Obama vows quick action in Mideast; says closing Gitmo will be challenge

some evidence against terrorism suspects may be tainted by the tactics used to obtain it, that doesn’t change the fact they are “people who are intent on blowing us up.”

Guilty even before they have had a trial. If they are guilty enough to be behind bars for 7 years without charge, why not just dispose of them and tell no one?

Closing Gitmo will be a challenge?! But I thought he promised to close down Gitmo pronto!

I think President Obama will find a lot of things much more of a challenge than he thought while he was campaigning. I support Obama and wish him well but he better realize that his honeymoon ends on Jan 20 and all those people counting down the days until he takes office had better realize that Obama is not the Messiah. He is on a runaway train that he probably will not be able to stop when it comes to many issues.

smartacus: "I support Obama and wish him well but he better realize that his honeymoon ends on Jan 20 and all those people counting down the days until he takes office had better realize that Obama is not the Messiah."

I'm sure he will... and anyone dumb enough to think he's an actual Messiah is a fool who deserves to be disappointed. Of COURSE Obama is going to face a lot of crap and have a hard time with it, anyone would after the current president turned an inherited surplus into a trillion dollar defecit. Then he's got to deal with the increased terrorism thanks to bush, etc.

"He is on a runaway train that he probably will not be able to stop when it comes to many issues."

It's a shame bush had to shoot the driver once he got the guy to speed up.

sarge: "But I thought he promised to close down Gitmo pronto!"

evidently there are some morons who still want it open and Obama's discovered that despite being morally superior BY FAR to president bush, you can't simply wish something closed, there are steps to take... and bush's cronies are putting as many obstacles in place as possible.

Not to worry, though, sarge... it'll be closed in due time and on Obama's watch -- likely by his second term in office.

The catch phrase for 2009 will be "don't blame me, I didn't vote for him" but all kidding aside the best way to end the violence is to cut off all aid to Israel. Without an economic and military gaurantor Israel who be forced to take a more moderate view to their neighbors. Both sides have their grievances that can only be settled among themselves. This view of the Mideast situation has been voiced many times by Congressman Ron Paul, who has a better grasp of the situation than me and all the posters here on JT.

Obama is not the Messiah.

I've never heard a Democrat say otherwise; "messiah" was simply a derogatory term used by the failing Republicans.

The catch phrase for 2009 will be "don't blame me, I didn't vote for him" That's been the catchphrase in America since bush was inaugurated.

Shocka! Not even in office yet and Mr Obama is already backpedalling.

Change the terrorism-makers can believe in, that's what that is!

Obama is in over his head. As is Biden.

Smith - By his second term??? If Gitmo's so bad, what's the hold up?

Sheesh,

I feel so much better now about him after reading the article.

Gonna be a long 4 years till junior gets up to speed.

sarge: "If Gitmo's so bad, what's the hold up?"

In case you didn't notice, even bad things take time to get chucked out if there's enough money in the hands of the wrong people. Bush made the economy so terrible, right? Or would you say the economy is good right now? Since it's agreed the economy is a bad thing, why didn't bush hurry up and fix it? Why the hold up? Hell, that OBL guy is one bad dude, so what was Bush's hold up in catching/killing him? He said he was going to do it pronto and it would be easy.

I realize my example is quite silly, but so are your comments. I'm sure Obama would like to have Gitmo closed ASAP, but I'm sure Cheney in particular had enough warning so as to make the red-tape a lot harder to get through for Obama to achieve his goals.

Anyway, stop being immature and accept the fact that Obama is going to be your leader for at least four years, and probably eight. Meanwhile, the world will continue to revel in the fact that the countdown to no more bush is in the single digits; and yes sarge, the ENTIRE world (including your country).

rolls eyes

8 days to go only, coming up folks,the new US/World policies change via Obama-Biden administration. Change is good,world is waiting for this moment in time.

USADude the term "messiah" came from the Europeans when Barack made his European tour. I remember repeating it the very next day.

Then the republicans picked up on it and liked using it as a slur.

Barack has said he'll close Gitmo, he'll do it. < :-)

"he'll close Gitmo"

Where's he gonna put all the scumbags who would torture and kill him without hesitation or remorse?

Sarge there are a lot of them who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. But in an effort to bolster his goals, the bush administration tried to make a big show of the Gitmo prisoners. But in all, they only had 6 or 7 bad guys.

