Stirring the Pot

No this is not a reference to a Tyler Florence cook book, but I wanted to revive some discussion I’ve had prior to the inauguration with a thread of emails with friends (“Interesting…” string)

Superbowl thread? Naw, AZ is going to “upset” the Steelers…

I just watched A Few Good Men and wanted to comment on Obama’s quick signing order to close Gitmo… Did he just “weaken a country” this week as Col. Nathan R. Jessep (known in this plot line as the GOP) claims, or is this just a symbolic statement to right the “America’s Human Rights & Justice” ship which has been tipped sideways in the last 8 years. This is very telling article in the Washington Post of how BushCo administration treated the situation down there.

Reading the first three paragraphs, my take (sourced from DKos) is that detention and interrogation (“torture”) were a higher priority to the former Administration than figuring out which cases actually merited prosecution. In other words, locking up some Arabs and torturing them was more important than determining if they were actually guilty and prosecuting them for their crimes.

While no such agency is doing a great job in monitoring, collecting and merging all kinds of data on all Americans especially the press (whistleblower video and shouldn’t really be a surprise given all the stories on this over the years in this area), this administration wasn’t interested in keep comprehensive files on their detainees to build a case against detainees.

Even with the closing of Gitmo, the new administration has such a cluster to deal with, it will be a miracle of governmental process to get this resolved within his first term. The Right meanwhile, is prepared to continually call Obama a terrorist sympathizer or a failure through out his administration regardless of actual Justice he’s looking to restore to not just Americans but all people.

Galloway: Tell your friend not to get cute down there, the Marines at Gitmo are fanatical.
Lt. Weinberg: Fanatical about what?
Galloway: About being Marines.