This will be brief, and to one point only: Gitmo
I know, i realize that with the best of intentions, BHO asked that Guantanamo be closed and its inhabitants, clients, prisoners and staff be reassigned to prisons or other facilities inside the continental USA. Senator Dick Durbin(Ill) even had a underutilized new SuperMax prison he offered up as a substitute. With plenty of cowards, knee knockers and Democrats sniffing the butt shorts of republicans a few points behind them in the polls deserting him, Obama in his first days got slapped down, and he backed off with the threats from Congress. (m0re)
It is now 5 years later. Congress is infested with Tea Party hystericals and even more political cowardice (see the gun background check votes), as well as half the former Blue Dogs and dozens of Tea Party types busy spinning circles and taking useless vote aftyer useless vote. Pentagon wants 200 million to restore and improve Gitmo. Obma backed down and retreated once, as political expediency. he has a hunger strike lasting over 80 days that more than a hundred prisoners are undertaking.
I suggest he take up Durbin's offer, use Federal money to pay for costs in Illinois in a already adequate structure, and transfer the population now at 160 or so. The irony ios over 130 are supposed to be released but the Feds haven't figured out how to do it yet. So about 40 to sixty prisoners are required to be kept for a trial.
So do it. move them and give them a deadline. Then tell the American people what you are doing and dare the buttholes in Congress to snort and whine and scream they have a better idea. You do it, let them cry.
Thank you, for human rights that have been abused in our name way way, too long.
I was more than a little disappointed watching Obama give a warm sendoff to the Bush
Lie Brary project. But, remember, Obama has been covering Bush's backside for years
Bush didn't give a flying crap about restrictions on Pentagon money when he transferred funds from Afghanistan accounts to the planning for the invasion of Iraq . Just a great big FU which the Congress slobbered all over him for. He didn't consult, just delivered a fait accompli. He INVADED, and got endless praise even as million here as well as around the world condemned it. Bush just did it. We were the "little people", not his base.
None of the turds and deadbeats and bribed pissholes in Congress will do anything but scream about terrarists! if Obama does the right thing. They won't help now, or ever..
So, move the people cleared for release to a med security federal institution, figure out a way to get these people to go to a non torture scenario country, and put up the rest in a Super Max with a trial schedule,. they are all on hunger strike because they are in limbo, with the feckless worthless Congress using Gitmo as a political football as if it is Obama's fault. He didn''t bring them there as a political prop, that was the bush baby and his Lie brary. now to be paid for its upkeep for by our tax dollars into infinity. The first 550 million was all that tax breaks for billionaires being shoved back in our face. But
their indefinite detention IS HIS DOING BY OMMISSION>
I don't like how we are all collectively guilty of depriving people ten years of their lives, some of them an extra 3 because this President doesn't have a plan or the gumption to move on this. Just like Seligmann, a Democrat rotting in a Alabama jail, these are people of little account forgotten by this Administration.
How about burning a little political capital and selling it as mercy, not a scare, for the American people?
I am tired of making excuses "'oooh, we are better than that...ooh, that is not who we are". damn straight that is who we are. A nation of political cowards.
Thank you, if you find the gumption to deliver for human rights that have been abused in our name way way, too long.