Obama's Gitmo Task Force Blows Its Deadline

newsweak ^ | 7/20/2009 | Michael Isikoff

[tobyhill]

An Obama administration task force set up to develop a plan for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will miss its first deadline this week—and put off a key report until the fall—amid continued divisions over how to resolve one of the president's thorniest policy dilemmas.

The task force, set up on Obama's second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21, outlining a long-term detention plan for detainees captured in counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantánamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a "few months," a senior administration official told NEWSWEEK. A separate task-force report on interrogations—also due this week—is being put off as well, said the official, who, like others quoted in this article, asked not to be named talking about private deliberations.

The postponement of the two reports is sure to raise fresh questions about whether Obama will be able to shut down Guantánamo by next January as he pledged immediately after taking office. While publicly saying they remain committed to next January's deadline, officials privately acknowledge that a host of political and diplomatic problems—including the reluctance of foreign countries to accept detainees and fierce opposition from members of Congress to moving them to the United States—has made closing the facility far more daunting than they had anticipated.

[Jewbacca]

Not the first thing Obama’s blown in his life.

[Paladin2]

If 0b0z0 doesn’t provide a paper trail of his “citizenship”, he needs to be frog-marched to a cell of his own at Gitmo.

[Jaxter]

Hey, that reminds me...Larry Sinclair’s book just came out.

[hsalaw]

This administration’s ship is springing leaks everywhere. They won’t put out the mid-year budget review, their porkulus package isn’t working (except to buy two pound hams, and how that’s going to “create or save” jobs I’ll never know), they can’t get the American public to believe in Obamacare, they put off the cap-and-tax cr*pola because it was another load no one was buying, the Indians told Clinton to take a hike on global warming (or whatever they’re calling it now), and they can’t even find someone willing to be paid billons of dollars in order to put up a bunch of murderous thug terrorists who are, actually, in the right place right now. Keystone Kops were amateurs compared with this bunch of bozos.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The "decision" to close Gitmo "in a year" was simply a post-inauguration campaign promise. It boils down to an admission that he never did have a clue what to do other than what Bush had been doing.

He will either renege on his promise to close Gitmo, or what he does do will be obviously detrimental to the United States. Not that that is certain to stop him; all his foreign speeches have done as much.