The Gulag That Obama Promised to Close is Getting a $750,000 Soccer Field

I'm in favor of keeping Club Gitmo open until the last terrorist goes to Allah, but Obama promised to close the prison within one year of taking office.  How's that going?

The Ritz Carlton of jails just got a major upgrade-- Despite all the lousy press Gitmo gets, there probably isn't a jail outside of the ones where they put Norwegian mass murders that compares to its opulence and amenities. And now TheDC's Caroline May reports that it is getting a major upgrade:

"The U.S. military is putting the finishing touches on a new soccer field for detainees at Camp 6 in Guantanamo Bay. The project has set taxpayers back $750,000, the Fox News Channel reported Tuesday."

Condé Nast Traveler's Gold List of the world's finest hotels may have to add a prison to its next edition.

Funny how closing Gitmo suddenly disappeared as a demand from the lefties that got Obama elected.

Attorney General Holder: We're Still Going to Close Gitmo

Sure they are:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the Obama administration will do its utmost to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay before next year’s presidential elections despite political opposition.

Holder said at the European Parliament that even if the current administration fails to close it ahead of elections, it will continue to press ahead if it wins the November 2012 presidential vote.

Remember when Obama said he'd close Gitmo by January 20, 2010? How's that going?

Gitmo will never close because we have place to put the really hard cases that are still in our custody.  Nobody will take them and we can't just let them go.

Gitmo, The Gift That Keeps on Giving

How happy must liberals be today to know that the enhanced interrogation techniques employed at Gitmo helped their rainbows and unicorns president order the assassination of a foreign national?

Former George W. Bush administration intelligence and national security officials tell The Daily Caller that the intelligence President Barack Obama acted on when authorizing the mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was likely obtained during enhanced interrogations and/or at the Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) detention facilities.

One such official, Steve Yates, who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney until 2005, said the intelligence had to have come from detainees one way or another. Whether it was obtained at Gitmo or in some other overseas CIA facility where enhanced interrogation techniques were permissible, or some combination of the two, he’s not sure.

Liberals “can’t love the idea of having the ‘liberal-in-chief’ using the CIA to assassinate opponents,” Yates said, adding that it’s the exact opposite of what the “hippies from the flower generation and the anti-war movement generally” expect from a Democrat they helped elect president. “I think, generally, the administration has been mugged by reality when it comes to why these things exist, these programs, capabilities and the fact that evil exists in the world, that evil wasn’t George Bush and it wasn’t conservatives. These things [contentious Bush anti-terror measures] actually had a purpose that they [the Obama administration] didn’t care to discuss until they took the reins of power.”

In a Defense Department background briefing, a senior intelligence official said that, “key information was gleaned from detainees. And that detainee reporting provided insights into the bin Laden courier network. And so it did — it did contribute, you know, to the intelligence case. But it was by no means the only bit of information.”

The senior intelligence official then said, “it was multiple detainees debriefed over a number of years,” who provided the information, “and then it was a composite picture of the courier network and this particular courier that we were interested — that led us to this compound, that came out of that composite picture and then was developed further through other intelligence means.”

The administration is desperately trying to insist that waterboarding had nothing to do with the raid on bin Laden, but it's simply not true given that intelligence like this has to be developed over many years and using bits and pieces of information gathered from time-to-time.  There's no question that the enhanced techniques provided some of this information, and that Guantanamo Bay and the techniques employed there have helped keep Americans safe.

Did Waterboarding Lead to the Locating of bin Laden?

I sure hope so:

For nearly a decade, American military and intelligence forces had chased the specter of Bin Laden through Pakistan and Afghanistan, once coming agonizingly close and losing him in a pitched battle at Tora Bora, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. As Obama administration officials described it, the real breakthrough came when they finally figured out the name and location of Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, whom the Qaeda chief appeared to rely on to maintain contacts with the outside world.

Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

American intelligence officials said Sunday night that they finally learned the courier’s real name four years ago, but that it took another two years for them to learn the general region where he operated.

