interesting what a few months in office does to you;

[dickay]

It looks like guantanamo is back on the map, and bringing enemy combatents to US Courts, a promise made during the campaign trail, is now off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us...o.html?_r=2&hp

Still, during the presidential campaign Mr. Obama criticized the commissions, saying that “by any measure our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure,” and declaring that as president he would “reject the Military Commissions Act.”

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

In a news conference this week, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. emphasized that if the administration did use military commissions, the rules must give detainees “a maximum amount of due process.”

But, speaking of detainees whom American officials have accused of involvement in major terrorist plots, Mr. Holder added, “It may be difficult for some of those high-value detainees to be tried in a normal federal court.”

What it appears to me, is that Obama and his clan have realized that prosecution in a Federal Court is a mistake on so many levels, thus Bush was right. However, he can't simply revert back to bush's system, he's in a pickle and will word things so that the requirements are relaxed somehow.

Obama has changed his thoughts on alot of issues which he critiqued Bush on during the campaign and that he ran on "changing". Most notably is this detainee issue and the Vice Presidential protection powers, as well as aspects of the Patriot Act. Personally, I like this....but I wonder how many blind supporters are questioning their messiah for going back on his campaign promises?

[ohms_law]

My apologies for tooting my own horn here, but:
Guantanamo to be closed??

All of the above being the case I'm not convinced that "closing Guantanamo" really means releasing all of the prisoners, let alone actually closing the base (which is never going to happen for reasons far outside of this debate). President-elect Obama has many smart people working for his administration, and I'm certain that most of them realize that it's probably a good idea to hold prisoners there. If there's a better physical location to hold them then I'm sure that information will be offered up, but I don't know of a better physical place to hold them. What I see the phrase "closing Guantanamo" as representing is a change to the body of law that the prison and the personnel running it are operating under. I know that recent press coverage of the President-elect's administration has been about how he wants to change many of the Executive Orders issued by the Bush administration, so I imagine that the "torture papers" which I talked about above are going to be included in that list of Orders in which to change.

One former criticism of the prison on Guantanamo was also the conditions of the prison itself. This has largely been addressed already by the Bush administration however. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Obama administration ends up spending more money in order to upgrade the facility further however.

Once the above items have been addressed then a case could be made that the "old Guantanamo" has been closed to be replaced by the new policy, law and facilities. All of this is purely speculative however since none of us know what the President-elect's administration is specifically planning on doing, that I know of.

Ahem...

[dickay]

My apologies for tooting my own horn here, but:
Guantanamo to be closed??


Ahem...

haha, i do remember your position at the time and when making my post was saying to myself that i'm glad you're back around. for some reason most in here can't see the forest through the trees on this issue. Its nice to have someone with a similar viewpoint.

[oriole^]

I wish I could say I was surprised. Somebody cue up another round of Democrats trying to convince me that this is somehow better than standing up for any actual ideals. On second thought, don't, because I'm kind of sick of hearing it by now.

[free2131]

I wish I could say I was surprised. Somebody cue up another round of Democrats trying to convince me that this is somehow better than standing up for any actual ideals. On second thought, don't, because I'm kind of sick of hearing it by now.

Yeah... well... uh...

TREES SUCK!!!

[Jeffy25]

Republicans one, democrats zero on this one. So many people just "bought" into this plan of "change" from Obama, who (of course) would realize things weren't as he thought they would be once he got into office. This doesn't mean he should be criticized..he is learning on the job...for a short amount of time. But many campaigns promised in this (and every) election...of course, aren't going to get to come true as he said they would. It's just a reality of the situation. Doesn't mean Obama is a failed president...but all those ****ing liberals that hated Bush, but didn't have a clue what it took to do the job, and didn't know the details of what really was going on...are slowly starting to find out once their messiah is in office...of course they are still not going to ever admit that Bush was ever right on anything...they'll just say that Obama proved it couldn't be done.

[dickay]

Republicans one, democrats zero on this one. So many people just "bought" into this plan of "change" from Obama, who (of course) would realize things weren't as he thought they would be once he got into office. This doesn't mean he should be criticized..he is learning on the job...for a short amount of time. But many campaigns promised in this (and every) election...of course, aren't going to get to come true as he said they would. It's just a reality of the situation. Doesn't mean Obama is a failed president...but all those ****ing liberals that hated Bush, but didn't have a clue what it took to do the job, and didn't know the details of what really was going on...are slowly starting to find out once their messiah is in office...of course they are still not going to ever admit that Bush was ever right on anything...they'll just say that Obama proved it couldn't be done.

well said.

[Matty86]

I don't know a ton about politics, but I'd imagine a majority of the Obama supporters don't really care that he's going back on campaign promises. From what I saw of the supporters, their following was so blind that I don't think they even paid attention to what his positions were on topics. They just heard a great speaker who wasn't an old white guy (the complete opposite of Bush) and voted based on that.

[RickD]

CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA....oh wait...

no I was wrong.....politics as usual, carry on.

[Jeffy25]

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that made me chuckle

I'll keep my freedom, my guns and my money and you can keep the "change"

teehee

[Alloutwar]

Oh my god. Out of 1200 ridiculously stupid, poor decisions the last administration made, they made ONE (1) move that might not have been the worst decision, and somehow this turns into a right-wing glee club? Give me a break.

for you guys jumping up and down and saying 'look! he's not infallible! He's not perfect! Mwaha-hah!' What did you think, we're all sheep? That we felt Obama was the Neo-esque, real life equivalent of The One, flying about DC and kung-fu-ing the place into shape in 110 days? Holy projected idealistic ignorance, Batman.

