that Switzerland, Portugal and France have offered to take in the prisoners who can't return to their home countries.

Gitmo is a travesty. It's hard to believe, well, maybe it isn't, but I used to think we were better than this. Freaking Bush administration. Please don't make it worse, Obama, by prolonging this injustice.

It isn't at all unreasonable to give the Obama administration a little time to sort out what is going on with these prisoners. BushCo assuredly did not tell all during the transition, and much information may still be hidden away in places that will be difficult to ferret out. Nothing would please the VRWC more than for Obama to release a prisoner who then causes some meaningful damage to Americans or American interests. The rest of us, I presume, do not want that to happen.

Also going to take some time to sort out where to ship the prisoners, both those who can simply be released and those who are held for some sort of more constitutionally compatable trial. Several European nations are now proposing to take a few of them, something they would not do for Bush, so that's good; maybe get the residual down to 200 or so. Of those, maybe 50 can be released back to their home country and another 25 or so can be released into the US.

That leaves 125, most of whom were minor players but after seven years of detention and some amount of torture may well be pissed off enough to come back at us. They'll need some therapy and perhaps compensation, enough to at least ease the pain. Where do they go while that's happening?

They can't just be put into the general population at Federal penetentiaries, the inmates will kill them. They would have to be put in what's called Administrative Segregation, or AdSeg; a fancy term for solitary confinement, lockdown 23 hours a day, for who knows how long. The entire Fed system doesn't have enough AdSeg room for the hundred or so who might qualify; might as well just keep them in Gitmo, probably safer for them, as even in AdSeg revenge murders are carried out.

That leaves an estimated 25 or so who actually are bad people, at least from our POV. Again, there is neither room nor safety in Fed prison AdSeg. Should they be held at a military brig in the middle of some large base? Sort of a Gitmo Delux? How is that an actual improvement? Maybe a cosmetic shift has some political value, but it does not resolve the very real dilema that they are in all probability people who represent a danger but who also probably can't be prosecuted because the information to be used as evidence against them is tainted by torture.

It isn't unreasonable to take three months to sort through who is there and find the truth about why. Most of the population there now can probably get moved out starting in another three months or less. Figuring out what to do with the hardcore 25 or so will take a little longer, so while I think it can be done fairly quickly I'm also not privy to all the information required to make sound judgments; a year to shut it all down doesn't seem excessive to me.

Really easy to demand immediate change; much more difficult to lay out specific steps to achieve it. Those calling for immediate trial or release need to also put up detailed plans for how to deal with the very real complexities involved. I look forward to reading more of those, and fewer simplistic demands of NOW NOW NOW.

On a broader scale, Gitmo is the poster prison but hardly the root cause for the wrongs we've been doing. Changes need to be made and formalized regarding torture and habeas corpus, and while the former is administratively straightforward it still involves some team crawling through the statutes to make certain that no other legal problems are created by whatever wording is chosen. As for habeas, the legal problems are anything but straightforward - but that requires a longer comment.

For the moment, let me summarize by saying that all of these captives existed in a legal limbo until the Military Comissions Act went into effect. Obama says he wants to get rid of that mess and institute something else; the question is what. The problem is complicated by the fact that we hold not just the 250 or so prsoners in Gitmo but have thousands of others in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and surely more than a few in secret prisons elsewhere; Gitmo, while made famous by the press, is the least onerous and least difficult part of the problem. Whatever replaces the current structure needs to resolve the fate of all those those prisoners and do it in a way that keeps the relatively few real dangers contained.

Not, I think, a simple task. Obama has put the process underway, and nothing would have happened had he not made a start. These decisions, while spare, are a positive development. I'll give him a few months to sort out what comes next and how to best get it done.

It isn't at all unreasonable to give the Obama administration a little time to sort out what is going on with these prisoners.

They've been held for how long? If the freaks in the Bush administration couldn't manufacture charges, these guys sure won't. The Obama administration had better already know what's going on (cue Marvin Gaye).

I'm hoping they're sending new guys down there to oversee the release of prisoners to wherever and the closing of what certainly has been a huge black eye for America.

One year is unacceptable.