Still, it was not until August that they tracked him to the compound in Abbottabad, a medium-sized city about an hour’s drive north of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

Get the hose. There's still some other guys we're looking for.

Cheney: Obama a One-Termer

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will make some news today:

Former vice president Dick Cheney, back in the public eye after a major heart operation, predicts that President Obama will be a one-term president because of health care and other big government programs.

In an interview to air Tuesday on NBC's Today show, Cheney cited Obama's "overall approach to expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit, and giving more and more authority and power to the government over the private sector."

As for health care, Cheney said Obama has "enacted a program that a great many people are very worried about. And that there's a lot of support out there for the effort to repeal that health care package."

According to excerpts released by NBC, the former vice president also talks about his newly implanted heart pump, Obama's national security record, the Arizona shooting, and his offer to step aside as George W. Bush's running mate prior to the 2004 election.

Of course, if Obamacare was fully implemented at his age and with his history Cheney wouldn't be allowed to have a heart transplant.

Another article has more on the Cheney interview:

President Obama has “learned from experience” that some of the Bush administration’s decisions on terrorism issues were necessary, according to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

In his first interview since undergoing major heart surgery last July, Cheney said he thinks Obama has been forced to rethink some of his national security positions now that he sits in the Oval Office.

"I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he's learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election."

Cheney also asserted that Obama has learned that the prison at Guantanamo Bay simply cannot be closed, despite the promises he made while campaigning for the White House.

"I think he's learned that he's not going to be able to close Guantanamo," Cheney said. "That it's — if you didn't have it, you'd have to create one like that. You've got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans."

Watch the lefty heads explode as they respond to Bush's evil overlord.

Club Gitmo Will Stay Open

In yet another Friday night news dump the Obama Administration has admitted that Club Gitmo, resort paradise for anti-American terrorists, will remain open.  They're trying to spin this as the fault of Congress:

Still, some senior officials say privately that the administration has done its part, including identifying the Illinois prison — an empty maximum-security center in Thomson, 150 miles west of Chicago — where the detainees could be held. They blame Congress for failing to execute that endgame.

“The president can’t just wave a magic wand to say that Gitmo will be closed,” said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking on a sensitive issue. …

But wait! I take you to Thursday, January 22, 2009, just two days into the Obama fiasco:

Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.

I guess you can "wave a magic wand to say that Gitmo will be closed". Sadly for Obama, there was no magic in his wand. It takes more than rainbows and unicorns to move terrorists from a safe, secure facility offshore to American soil in the middle of the heartland.

This decision is sure to enrage those in Obama's leftist base who look at Gitmo as the source of all evil in the world.  After all, they've been telling us that Gitmo has only created more terrorism, not helped stop it.

Why would Obama want to create more terrorism?

Neither Obama nor the left want to admit that keeping terrorists at Gitmo is exactly the right place for them, and that bringing them to American soil would create all kinds of new legal problems.  Let's let the bad boys continue to enjoy their Cuban paradise.  It's where they belong and it's where American want them to be.

Support for Closing Gitmo Drops 12 Points

Obama isn't completely out-of-touch with America. His inability to close Gitmo has brought him in line with a majority of Americans:

Attitudes about the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have changed dramatically since President Barack Obama took office, according to a new national poll.

Support for closing the facility has dropped 12 points over the past 14 months, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates.

Shortly before Obama's inauguration, 51 percent of Americans said they thought the facility in Cuba should be closed. Now that number is down to 39 percent, and six in ten believe the United States should continue to operate Guantanamo.

The poll, released Sunday, suggests independent voters are contributing to the 12 point overall drop.

"Just Democrats still think that Guantanamo should be closed, but Independents have completely changed - from an even split in January 2009 to three-quarters who want to keep the facility open today," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

More than three out of four Republicans questioned in the poll think that the facility should stay open.

When Obama fails America wins.

