From Contentions:
Uh, Yeah, About Those DetaineesAbe Greenwald - 03.16.2009 - 11:28 AM
Was President Obama banking on non-existent European support to make his Guantanamo closing viable? Here’s the New York Times:
European countries that have offered to help the Obama administration close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have begun raising questions about the security risks and requirements if they accept prisoners described by the Bush administration as “the worst of the worst,” according to diplomats and other officials.
[…]
Germany’s interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has suggested publicly that if Guantánamo detainees pose no security risk, there is no reason the United States should not take them.
“No reason”? Why so rational? Hasn’t Herr Schäuble heard about the global appeal of America’s new superstar president? Does the Obama administration actually have to start giving reasons for things all of the sudden? If it does, let’s go one step back and ask why the United States should close Guantánamo at all.
Oh, that’s right, because we’re in the land of the dummy “Restart” button, where gesture trumps reality, where a signing ceremony is more important than the ramifications of what’s being signed, where renouncing Wall Street bonuses is more important than getting Wall Streeters to spend and stimulate the economy, where the significance of tearing down a Bush-era institution outweighs the potential dangers of freed terrorists, and where praise from European leaders is set above the actual cooperation of European governments
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