One is to read bringiton who, it seems, is all for people getting "fed up" in theory, but never when it comes down to actual cases like this one.

The other is to read what the center for Constitutional Rights says:

January 21, 2009, New York – Center for Constitutional Rights attorneys for Guantánamo detainees responded today to portions of President Obama’s draft executive order to close the offshore prison camp that appeared in the news.

According to accounts, the president will order that Guantánamo “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” In addition, President Obama requested yesterday that the notorious military commissions be halted for 120 days while his administration reviews the cases.

CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren issued the following statement:

It only took days to put these men in Guantanamo, it shouldn’t take a year to get them out.
We are proud that President Obama made addressing Guantánamo one of his first acts in office. Yet we are disappointed that he outlined no concrete steps for closing the base and gave his administration an entire year to sort out its plans – meaning that some men could have been detained indefinitely in terrible conditions for eight full years. Surely he could do better.
President Obama should commit to dismantling the military commissions, not just suspending them, and to prosecuting any cases before federal criminal courts – real courts with real laws.

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee.” CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. CCR represented the detainees with co-counsel in the most recent argument before the Supreme Court on December 5, 2007.

Life is short. Some choices are easy to make.

NOTE I always admire bringiton's tactical sense; in this case, co-opting NOW NOW NOW. An excellent indicator that this riff is effective! However, there are some things that ought to be done NOW NOW NOW. Restoring Constitutional government and the rule of law is one such. Handing a trillion or so to Hank Paulson's golfing buddies with no transparency and no accountability is not. Nice try. Over and out.

Kind of like how the Patriot Act was only supposed to be temporary until its sunset kept getting further away until the sun never set, right? Color my cynical, but I'll be surprised if we are even reminded of Gitmo in a year. Presidents count on America's infinitesimal attention span.

Is it really wrong to expect more from a person who expected us to expect more of him? If we're all being too difficult, it's only because he demanded that of us by setting an incredibly high bar from himself. So, who's to blame when he comes up short? I'll tell you isn't: us.

Presidency? Because at 7:35 pm EST Justice Roberts gave the oath again, and Obama took the oath again.
So that's the "he's not really the President" thing out of the way.
Cabinet confirmations -- five of seven on the first afternoon, not too shabby, and Hillary today.
I read someplace there'll be an order on Gitmo tomorrow, so that's either day 2 or day 3, depending on how you count it.
Now, I realize we'd all like to see the shutdown happen already, and I know I'm not the only person who thinks we need jobs yesterday in big bunches.
But there are things you can do overnight, things you can do in five minutes, and things you have to make sure you do right so there's no blowback -- and I would bet real money Gitmo is one of the last category.

I'm looking at lambert's typical response to bringiton (what is it between you guys? can y'all not have a debate without lambert deciding to take toys and go home as a preemptive strike?) and I'm thinking that here is an instance where we all need to take a breath.

NOW NOW NOW NOW worked for Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld / Powell in the runup to the Iraq war, and worked again for Bush / Cheney / Bernanke in the runup to the bailout for the big banks and finance houses.

Neither one of those decisions was walked through in order to prevent blowback, and my bet is we'll all end up wishing both of them had been for a long time to come.

NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW isn't how you do stuff correctly; it isn't how you do stuff you don't have to go back and fix because, not to put too fine a point on it, you got in such a hurry you effed up every possible way you could.

So I'm all for getting closing Gitmo underway, but being sure that we close it in a way that will keep it closed -- and in a way that, unlike so much of the Bush administration's legacy, will be humanly possible to clean up in a timely fashion.

It might take as much as a year, but it may be well worth the time to do this correctly instead of in the biggest of all possible hurries.

Of course, that's just my bullying again.

according to administration sources, reported by NYT.

I dunno. This keeps up, he really must be just like Bush. Hope somebody counted the White House silver.

Obama, or his team, or some combination of them, are making me wonder if maybe I was wrong about how much they would do. Or maybe even *could* do.

That said: what Favreau, Obama and others did to Hillary (and Edwards, and Kucinich, and yes, also, what Rahm is doing to Howard Dean) SUCKS.

No forgiveness there.