And a Fox News story tells us that keeping those people in Gitmo is the smartest thing to do:

More Guantanamo Detainees Are Returning to Terror Upon Release

Lindsey Graham to Screw-up Gitmo...Too

Sen. Lindsay Graham (RINO-SC) was part of the Gang of 14 disaster that cost George Bush a lot of good judicial candidates, and now according to Andy McCarthy he's planning to do for Gitmo what he did for conservative judges:

It's the Gang of 14 revisited.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham and the White House are close to a deal that would close Guantanamo Bay in exchange for some amorphous concessions on the legal proceedings to which terrorist detainees will be subjected.

The Journal says two other Senate Republicans (not identified) are prepared to join Graham in breaking ranks, which ensures that the pact will be filibuster-proof.

There's not much more I can say beyond what I've already said (see here and here) about what a disaster this will be for our national security. Sen. Graham will try to spin it as a great result — just as the Gang of 14 compromise was spun, despite its acquiescence in the Left's torpedoing of several qualified Bush nominees, leaving unfilled slots that Obama is now filling with his kind of juidges. It will be a terrible result.

The good parts of the deal will be either things we'd have gotten anyway (like no civilian trial for KSM) or unenforceable (like promises that the Obama administration will be more open to using options other than the criminal justice system for top terrorists). The bad parts will be horrific, and no matter what Sen. Graham says, he can't do a thing about them: The place or places where the terrorists are held will become targets that we will have to spend tons of money to protect; the tons of money we have already spent to make Gitmo a first-rate, ideally secured facility, will be lost; and, most significantly, the physical presence in the U.S. of the detainees will mean they are unquestionably in the jurisdiction of the federal courts, where judges will be able to say the Constitution requires all sorts of remedies, including release.

And remember, alll of this will be based on the fiction that Gitmo foments anti-U.S. terrorism — and to the extent the U.S. reputation in the world has been tarnished, much more of that has been done by the politicians who've attacked Gitmo than by the facility itself, which is a model.

It's hard to understand how one politician can be really good on certain issues and really, really bad on too many others. Closing Gitmo will not make America safer, nor will it improve our image in the world. It will simply make us look stupid in the long run.

What Is It With Flights to Detroit?

If you're looking for in-flight entertainment these days, try flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. If someone isn't trying to light their underwear on fire, you can at least count on Arabic men to do something that will get the attention of the authorities:

MyFoxDetroit.com - Sources tell Fox 2 that a flight from Amsterdam into Detroit Metropolitan Airport was held on the tarmac after landing because of unruly behavior by some of the passengers.

The source says five men from Saudi Arabai were saying something in Arabic that alarmed four on-board Federal Air Marshals. The Marshals speak Arabic. A decision was made to stop the plane on the tarmac away from the passenger terminal and remove the men from the plane.

Once the men were removed, the rest of passengers were then taken to the terminal for deboarding.

The men are in currently in custody at Metro Airport and being questioned by federal authorities.

Fox 2 has a crew at Metro Airport and more information will be posted as soon as it becomes available.

Looks like the Feds are watching these flights pretty carefully if they have four Air Marshals on board. Maybe we should just automatically route these flights through Gitmo and just drop off the troublemakers.

It's the Drones, Stupid

I thought Al Qaeda hates us because of Gitmo:

Al-Qaeda said the suicide bombing of a CIA base in Afghanistan that killed seven agents last week was "revenge" for the deaths of top militants in US drone strikes in Pakistan, the US monitoring group SITE said on Thursday.

You mean if we close Gitmo they'll still hate us? How can that be? Obama assured us the world's terrorists would suddenly like us if we just closed Gitmo.

And Al Qaeda isn't the only group that's upset about the drones. Zombie has a report on the Code Pinkos in the Gay Bay Area who are also conducting their own little jihad against the drones.

Homeland Security Headline of the Day

From Gateway Pundit:

Illinois Panel Votes in Favor of Gitmo Plan On Same Day That 3 Federal Prisoners Escape Illinois Prison.

Oops.