Where's he gonna put all the scumbags who would torture and kill him without hesitation or remorse?

I think he's, george bush, is going to be in Crawford or Dallas, Texas. Too bad he can't retire to Gitmo. < :-)

According to my understanding, what he said was something like this: "For detainees for whom the evidence against them has been obtained through torture, not admissible in any court in the civilized world, therefore cannot be convicted in a court of law. But I'm not going to give them a get out of jail card free either." Not clear what he plans to do; but at least he's identified the problem with obtaining evidence through torture, namely it won't hold up in a court of law. I don't recall anyone in the current administration ever acknowledging this inconvenient fact.

My sense is that he's also going to make his first priority salvaging the economy which is in a free fall. The much touted growth of the past eight years was built on a house of credit cards. Is there anything GWB is handing off that isn't in desperate need to attention?

Not that Obama critics are going to keep this in mind, but the bipartisan verdict is in on GWB's tax-cut induced "great economy": "It's sad to say, but we really went nowhere for almost ten years, after you extract the boost provided by the housing and mortgage boom," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, and an informal adviser to McCain's campaign. "It's almost a lost economic decade."

I look forward to the return of people who can discuss tough issues intelligently rather than engaging in ad hominen attacks on their critics.

Closing Gitmo is a challenge because most of the prisoners home countries don't want them back and neither does Europe. Where does that leave us exactly? Betzee: I'm glad that Zandee came out and said what I have believed all along. The huge numbers in the Dow and the housing bubble were the only things that reflected economic growth. It was all on paper and that's why the crash was inevitible. When a country outsources it's manufacturing base and consumers are buying on credit what the hell did anyone expect. The economy was never fundementally strong merely overinflated and manipulated on paper.

Closing Gitmo is a challenge because most of the prisoners home countries don't want them back and neither does Europe.

I don't think the problem lies in our inability to repatriate those held at Gitmo. For that to be the case, their countries of origin would have to revoke their citizenship. There is precedent for such a move: in the 1980s a number of Southeast Asian nations had camps full of boat people who had fled Vietnam. The vast majority were deemed economic migrants, rather than political refugees, and therefore ineligible for resettlement elsewhere. Meanwhile Hanoi attempted to wash it hands of the matter by declaring, "Departure without authorization means automatic loss of citizenship so we don't have to take them back." The argument didn't hold up and eventually they were repatriated. While there are some genuinely stateless people, it's unlikely anyone held at Gitmo would fall into that category.

No, I think the problem here owes to the highly politicized nature of the war on terror. GWB has repeatedly emphasized in recent weeks, "I kept America safe." Obama can't afford to do anything less. Letting someone out of Gitmo poses a risk, what if the individual is later linked to some terrorist plot? We are sort of back to the Cold War mentality of the 1950s when Congress was convulsed in a debate over "Who Lost China?" Presidents had to be able to tell the American people at the end of their terms, "The reds were held in check on my watch."

Personalizing policy in this way is a bad idea because it doesn't allow us to deploy our finite resources in the most efficient manner. Instead it becomes about providing cover for the incumbent's decisions. Evidence for this will be published shortly: the 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco [Iraq]. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction - led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a "new" Iraq.

The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces - the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"

We can't afford to keep going down this path and I'm confident Barack Obama will change course to prevent that.

Where's he gonna put all the scumbags who would torture and kill him without hesitation or remorse?

Presumably they would be tried and, if guilty, sent to some reputable prison after being branded across their foreheads with SWWTAKYWHOR in lieu of the soon-to-be retired phrase, "Scumbag Who Would Torture And Kill You Without Hesitation Or Remorse".

Obama's team should examine each detainee's situation, charge those accused of crimes and try them. If a detainee is suspected of a crime, then hold him and try him; on the other hand, no charges, no imprisonment.

Now how freakin' hard was that to figure out?

I can't wait to see how Obama to the rescue will clean up the Bush mistakes. Obama can't be as liberal as some posters on JT about who they let go.

There are really only a handful of detainees at Gitmo who have established connections to terrorists. The rest are people who were fingered for reward money. We don't have anything on them. But, once they are in the system, it's very hard for anyone to take responsibility for releasing them. Call it "the Willie Horton effect." Well, if I let this person out and then he is implicated in another crime then I can kiss my career good-bye....