress, as Craig points out, the Bush administration, the international community, and the American people — all of whom have let Obama down. Apparently the Bush administration didn’t keep tidy enough files — they “had been left in disarray.” And this made it impossible for the administration to know just what kind of animals were locked up down there before “boldly” setting a one-year deadline to close the facility. One anonymous government lawyer tells the Post ,”The entire civil service counseled him [Craig] not to set a deadline.” Craig may have been wrong on this point, too. The administration also blames the international community for being so uncooperative in the terrorist resettlement program. But then that one is also kind of Craig’s fault. “They essentially snuck them in, and we were furious,” a senior British official tells the Post in regard to the al Qaeda trained Uighurs now working at a Bermuda golf course. Our allies were inexplicably less cooperative after all that. And then there’s the American people, whose opposition to the administration’s plans to for resettling detainees in suburban America oddly spiked as the spring wore on — and as Dick Cheney pummeled the administration. “Senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer were brought in to craft a more effective message around detainee policy,” the Post reports. That happened in May — no indication of whether it came before or after the decision to send Obama out for a head to head match up with the former vice president. Remember that speech? May 21, 2009, Obama at the National Archives and Dick Cheney at AEI going one after the other? At the time the press couldn’t get enough of the mismatch storyline — the popular new president against the loathed former VP. The Post‘s report concludes with this: “In coming weeks, officials say, they expect to complete the initial review of all the files of those held at Guantanamo.” They haven’t even reviewed all the files yet! Marc Ambinder offers this delightful spin on twitter: “GTMO was messy, but it’s gonna close, nearly on time. Obama thinks Craig did yoeman’s work on GTMO. If there’s a problem, it’s not that.” Right. Gitmo is going to close real soon — and at no risk to national security — just after Obama brings peace to the Middle East, adds 40 million uninsured to the system for not a penny more than you’re paying today, talks the North Koreans and Iranians into abandoning the pursuit of nuclear weapons, and wins the war in Afghanistan after tying General McChrystal’s hands behind his back.
