Looking For The Git-Go On Gitmo

Looks like closing Guantanamo is even harder than getting the asbestos out of Altgeld Gardens.

The AP reports that the January deadline for closing Guantanamo will probably slip, to no one's surprise.  The WaPo had a long story about the new management team at the White House that will focus like a laser beam on this issue, now:

"Guantanamo was everyone's part-time job," said a senior official, one of several interviewed for this article who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Now, the official added, Rouse is coordinating them.

White House Counsel Greg Craig is the designated fall guy, but shouldn't be:

Virginia Democratic Rep.  James Moran, who led a one-man charge to counter GOP's Guantánamo campaign, said there were many Obama officials to blame in an interview with The Cable.

"Greg Craig was not the person responsible for the delay on the Guantanamo plan," said Moran. "He is a professional; he was given a lot to do, little backup, and apparently virtually no information on the background of the detainees and the kind of talking points that were needed."

...

Other key appropriators who were trying to fund the effort, such as defense subcommittee chairman Jack Murtha, D-PA, and Appropriations chairman David Obey, D-WI, couldn't and wouldn't fight the Republican machine without Obama's help.

"They talked to the White House and the White House wasn't willing to stand alongside them," said Moran. The thinking among Democrats was, "If we can't take advantage of Obama's credibility on this issue, we probably are not going win."

Now the administration is trying to press the reset button on Guantánamo, but Moran argued the damage is done and it is now nearly impossible to sell the idea of moving the prisoners to U.S. soil.

"This is their first major fuck up, and it's an enormous fuckup, because now that you've lost ground you're not going to be able to recover it," said Moran.

Comments

[PD]

"If we can't take advantage of Obama's credibility on this issue, we probably are not going win."

Huh.

If we can't shoot ourselves in both feet with a shotgun, we won't be able to win the marathon.

[PaulL]

Yep, the most important information on the Gitmo detainees is the talking points.

[bishop]

"That word you're using, doesn't mean what you think it means: in re credibility.

[Barry Dauphin]

The f#ck up was listening to Moran in the first place.

[Original MikeS]

Does this mean that after 9 months in office (8 to racist evil-mongers) President Odrama has found another issue on which he was wrong and Bush was right?

[No one you know]

First major fuck up??

What the eff channel has this dude been watching?

[ROA]

Why should it require more than a part-time effort by a low level staffer to close Guantanamo? On November 14, 2007, constitutional scholar and law professor Obama said “Last point, Guantanamo. That’s easy. Close down Guantanamo.” We all know Obama never mispeakes and that anyone who says he does is a racist. I guess that makes Moran a racist too.

[bishop]

"All of them," with the possible exception of Fox, and I say that advisedly.

[Jane]

"This is their first major fuck up, and it's an enormous fuckup, because now that you've lost ground you're not going to be able to recover it," said Moran.

"First major fuck up?" Where have you been?

[Janet]

((The f#ck up was listening to Moran in the first place.))

Barry Dauphin - Well said! I don't know who Jim Moran represents, but it sure isn't the people or interests of the United States of America.

[Pofarmer]

Dang, Paul L beat me to it. If it requires Talking Points, to get something done, then you probably need to reevaluate what you are doing.

[Dave (in the People's Banana Republic of MA)]

I don't know who Jim Moran represents, but it sure isn't the people or interests of the United States of America.

[Neo]

Other key appropriators who were trying to fund the effort, such as defense subcommittee chairman Jack Murtha, D-PA, and Appropriations chairman David Obey, D-WI, couldn't and wouldn't fight the Republican machine without Obama's help.

We've been told for months that the Republicans are a dying, hapless party incapable of doing anything .. and now we're told there is a mythical "Republican machine" so powerful that powerful Democrats cower. It strains credulity.

[PD]

It strains credulity.

The leaders know that both things can't be true simultaneously. Unfortunately the people they lead, like those who show up at DKos and occasionally here, have no trouble maintaining that both assertions are gospel.

[matt]

perhaps it is finally dawning on them that they are well and truly screwed, even in their alternate universe. Now the Lefties are going to be screaming at them as well as the rest of us.

I find it simply amazing that they are playing to the hard left rather than the more centrist Democratic Party core.

[Ratskeller]

Guantanamo needs to stay open to prevent terror detainees from being released and/or to prevent them from being introduced into the criminal population of US prisons. The so-called administration "fu*k up" has actually ended in a good way and has produced a result that is beneficial to the country's self interest. I say this is one of those times when we on the right should keep our mouths shut--NOT wave a red flag in front of the bull--and NOT do an outrageous celebratory dance in the end zone. Let's quietly savor the unanticipated victory and let the Guantanamo issue that should have never even been brought up die a quiet death.

