That’s the view of a couple retired generals who’ve been trotted out by Human Rights First. They do not blame Greg Craig or Barack Obama for the failure to meet the January 22nd deadline to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. They also don’t blame the ninety senators who voted to deny the administration funds to close the facility. And they don’t blame the Bush administration’s filing system and sloppy paperwork, as Greg Craig has done. “Generals: Cheneys scaremongering.”
Never mind that almost 100 of the detainees held at Gitmo are Yemenis and the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, is wary of sending them back home because of the duplicitous Yemeni government — al Qaeda terrorists have a habit of “escaping” from jail in Yemen. Never mind the lack of cooperation from our European allies. For years the Europeans complained about Gitmo, but it turns out they are actually not too keen on taking in terrorists. And never mind the fact that the American people don’t want the Gitmo detainees here for obvious reasons — despite General Maddox’s great faith that they are no more dangerous than your average pick-pocket. Never mind all that because there is still the little problem that, you know, there are a lot of dangerous terrorists down at Gitmo whom even the Obama adminstration doesn’t want to free or transfer or put before a court. It would’ve been nice if Obama had thought this through before blindly ordering Gitmo closed at the end of his first year in office — a move the majority of the American people did not support then and do not support now. Because Obama didn’t think this through, however, his surrogates are now reduced to attacking the Cheneys.
