What in hell is going on? First
Bush says on June 8:
"We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America," Bush said when asked in an interview with Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto if he would close the detention center.
Then for the next few days we get headlines to the tune of "Bush Administration Split on Closing Guantanamo," although if one reads the article, Rumsfeld says that he knows of no one who's considering the option. Go MSM!
And now...
...Cheney says
no way. The
NYT has a piece on it too, but I much prefer the boston.com piece, simply because of the headline:
VP Says No to Plan to Close Cuba Jail
But White House keeps options open.
Unh?
If this is BushCo trying to play both sides of the fence on this, they're doing a piss-poor job of it. It is worth nothing that both interviews mentioned took place on Fox News Channel and were taped within days of each other (the Cheney interview was taped Friday, the Bush one taped Wednesday).
That said, I refuse to believe that this is the administration not presenting a unified front just because they might happen to disagree - mostly because no one in the admin is on record as wanting to close Guantanamo. This is orchestrated to let Bush look like he's thinking about doing something about Guantanamo while he sends the rest of his staff out to let us all know what's really going on. Bush gets to go out and say the happy, feel-good line that we're "exploring all alternatives," but until someone central to the administration admits they have a problem, they can't solve it.
Wasn't Dubya in AA or NA? He should remember that the first step is admitting you have a problem. Not talking about the "hard core" terrorists that we have holed up in Guantanamo [see Cheney in boston.com article].
Yes - we've finally weeded out all the people that shouldn't have been there. We're sure this time! C'mon - you can trust us!
That said - kudos to Leahy and Hagel (!!!) for not shutting up about this, even when the admin was pretending that they were going to get off their butts and take some decisive action.
''People in the world believe [America] is a power, an empire that pushes people around -- we do it our way, we don't live up to our commitments to multilateral institutions," Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, told CNN's ''Late Edition."
Sounds a lot like what Dems have been saying about Repug foreign policy for the past few years, doesn't it?