Obama regroups on Guantanamo - Counsel Craig Replaced as Point Man

Washington Post ^ | September 25, 2009 | Anne E. Kornblut and Dafna Linzer

[La Lydia]

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress...Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal. The White House has faltered...because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

White House Counsel Gregory Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said...

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said...

To empty the prison, the administration will need to find facilities to house 50 to 60 prisoners who cannot be released and who cannot be tried because of legal impediments, according to an administration official. The administration must also win congressional funding for the closure process, find host countries for detainees cleared for release, and transfer dozens of inmates to federal and military courts for prosecution...

"The entire civil service counseled him not to set a deadline" to close Guantanamo, according to one senior government lawyer...

[La Lydia]

I started laughing at the point where Craig blames the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress for this cluster of failure and danger and political screwing-up. Bottom line: it was Obama who chose Craig -- who had NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER WITH THIS KIND OF SITUATION -- to run the show. They don't have a message, they don't have a policy, they don't have a plan. All they have is an executive order that is becoming harder and harder to actually execute.

[DuncanWaring]

119 days, MF.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Counselor Craig, welcome to the underside of the bus!

[ridesthemiles]

That bus must be a multi-unit articulated one!!

[La Lydia]

The entire story is really worth a read, both for what it contains and what it assumes. The BO administration came in thinking they were oh-so-much-smarter than those who came before, and it is becoming more and more evident the direction that hubris is taking them — and our country.

[bvw]

The revenge of Elizabeth Broton.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I miss the smooth running well oiled machine that was the Carter White House. Is this the most incompetent administration in history or what?

How's this sound? Let's turn over a trillion dollars of borrowed "stimulus" money to these jamokes and then let them run two of our largest manufacturing concerns, and when they've well and truly screwed that up, let's let them run all the hospitals and tell doctors how to run their businesses. That's the ticket!

[norwaypinesavage]

It is interesting how this story blames the White House, the administration, senior officials, Greg Craig, George Bush, officials, senior government lawyers, etc, but never Barack Obama.