1/3/10: Another Gitmo Failure

BHO's Gitmo Policy: A failure, wrapped in a failed ideology, wrapped in incompetence

Back on November 18, 2009, we wrote about Obama's admission that he would fail to close Guantanemo Bay before his self-imposed deadline of January 2010. The admission came during an interview in Beijing, while Americans were still getting over the shock that Eric Holder (dba President Obama) was going to grant civilian trials to Islamist terrorists. It was all about confusion and diffusion:

It would seem that these factors are not coincidental. With Obama out of the country and the focus still on Holder's press conference, it definitely diffuses any discussion of Guantanamo Bay. The administration began diffusing this issue months ago by leaking hints that Obama may miss his deadline and then blaming it on White House legal counsel Greg Craig, who has since been forced to resign.

By the time January rolls around, the administration will almost surely diffuse any further mention of this issue with a roll of the eyes and a comment by Robert Gibbs to the effect of, "That's old news."

Well it ain't... It's a FAILURE.

Source: Obama Fail Blog

Well, January is upon us, but the administration's problem with Guantanemo Bay has grown exponentially - far beyond failing to meet a self-imposed deadline. In December, the US released six detainees back to Yemen and there were plans for additional Yemeni releases, but the Christmas attack by a Nigerian-born, Yemeni-trained Islamist terrorist has kind of put the damper on all that hopenchange:

"A senior administration official said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s interagency team had already decided quietly several weeks ago that the security situation in Yemen was too volatile to transfer any more detainees beyond six who were sent home in December. The government concluded it had to release those six because it was about to lose habeas corpus hearings in court that would order them freed.

As for the rest, 'we all agreed we couldn’t send people back because of the security situation,' said the official, who like others requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The administration will re-examine the question in late 2010, when an Illinois prison is ready to take remaining Guantánamo detainees, the official said."

Source: New York Times via Politico

Hey! That sounds like a leak of sensitive information! Where are Janet Napolitano and her TSA agents when you need them?

As usual, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air puts it all in perspective:

At least the White House has finally come to the correct conclusion, albeit tardy indeed. However, the subsequent admissions of intel connected to Abdulmutallab’s near-miss makes one wonder why it took the failed attack to reach it. American intel heard plenty of chatter about Yemeni efforts to conduct terrorist attacks on the US; they just didn’t get specific enough to pinpoint the actual attack. Just a a few days before Christmas, Barack Obama gave the green light to a mission assisting Yemen in conducting airstrikes on AQ targets. That decision didn’t come because Yemen is secure against terrorists, or because Yemen wasn’t a big threat.

It seems that everyone knew that Yemen has a big, big problem with al-Qaeda, but for some reason, Obama thought dumping almost a hundred hardened terrorists into Yemen would … what? Improve the situation? Make the Yemeni AQ networks suddenly love America? The question isn’t so much the reversal — which is just common sense after the attack and its pedigree became known — but why anyone thought releasing the 95 Yemeni detainees in Gitmo back into a near-failed state was a laudatory goal at all.

Source: Hot Air