This doesn't make me happy, but I don't expect every major Bush-era decision to be completely reversed. The administration was horrible, but most of that was exemplified in how they handled things - lies, miscommunications, underhanded firings/leaks etc. The actual policies are almost an afterthought. I can accept that maybe in this case there is no easy tear-it-down alternative - just like there's no pack-up-and-get-out-of-Iraq in a week plan, either.

My god, the administration made a campaign promise; it looked at the facts examined the situation, and is now coming forward with those results. Even that - even that simple act of having more communication, entertaining more than one viewpoint - sets this administration light years ahead of its predecessor. It's not even in the same universe.

Those of us on the more conservative side of things often have this I-know-the-ways-of-the-world-better-than-you attitude, as if liberal is equal to inexperienced, naive, idealistic, or just 'never been mugged'. I think that's something that you need to abandon if you hope to get any educated youth to respect your opinions and viewpoints. You're not all old, rich, uneducated white men, and we're not all young, poor, minority socialists. Get a grip.

[OldFatGuy]

Oh my god. Out of 1200 ridiculously stupid, poor decisions the last administration made, they made ONE (1) move that might not have been the worst decision, and somehow this turns into a right-wing glee club? Give me a break.

for you guys jumping up and down and saying 'look! he's not infallible! He's not perfect! Mwaha-hah!' What did you think, we're all sheep? That we felt Obama was the Neo-esque, real life equivalent of The One, flying about DC and kung-fu-ing the place into shape in 110 days? Holy projected idealistic ignorance, Batman.

This doesn't make me happy, but I don't expect every major Bush-era decision to be completely reversed. The administration was horrible, but most of that was exemplified in how they handled things - lies, miscommunications, underhanded firings/leaks etc. The actual policies are almost an afterthought. I can accept that maybe in this case there is no easy tear-it-down alternative - just like there's no pack-up-and-get-out-of-Iraq in a week plan, either.

My god, the administration made a campaign promise; it looked at the facts examined the situation, and is now coming forward with those results. Even that - even that simple act of having more communication, entertaining more than one viewpoint - sets this administration light years ahead of its predecessor. It's not even in the same universe.

Those of us on the more conservative side of things often have this I-know-the-ways-of-the-world-better-than-you attitude, as if liberal is equal to inexperienced, naive, idealistic, or just 'never been mugged'. I think that's something that you need to abandon if you hope to get any educated youth to respect your opinions and viewpoints. You're not all old, rich, uneducated white men, and we're not all young, poor, minority socialists. Get a grip.

Judging by the ignorance surrounding the $400/$800 tax cut (there are STILL lots of people that claim it wasn't really a cut... LOL), I'd say this well reasoned, logical retort will get you..........


no where.

Sorry AOW.

[ohms_law]

Good reply, AOW.

I don't buy into Obama's image and policies any more then I bought into Bush's. Neither one is an ideological match to my views. Obama is no more or less correct then Bush was.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Obama administration is doing what they feel is best, with the facts as they are, through their (Liberal) ideological viewpoint. The Bush administration did what it viewed as best through it's (Neo-Conservative) ideological view.
The Neo-Cons were in power, now the Liberal's are. Deal with it.

[dickay]

Oh my god. Out of 1200 ridiculously stupid, poor decisions the last administration made, they made ONE (1) move that might not have been the worst decision, and somehow this turns into a right-wing glee club? Give me a break.

read my initial post. it wasn't referring to "1" move in general but a series of moves Obama has made that were inconsistent with the campaign trail promises and more importantly were exactly the items that his campaign and liberals attacked Bush for.

More significantly than this issue for me, is the Vice Presidential powers that liberals & Obama vehemently attached Bush / Cheney for which Obama immediately backed down upon after accepting office. I'll post more on that one later, i'm off to the Yankee/Sox game to pay my parking fee so they can then cancel the game.

[Alloutwar]

I know - I wasn't directly ping-ponging you - I read your post at first and just went on to another thread. When I came back and found all the other comments, I pretty much had to blow off the steam in my post.

My point is that, even if the Obama admin goes through and finds that all of these policies and detention centers and what not really were the best option, and somehow are defensible/necessary/immovable, then at least they went in with the intention of doing the right thing, and were convinced otherwise - and will then (be forced to) let the public know why. And that, alone, is enough to satisfy people like me - knowing that the people in charge are examining things and adapting and learning what the best option is, instead of just declaring it Decider-style and then labelling anyone disagreeing or even questioning as assisting terrorism.

I don't expect every campaign promise to be lived up to 100% - but by pushing the tax stuff, economic overhauls, and masssive green/environment agenda, they're following through at a pretty good rate. What gets me upset is when people get gleeful at any tiny opportunity to play political "gotcha!" - especially when some of this crap saddling the new administration might have been left in an unfixable mess by their predecessor. Ever have public office? I ran thinking I could get the budget sorted out, not realizing how seriously F'd up the fools before me had gotten it.

Anyway - back to something everyone here should be able to agree on; here's hoping the Sox wipe the floor with the Yanks! Enjoy the game.