[Rob Crawford]

I find it simply amazing that they are playing to the hard left rather than the more centrist Democratic Party core.

Why?

Their beliefs lay with the hard left. The centrists are "centrist" only so long as voters are paying attention, anyway.

[Thomas Collins]

I am going to have to stop analogizing Obama's Administration to Carter's. Carter at least helped facilitate the Camp David Accords, and began to recognize late in his term that, in the USSR, he was dealing with an Evil Empire.

For sheer dangerous incompetence, I think we have to go back to the Buchanan Administration to find an appropriate analogy to Obama.

Sarkozy's speech, I don't think, was an attempt to wake up Obama. I think it was a message to the Free World that, until January of 2013, the US will be a pitiful player on the international scene, and that other countries will have to take the lead.

In addition to incompetence, Obama is an abject coward. Letting Craig take the fall for the Gitmo debacle bespeaks a complete inability to take responsibility for a policy call (announcing the Gitmo closing at the beginning of a Presidential term without having thought through the implications) that was the responsibility of the President.

[PD]

In addition to incompetence, Obama is an abject coward.

One of the ads over at Tapper's runs like so:

"Get a free trial pair."

Yes, it's for contact lenses, but thinking of it in a different way brought to mind your comment.

[daddy]

This reminds me of that BBC story from this morning about how when at taxpayer expense they put monkeys and typewriters in a closed room for a month, instead of getting Shakespeare, they got poop on the keyboards and gibberish.

Our News Media and the Left placed in the Oval Office a woefully ignorant of World History and Economics, Race-baiting, Capitalist-hating, anti-American Marxist ideologue, with zero college records or resume', nor any semblance of ever having done a days work in his life, or of even understanding what an honest to goodness job is and how it fuels the economy. Now they are amazed that instead of Abe Lincolnesque leadership emerging from the White House, instead there's nothing but poop and gibberish.

Who, besides the Media and the Left and the Faculty of Harvard and Yale and Congress and The New York Times and The NEA and the funders of British Science projects, would have thunk it?

[Uncle BigBad]

I don't understand the rush to close GITMO.

Consider:
It's a first class facility,
A pleasant duty station for the guards,
For the detainees, it's probably cleanser and safer than their own homes,
It's a good use for the area, which probably isn't much good for anything else,
It keeps 200 terrorists off U.S. soil.
What's not to like?

I hope our lease isn't ending soon (We could probably renew if we insisted).

I'll admit, I don't understand the left-wing mindset.

[JorgXMcKie]

First, Rep Moran is mis-spelling his own name. It's 'Moron;.

Second, just like there are First Sergeants in the US Army, in the Obama Army, this representative is First F*ckup Moron.

[Gregory Koster]

Note a peculiarity in the POST article: it isn't by the POST, but is a POST-Propublica collaboration. ProPublica is a wholly owned subsdiary of Herb and Marion Sandler, who are big vampire buddies with George Soros, and did just fine out of the bank collapse. Why does the POST feel the need to collaborate with this crowd of zanies and sharks? Another great idea by the masterminds who were trying to rent newsroom access at the POST a little while ago?

[PD]

A pleasant duty station for the guards

Actually, I've read that it's somewhat hazardous for the guards. Detainees storing up their urine and feces so they can ambush the guards with it, that sort of thing. Treatment that, should any leftist be subjected to, they'd of course bear it with grace.

[DrJ]

"Get a free trial pair."

Here's what he needs: Neuticals!

[bishop]

If I didn't give a damn about the accuracy or effectiveness of interrogation techniques, I'd send them all to Damascus's
Filistin Branch of the Mukharabat, where two generations of torturers were trained by the late Georg Fischer, aka Alois Brunner, and assorted KGB and GRU detailees.
Similarly the Citadel prison in Cairo, not far from where Obama spoke, where Syed Qutb
gave his final gasp, thus inspiring a generation of jihadists. Yet Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, and to a lesser degree, Bagram, are the Devils Islands and "Black Hole of Calcutta" in this wordview. Such is the hypocrisy reigning in this administration.
Right now, Law & Order, is spouting all the
crap that's been debunked so often here as to induce nausea.

[hit and run]

DrJ:
Here's what he needs: Neuticals!

Wasn't Bill Ayers famous for his neutical references?

[Ralph L]

Moran was mayor of the People's Republic of Alexandria, Va, and now represents the eastern part of the Virginia suburbs of DC. Before he was mayor, he was forced off the city council and lost his stockbroker credentials for shady dealings. Horrid Boston accent.

[DrJ]

Wasn't Bill Ayers famous for his neutical references?

