White House: 'Gitmo is Going to Remain Open for the Foreseeable Future'

Guantanamo Bay is a disgrace, a festering sore on the U.S.'s human rights record where 174 men, some imprisoned since they were children, are locked away in cages for crimes the government admits in some cases it has no evidence they committed. Yet closing it -- that is, fulfilling a key and oft-repeated campaign promise -- might cause some in Congress to say mean things about the president and maybe even hurt Barack Obama's reelection campaign in 2012, so courageously anonymous White House officials are now setting the record straight: the prison camp at Gitmo ain't going anywhere.

As for all that rhetoric about needing to close the prison camp in order to begin restoring the U.S.'s image abroad? It was just that: rhetoric, useful at the time to win over liberals and progressives angered over the Bush administration's cavalier disregard for international law, but now seen as burdensome in today's political environment. And so like that, the pledge is dropped.

Indeed, quoted in The Washington Post over the weekend, a top Obama administration official was as clear as could be: "Gitmo is going to remain open for the foreseeable future." Just as with the previous administration, closing the prison camp is ostensibly a long-term goal. But just as under President Bush -- whose Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, Obama personally asked to stay on -- it's not a goal the White House is willing to spend any political capital actually achieving, suggesting that perhaps it's not a real goal at all.

Yet as you can almost hear David Axelod saying, what'cha gonna do about it -- vote Republican?

The Post article also quotes a number of other Obama officials fretting over the potential political implications of trying alleged 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, as Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to do earlier this year. While claiming the administration really, really wants to abide by that whole burdensome rule of law thing -- no I'm serious, I'll stop drinking for good, just after I finish this one beer -- White House officials now say that while they haven't given up on possibly trying Mohammed, maybe, some day, if they feel like it, "they acknowledge that a trial is unlikely to happen before the next presidential election and, even then, would require a different political environment."

But then, abiding by international law has never been a big priority for Obama. In Afghanistan, his administration is holding dozens of people on an Air Force base where they are denied legal counsel and where torture is reported to be widespread. Under his watch, the CIA has also fired more Hellfire missiles in the U.S.'s undeclared war in Pakistan than during the entirety of the Bush administration, a fact that Loyola Law School Professor David Glazier says makes White House officials eligible for prosecution as war criminals under their very own legal theories. But instead of reign in the strikes, which have killed dozens of civilians and inflamed hatred of the U.S., Obama has instead joked with the press about ordering predator drones to kill anyone who might be attracted to his two young girls. Funny!

The administration has also openly stated that it plans to imprison nearly 50 prisoners at Guantanamo forever, without trial, acknowledging that the evidence against them would never even be admissible in a military tribunal, much less a civilian court. The president also voiced no objection to and in fact signed into law a provision passed with the support of Democrats in Congress that calls on the Pentagon's Inspector General to investigate (read: intimidate and harass) any lawyer who dares represent a client at Gitmo.

But then, all this focus on the rule of law, or the lack thereof, and Obama's litany of broken campaign promises is all so depressing. And really, it only distracts from the important stuff -- like, my god, did you hear what Sarah Palin wrote on Twitter the other day?

Photo Credit: Truthout.org