Wow. I just…
From the New York Times…
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday that he would advise President Trump to send newly captured terrorism suspects to the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which he called “a very fine place,” rather than to bring them to civilian court for prosecution by the Justice Department he now runs.
“There’s plenty of space,” Mr. Sessions said of the prison. “We are well equipped for it. It’s a perfect place for it. Eventually, this will be decided by the military rather than the Justice Department. But I see no legal problem whatsoever with doing that.”
Guantánamo Bay is NOT a “very fine place”. It shouldn’t fucking exist. It should be fucking illegal.
Yet here Sessions is, calling it “perfect”.
Fuck you, Jeff.
The bay, and the beaches around it, are by all accounts indeed wonderful.
It’s just the torture camp run by the United States of America there that gives the place a bad rep.
Its continued operation of is a stain on the USA’s reputation. Can anyone explain why, after eight years of a Democrat president who came to power explicitly promising to close it, are we still even having this conversation?
sonofrojblake @ # 2 -- We still have this conversation because the Democratic president you mention lacked the political nerve and skills to build on the momentum of his initial electoral victory.
He thus allowed the opposition to gain and maintain control of Congress, whereupon he tried and failed to achieve any of of the “Grand Bargain(s)” he hallucinated: Guantanamo was just one of the many chips he left on the table.
Not to take all the blame off President Obama for the failure to close Guantánamo Bay, as he never should have lost his nerve with that, but…
The Democrats as a whole did not support that, either. They obstructed him on that issue at least as much as the Republicans did. On most other issues, the Dems did support him, but they basically turned on him with the Guantánamo Bay thing. So it’s a failure of the entire Democratic party…
President Obama for losing his nerve, and the Democratic party for refusing to let him close it in the first place. He lost his nerve because of the Democrats.
Nathan @ # 4: Good point.
He lost his nerve because of the Democrats.
Obama -- aside from running for President in the first place -- never had that much nerve: he pussyfooted on everything.
But your point about Gitmo and the Democrats reminds me of various post-hoc studies of the self-defeating US persistence in the war on Vietnam. Johnson, Nixon, and their respective posses all knew they had no chance of military success, but they also knew that the “hawks” (themselves in on that secret) would rouse the ignorant voters against whoever attempted any sort of sane withdrawal. So, they kept the murder machine grinding away year after year, creating rivers of blood to trade military failure for political success.