But maybe the BHO administration won't turn out to be as bad as I was afraid it would.

Hey, Limbaugh's upset with them already. So there's that much good, to go on ...

is a bonus in my book.

GODS but I'm sick of that gasbag blowhard asshat dimwit nimrod "comedian".

Since I'm not worth the time to read, thought some commentary from others might be worthwhile. In addition to the single negative assessment offered above, here are the thoughts of a few clearly delusional slavish Obots after they've passed the Kool-aid jug around.

Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:

These executive orders represent a giant step forward. Putting an end to Guantanamo, torture and secret prisons is a civil liberties trifecta, and President Obama should be highly commended for this bold and decisive action so early in his administration on an issue so critical to restoring an America we can be proud of again.

Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

By shutting Guantanamo, ending torture, and closing the CIA secret prisons abroad, President Obama has given America a much-needed and significant break from the Bush administration policies that, with utter disregard for our Constitution, trampled our nation’s values and ideals. Today’s executive orders are significant steps towards restoring the rule of law in America....

Some caveats follow, need to track follow through, make sure the orders are actually followed, that kind of stuff, but obviously the ACLU is in Obama's pocket and can no longer be trusted.

Jennifer Daskal, Senior Counterterrorism Counsel at Human Rights Watch:

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama will make great progress toward restoring America's moral authority. By shutting down a global symbol of abuse, he will deprive terrorists of a powerful recruitment tool. The executive order will allow the Obama administration to begin a thorough and sensible process to close Guantanamo. We hope and expect that by January 2010 every detainee will either be facing criminal charges in a fair process or be released.

She said "hope"! That cuts it; Human Rights Watch has sold out, absolutely clear that they care nothing about human rights.

Elisa Massimino, Executive Director and CEO of Human Rights First:

It's exactly the kind of bold action that is necessary. Both the speed and the content will send a clear message to our own people and the rest of the world that what he said ... he meant.

President Obama promised to reject the false choice between our safety and our ideals as a nation. Today he's making good on that promise. These orders mark a clean break from the Bush Administration's policies of torture, unjust trials and prolonged detention without charge. Those policies fueled terrorist recruitment and stained the reputation of the United States. Today is the beginning of the end of that sorry chapter in our nation's history. The message this sends to the world could not be clearer - the United States is ready to reclaim its role as a nation committed to human rights and the rule of law.

By announcing an end to the policies that brought us Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, President Obama has ripped down al Qaeda's recruiting poster. The firm and definitive one-year deadline for closing Guantanamo creates time pressure to resolve the inevitable challenges fixing this mess poses, while allowing enough time to address those problems in a thoughtful way consistent with national security.

What's that you say? Addressing things in a thoughtful way? Concern for national security? What the hell! Why do that when a pell-mell heedless rush is clearly what's called for.

But wait, there's more!

For the past several years a group of retired admirals and generals have been working through Human Rights First to lobby against the Bush administration on torture, the use of secret prisons, Gitmo and other prisons where people are being held without due process. They began working with the Obama transition team last summer, laying out the processes and policy considerations for closing down the prisons and restoring American policy to civilized norms. If you saw the ceremony, they were the distinguished looking fellows standing behind President Obama. From their press release:

President Obama's actions today will restore the moral authority and strengthen the national security of the United States. It is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States never sanction the use of interrogation methods that we would find unacceptable if inflicted by an enemy against captured Americans.

We commend President Obama for acting quickly through these executive orders to enforce a single standard of humane treatment for all U.S. intelligence interrogations. As Commander in Chief, he has provided clarity throughout the military chain of command.

By unequivocally rejecting torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment, shutting down secret prisons, providing Red Cross access to prisoners in U.S. custody, rejecting the legal opinions that facilitated and excused torture, and announcing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison, President Obama has rejected the false choice between national security and our ideals. Our Nation will be stronger and safer for it."

Clearly, I am not the only person who has been co-opted by Obama's secret mind control ray. Don't know why I'm so easily taken in; perhaps my head isn't as hard as some other people's.

[Note: All of the executive orders around the issues of torture, prisons and disposition of prisoners can be viewed at Human Rights First.]