That dog! Argh!! And just after my favorite holiday!

[Barry Dauphin]

Yes, tonight's rerun of "Law & Order" was a Huffington Post wet dream. They use as evidence everything as fact that has been debunked (that's why it's called fiction) and the video of the dead soldier read like it came off of an Olberman rant. It was interesting to watch the police get all indignant about "torture". If you watch an episode of SVU, they make Gitmo look like a picnic. Harsh interrogation is OK for sex abuse suspects but not for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

[Jane]

I'll admit, I don't understand the left-wing mindset.

I keep coming back to an addiction to hate, fully developed from the Bush administration. Or maybe the indoctrination has already taken place.

I used to be on the left, and the people I knew then are completely unrecognizable to me now.

[richard mcenroe]

"We've been told for months that the Republicans are a dying, hapless party incapable of doing anything .. and now we're told there is a mythical "Republican machine" so powerful that powerful Democrats cower. It strains credulity."

The Republican Machine is poisoning the wells.

[hit and run]

And just after my favorite holiday!

And I'm lobbying for Talk Like a Trucker Day.

[Gmax]

Jim Moran is a very disgusting individual and a far lefty, akin to Pete Stark.

What publication was he speaking to, swearing like a longshoreman? I know he just sounds like any garden variety leftard, but he is a US Congressman.

Even a dog wont foul its own bed, but Moran seems to roll in it.

[Ann]

OT,

glaster,

The Home Coming crowd was at the house tonight, so my husband and I were mostly quarantined to one room...Ha! He saw your pictures on my computer and asked who the INCREDIBLE photographer was. He couldn't believe the clarity and detail. AMAZING were his words. (He has several design awards, so that his Hugh praise, in my book.)

Just thought you would like to know, you have another admirer!

[Peg C.]

Jim Moran, of the famously raucous and rowdy August town hall. He totally dissed his constituents and amazingly enough now the WH apparently has dissed him. It's a good day when he doesn't get what he wants.

[PD]

Tapper has a posting about the Law & Order episode and the lefties are castigating right-wingers for not liking the episode: "Hey, it presented the arguments for BOTH SIDES, how closed minded can you be?" That sort of thing.

Those of you who've seen it (I confess to never having watched a single episode of L/O in any of its many incarnations), your assessment of its "balance" is ...?

[Ann]

Sadly, the only talent I have is posting pics of Chewbacca.

Todays Disdress: Manly

[Ann]

And the Manly Backside:

You know if bad were around, she would have a plumber crack joke. :)

[hit and run]

NOOOO!!!! They said that when Barack threw out the first pitch at the All Star Game that he wore "mom jeans".

Well, they certainly weren't Michelle's.

Those jeans would swallow him whole.

[hit and run]

Bo is a fine looking dog.

[Ann]

Hit, LOL, I almost went with the fine looking dog angle.

[Gmax]

Baby got Back. Lots of it. Sit a wine glass on the back, back.

[Barry Dauphin]

Law & Order balance on John-Yoo-who mock case?. Well it's like having Keith Olberman and Eric Alterman debate it and call it balance. Yes the prosecutor makes his pro harsh interrogation argument in the most cardboard character-like way (written so that he comes off like a boob). Every rumor about interrogations were presented as fact in the episode and the case is made that the Bush administration wrote memos so that anything goes. Stepping on the testicles of children of terrorists would be OK for GWB.

Jack McCoy is the DA and presides over the interrogation techniques of all Law & Order cases. Harsh techniques are OK when the officers know the bad guy is guilty in SVU.

[bishop]

Recall that the character's name was Franklin as is Larry, the official used to bait the AIPAC case, that was ultimately suspended. More likely than not, we will more cases like Fizgerald failing to nab Ali Mohammed till five years later, after
the embassy bombing plot, it seems he provided part of the information for the 1st PDB, including the instigators Seif Al Adel and the now late Mohammed Atef, two more of those Egyptian gentleman I referenced earlier, one an Army Colonel the other a prison guard, whose previous operation had been the incident in Mogadishu

[Boatbuilder]

Hit--I got here late so I'm putting it on this thread instead of the last.

Your comment about the "international community's" attitude toward Iran reminded me of a classic Clinton joke.

Shortly after they marry, Bill places a covered plywood box under their bed. He tells Hillary--"I love you, and I'll try to be honest and true to you, but you have to promise me one thing--never open that box!"

Hillary promises, and despite her intense curiosity, she keeps the promise through the years, until after they leave the White House. Her curiosity gets the best of her. She opens the box and finds 5 empty beer cans and $87,547.35 in cash.

She apologizes to Bill--"I'm so sorry, Bill, but I couldn't stand it any more. I opened the box. Please, please explain what this is all about."

