What the Obama administration is saying now:
“We never had a plan to transfer Yemenis back to their country if the Yemeni government was not capable of handling that transfer.”
January 6, 2010 — Robert Gibbs, White House briefing
What the Obama admininstration was saying a year ago:
“Certainly we would like to be able to bring them back to Yemen and have them integrate themselves back into their own society with their families…Except in the case perhaps of some very hard core elements, we believe that the majority of these detainees can be put productively into a…reintegration program with the goal over time of enabling them to find a way back into Yemeni society without posing a security risk.”
January 22, 2009 — U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Stephen Seche, in an interview with America.gov
“Ambassador Seche’s comments that you referred to lay out very well the U.S. government position on the situation of the Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo.”
January 26, 2009 — State Department spokesman statement to THE WEEKLY STANDARD
This isn’t the first time the Obama administration has been unable to keep its story straight on Yemen and Guantanamo Bay.
