Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Gitmo closed?

Little History lesson first:

Guantanamo Bay is an American detainment facility located in Cuba. The facility is operated by Joint Task Force Guantánamo of the United States government since 2002 in Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, which is on the shore of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The detainment areas consist of three camps: Camp Delta (which includes Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, the last of which has been closed. The facility is often referred to as Guantánamo, or Gitmo. In 1999, President George W. Bush signed an executive order that stipulated that the US military could indefinitely detain any non-citizen who was believed to be involved in international terrorism. After the Justice Department advised that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp could be considered outside US legal jurisdiction, prisoners captured in Afghanistan were moved there beginning in early 2002.
(Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Enough of the history lesson, On Nov 16th 2008 then President Elect Mr. Obama had committed, that upon taking office he would close Guantanamo Bay and ban torture by the American military. First of all I do not think American military is doing torturing, they should if needed to get information out, I personally have no problem torturing enemy to the nation. But that is beside the point, we are here to talk about Gitmo closing....
On January 11 2009, he said on interview on ABC, that he does not expect to close Guantanamo Bay in his first 100 days in office. And than comes the dead line a year later in January 2010. On November 18 2009, at Beijing, President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.


See here is my real trouble with this president, any decision he has taken, any stand taken, any statement made are either wrong, or taken with no thinking behind it, just because they sound good to stupid Voters to Vote for him. Obviously he had no executive experience on or before when he had taken this office so as he is learning facts, he is making excuses and the days goes pushing out.

Now we have news this week, President Barack Obama has ordered the federal government to acquire an underused state prison in rural Illinois to be the new home for a limited number of terror suspects now held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The federal government will acquire Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, IL., transforming the prison in a sleepy town near the Mississippi River into a prison that exceeds "supermax standards".

Let us hope they move all detainees from Gitmo to this new Prison in 1 year, though there are many concerns raised for that. But big quesion I have, Does this complete the commitment of closing Gitmo?, or it is just moving it from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to Thomson, IL.