Go Go Gitmo

Here we go again. Candidate Obama made a huge (HUGE) deal about closing GITMO during the 2008 election. President Obama has done damn little to address it and now in the final year he wants to stir the hornets nest. He's not likely to succeed nor should he.

By the gods (of which none exist) would someone please point out the fact that the terrorist suspects at GITMO are on American soil. Over and over again those opposing it's closing say the same thing, "we don't want these people on American soil." Guantanamo Bay is a military base and just like an Embassy it is considered to be American soil in the eyes of international law. An attack on such facilities/soil is an act of war.

Guantanamo Bay is not the issue and it never has been. The geographical disposition of these suspects is irrelevant. Is there anyone with a functioning brain that believes we cannot safely confine these prisoners in our maximum security facilities including military prisons right here in the homeland?

The issue is holding people without trial endlessly as enemy combatants while we fight a war which in fact will never end. We have created a system of confinement without consideration of what if anything is just punishment. In the President's announcement today this issue was once again not addressed. Bush and Obama have both allowed Guantanamo Bay to be an international embarrassment because neither they or anyone else in legislative leadership wants to do the heavy lifting and fix this problem.

Barack Obama will leave office with GITMO still in use and this painfully little gesture will quickly be forgotten but his promises of 2008 will not.