Sarah Palin: It's a War Not a Crime Spree

Gotta love the latest from Sarah Palin:

President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an “isolated extremist” who traveled to a land of “crushing poverty.” He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant.

It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed “there are no downsides or upsides” to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.

President Obama was right to change his policy and decide to send no more detainees to Yemen where they can be free to rejoin their war on America. Now he must back off his reckless plan to close Guantanamo, begin treating terrorists as wartime enemies not suspects alleged to have committed crimes, and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.

Boy, has she got his number.

A Good Idea for Dealing With Gitmo

From Cliff May:

Step (1): Return all Gitmo detainees to Yemen.

Step (2): Use Predator missiles to strike the baggage-claim area 20 minutes after they arrive.

Just an idea.

Works for me.

And then there's this:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.

Drip him, Dano.

Stopping Terrorism With Art Therapy

Let's see how well it's worked:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.

Both Saudi nationals have since emerged in leadership roles in Yemen, according to U.S. officials and the men's own statements on al Qaeda propaganda tapes.

Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal secretary.

And the administration still wants to close Gitmo and transfer a bunch of these guys to Illinois.

The terrorists are laughing at us.

Gitmo Illinois

Enough criminals have come out of Illinois, so I guess it's only fair to return some:

A prison complex 150 miles from Chicago will house Gitmo detainees, the Obama administration will announce Tuesday.

A senior administration official tells ABC News that on Tuesday the administration will announce that President Obama “has directed that the federal government proceed with the acquisition of the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois to house federal inmates and a limited number of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” …

“Closing the detention center at Guantanamo is essential to protecting our national security and helping our troops by removing a deadly recruiting tool from the hands of al Qaeda,” the official said. “Tomorrow’s announcement is an important step forward as we work to achieve our national security objectives.”

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Dick Durbin, two leading officials — both Democrats — who have supported the move, will be briefed on the decision Tuesday by administration officials.

Obama is doing this to convince the rest of the world that he's kind and compassionate towards terrorists, which is the kind of president foreigners prefer. Of course, this move is little more than symbolic because there are quite a few guys in Gitmo that will never be moved. And it's a liberal fantasy that terrorists are recruiting others because we have some guys locked up in Cuba, and that the recruiting will be reduced because of this move. The guys at Gitmo were written off long ago by the bad guys.

Homeland Security Cartoon of the Day

Seen on Facebook:

Obama Administration Never Understood Public Sentiment on Closing Gitmo

And now a current White House lawyer and former defender of Bill Clinton's impeachment may get the boot as the fall guy:

Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order.

But sources familiar with the process believe Craig is being set-up as the fall guy and say the blame for missing the deadline extends well beyond him.

Instead, it was a widespread breakdown on the political, legislative, policy and planning fronts that contributed to what is shaping up as one of Obama’s most high-profile setbacks, these people say.

The White House misread the congressional mood – as it found out abruptly in May, when the Senate voted 90-6 against funds for closing the base after Republicans stoked fears about bringing prisoners to the U.S. The House also went on record last week opposing bringing Gitmo detainees here.

The White House misread the public mood – as roughly half of Americans surveyed say they disagree with Obama’s approach. A strong element of NIMBY-ism permeates those results, as Americans say they don’t want the prisoners in their backyards.

But most of all Obama’s aides mistook that political consensus from the campaign trail for a deep commitment in Washington to do whatever it takes to close the prison.

“The administration came in reading there to be wide support for closing Guantanamo at home and abroad, and I think it misread that attitude,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who held Defense and State Department positions on detainee policy. “In general, they were right….but there was very little willingness to accept the costs and risks of getting it done.”

There were surprisingly few people who really wanted Gitmo closed, especially if it meant transferring dangerous terrorists to American soil. But like many issues, Obama thought his election meant big time support for all of his policies. It didn't.

The election was about "hope and change" and not about actual policies. For one thing, Obama was very careful not to tell us exactly what he planned to do, and once he started to try and enact his policies he's run into roadblocks all along the way. A 53% election victory does not translate into a mandate for anything.

