Bush's Gitmo Vindication

Despite all his empty rhetoric, Obama has come to realize what Bush knew all along - the Guantanamo terrorists are very dangerous and it will be nearly impossible to transfer them into the U.S. or to any foreign country, none of whom will accept them. From the WSJ:

Yet for all of his attacks on the Bush Administration, which he accused of making "decisions based upon fear rather than foresight," Mr. Obama stuck with his predecessor's support for military commissions, adding some procedural bells and whistles as political cover to justify his past opposition. For the record: Both the left and right, from the ACLU to Dick Cheney, now agree that the President has all but embraced the Bush policy.

Mr. Obama also pledged to release at least 50 detainees to other countries -- about one-tenth the number released under President Bush -- and added that the Administration was in "ongoing discussions" to transfer them. Good luck with that: The Europeans who were so robustly against Gitmo in the Bush years have suddenly discovered its detainees are dangerous. Meanwhile, the countries that might take them, such as Yemen, can't be trusted to prevent them from returning to the battlefield, where they can kill Americans again.

...Mr. Obama's most remarkable Gitmo sleight-of-hand was on the matter of how to handle the hard cases, those who Mr. Obama said "cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." After acknowledging this was "the toughest issue we will face" and pledging that he would not "release individuals who endanger the American people," the President proposed . . . well, he didn't really say what he'd do, except that whatever it is must be "defensible and lawful." No wonder the ACLU is in a tizzy.

Mr. Obama called all of this a "mess" that he had inherited, but in truth the mess is of his own haphazard design. He's the one who announced the end of Guantanamo without any plan for what to do with, or where to put, KSM and other killers. Now he's found that his erstwhile allies in Congress and Europe want nothing to do with them. Tell us again why Gitmo should be closed?