"Well, Hill, I guess it's OK. I keep the box as a way to remind me of my unfaithfulness. Every time I cheated on you, I put another beer can in the box."

Hillary, knowing of Bill's publicly exposed escapades, and her own suspicions, is touched. Feeling she has wronged him, she smiles sweetly at him [hey--its a joke] and says--"Oh, Bill, I am sorry, and you are a good man to be so decent about it. But. . .what's the $87,547.35 for?"

"Oh--every time the box fills up, I clean it out and get the deposit money."

[And he repeats the canard about the Times not blocking an ACORN gamechanging story before the election..]

Clark Hoyt, ombudsman for the Times, has an amusing apologia for their sluggishness off the mark over the ACORN business. There is a marvelous quote from Jill Abramson to the effect that they weren't paying enough attention to what was roiling the blogs and Fox.
=========================================

[JM Hanes]

Barry Dauphin:

I had decided to check out Law & Order myself tonight. I only lasted till they discovered that the victim had been forever damaged by proximity to Abu Ghraib, and that the apparent bad guy was a gun toting law prof. who had authored torture memos. It was just too much like reading the last page of a novel first.

[Janet]

Concerning Law & Order - Maybe this will be strike 3. I believe 2 past episodes focused on a cannibalistic POW (while McCain was running for President), and an abstinence high school teen club that stones to death one of its members.

How many times can we be outraged by the leftist propaganda?...How do we make it stop?

[Jane]

How many times can we be outraged by the leftist propaganda?...How do we make it stop?

Get some of our own?

[Find a leftist windbag at the link under name.]

Michelle Malkin eats Clark Hoyt and Jill Abramson alive about the pitiful excuses for not covering the ACORN story. Read all about it at Memeorandum.
===================================

[bishop]

Actually the last two were Medium, with the slimy fellow who did President Logan on '24
as the POW, and Cold Case, Law & Order, has moved to eleventy, in the last few years, the star chamber defending the likes of Zarquawi, among others. They've had one unequivocally anti terrorist episode in the last 5 years.

[centralcal]

Ann: I love how your fine eye for detail has noticed the startling resemblance to Chewbaca.

[Janet]

Yeah Jane, and I think a lot of efforts are ongoing to begin journalism, acting, production,...schools with a conservative and/or Christian bent.

The 2nd prong seems to be defunding the left. They get so much of our tax money for their projects and organizations. That is what is so frustrating. With my taxes, I actually "donate" to organizations I oppose, like Planned Parenthood, ACORN, NEA,...

[Janet]

Thanks bishop - I can't keep all the crap shows straight.

[Hey, if you've lost Jon Stewart.]

Red State has a clip of Jon Stewart bashing the Dems and their fundraiser Nemazee as well as taking another swipe at legacy journalism.
=================================

[Paglia and Stewart? These people reach a lot of thoughtful ones.]

Wow! And Polipundit has an even longer clip of Jon Stewart weighing in. If you haven't ever watched Jon Stewart, you are missing something. Though usually on the wrong side of the fence, Jon is both terribly incisive and desperately funny. He's a big, big, influence on the young.
========================================

[I think I've never heard so loud the quiet message in a cloud.]

Might as well complete the Sunday review with a link under name to Roy Spencer's latest, a paper about the influence of clouds and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation at Watt's Up. It's important, and very difficult to understand.

One theme in the comments is that climate regulation is a massively complex process; the idea of CO2 as an important climate driver is just too simple to be very useful.
=======================================

[Jane]

If you have a chance watch "The Power Player of the Week" on Fox News Sunday. It features James O'Keefe, the videographer of ACORN. He describes himself as a "progressive radical" motivated by liberal hypocrisy.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

How many times can we be outraged by the leftist propaganda?...How do we make it stop?

Stop watching.

[JM Hanes]

Hasn't worked so far, Charlie, alas!

Jane:
"Get some of our own?"
I'm picturing CSI arrayed against Law & Order. An Obama chorus of grade school children would make a great opener...

Law & Order is the worst of the worst, but in the theme du jour of several shows a year or two ago, familiar leads were snatched up by Homeland Security, or corralled for re-education by the FBI and then returned to base having had experiences they can't bring themselves to talk about.

[Thank you for your service.]

Tom really means 'Looking for the Git Gone'. Bush had the wisdom and the foresight from the Git Go to both create and position the prison. Fine execution, ol Buddy, ol' Pal. Yes, it seems the whole world is starting to miss you.

Even those bitter enemies of ours who salivate at Obama's appeasement must worry about his disconnect from reality and the power he can command. Funny how they are depending upon our military for some surety.
============================
===============================