Gitmo is absolutely the best place to keep these animals and rational people understand that. If the rest of the world wants it closed, they're welcome to take these guys off our hands. Meanwhile, I expect that Gitmo will be in operation for many years to come.

Obama to Hold Detainees Indefinitely

In a Friday news dump designed to hide behind the cap-and-tax vote and the ongoing orgy of public grieving over the death of the King of Pop, Obama made a little hope-and-change announcement, brought to you here by Andrew Malcolm:

In yet another sign of political perfidy, the White House of President George W. Bush has drafted a presidential executive order that would allow that double-dealing Republican chief executive to hold suspected terrorist detainees indefinitely.

According to the president's intentions, such suspects could be detained for long periods of time, virtually indefinitely. Is this really what the nation voted for last November?

Oh, wait. No. According to an exclusive Washington Post report this afternoon, it's the refreshing new Democratic administration of Barack Obama that's now preparing this new executive order to hold certain terrorist suspects indefinitely.

This is an obviously inspiring sign of the new style of leadership the Democrat promised and is finally bringing to the White House. And it shows the kind of powerful political pragmatism with which the ex-senator from Illinois approaches this job at such a crucial and globally turbulent time.

According to the Post report, the 44th president is now starting to think that closure of the internationally-reviled Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which Obama announced with so much fanfare on his first day in office last winter, may be impossible to actually accomplish before the one-year deadline he set for himself before actually planning where else to put these prisoners

In other words, fanfare aside, status quo ante. Democrat or Republican, same deal. Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney will be so pleased that the Obama-Biden folks finally accepted his advice to protect national security.

Another sign, finally, of real change after eight long years of the very same thing.

Gitmo's starting to look pretty good to Obama now that he realizes he's got no place to put some of these guys. After all, there are only so many vacation cabanas available on Bermuda.

Former Club Gitmo Resident Suspected in Murders

This could complicate Obama's plans to close Gitmo:

The fate of three of nine foreigners abducted in Yemen last week is known — their bodies were found, shot execution style. The whereabouts of the other six — including three children under the age of 6 — remain a mystery.

But terrorism experts say their abductors and killers are almost certainly not a mystery. They say the crimes bear the mark of Al Qaeda, and they fear they are the handiwork of the international terror organization's No. 2 man in the Arabian Peninsula: Said Ali al-Shihri, an Islamic extremist who once was in American custody — but who was released from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And if al-Shihri is behind the gruesome murders and abductions, they say, it raises grave concerns that the scheduled January 2010 closing of the Guantanamo prison and the release of most of its prisoners to foreign countries will galvanize Al Qaeda and compromise American national security.

And there's more just like this guy sunning themselves at Gitmo. As former president George W. Bush said the other day: "...there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind. "

George W. Bush Speaks Out on Obama Policies

I'm glad to hear Bush defending his policies and questioning Obama's:

Former President George W. Bush fired a salvo at President Obama on Wednesday, asserting his administration's interrogation policies were within the law, declaring the private sector not government will fix the economy and rejecting the nationalization of health care.

I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in, the former president said to applause from members of a local business group. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money. Repeatedly in his hourlong speech and question-and-answer session, Mr. Bush said he would not directly criticize the new president, who has moved to take over financial institutions and several large corporations. Several times, however, he took direct aim at Obama policies as he defended his own during eight years in office.

Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States, he said to huge cheers. Mr. Bush weighed in on some of the most pressing issues of the day: the election in Iran, the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, and his administration's interrogation policies of terrorists held there and elsewhere. The former president has not commented on Mr. Obama's decision to ban enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which the current president has called off course and based on fear.

The way I decided to address the problem was twofold: One, use every technique and tool within the law to bring terrorists to justice before they strike again, he said, adding that the country needs to stay on offense, not defense. On Guantanamo, which while in office Mr. Bush said he wanted to close, the former president was diplomatic.

I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor, he said. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind.

There's more here. The left will go nuts over this. They're still waiting for Obama to have Bush arrested.