Thursday, January 12, 2012

I Guess Bush Released the Poets

Gosh, I remember when our Guantanamo Bay detention facility was a war crime for our liberal side of the aisle that had to be closed. I remember all the stories about the poor poet-inmates who languished under the hot sun enduring the horrors of rice pilaf. Although prisoners gained weight in their stays, we were up to no good. One of the first things President Obama did was to sign an order to close the facility (in a year).

President Obama has not closed the facility:

The 10th anniversary of the Guantánamo Bay prison was marked with protests Wednesday, as closing the controversial detention facility remains a promise unfulfilled for President Obama.

Obama campaigned on closing the facility in Cuba and, in one of his first actions as president, issued an executive order calling for it to be dismantled within one year. But as he enters the final year of his first term, human-rights groups are dismayed that the end of Guantánamo is nowhere in sight.

As with most of the good things President Obama has done in foreign policy, this has been a continuation of Bush policies and not a reversal as he pledged.

For the hard-core anti-war left, the facility is still a crime. So they are at least consistent. But the press and liberals have stopped working themselves into a frenzy over the poor lost souls stuck there. So whatever Guantanamo is, we know the press and liberals either know that Gitmo wasn't a war crime under Bush or are unwilling to hammer their man in office now over the war crime that the camp is. Neither paints them in a particularly good light.