I hope Obama doesn’t stop at closing Guantanamo, I hope he returns it to the Cubans with an apology.

Okinawa should be next, and while we are at it bring the fleets home.  Might leave a contingent to fight pirates and escort the ships taking our military back from Iraq.

Good piece to your link, Crimes of the State.  Obama’s gesture is obviously a public relations ploy which keeps torture and arbitrary imprisoonment functioning under another guise.

But it is not obvious, I would guess, to most progressives.  It is becoming evident to me that progressives WANT to be deluded.  A simple brief article like this dispels the whole public relations effort, but most people prefer the public relations effort.

The central problme is not ignorance, not knowing, but NOT WANTING TO KNOW.  The American people do not understand how massively they have been deceived by American power, and do not want to know it.  It is un-Patriotic to know it.

The Bushites conducted a counter revolution to change the American power system and regress it to a trajectory of barbarism.  It legitimated torture, random imprisonment, lawlessness, enormous class ienquality, and military agression, all of which is justified by enormous irrationality.

Obama is continuing and consolidating the Bushite counter revolution.  But most progessives don’t want to know it.  The future doesn’t look good.

“end to the war om terror”—except in Pakistan/Afghanistan and Waziristan.

Yeeahh…....

People really need to get a grip ln what can be accomplished her, and, more importantly, what will be. Peace monger Holbrooke..

You dont want to end up with mission accomplished on your face, do you?

Here is the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7stBg2QZsg&feature=related

You will notice at the 6 minute mark Obama asks a cabinet member to tell him what the executive order means. The guy tells Obama. Obama repeats it verbatum. This happens twice in 20 seconds.

It happens at other times during the signing.

If it was George Bush doing that, you guys would say he didnt know what he was doing.

I think its a good start for his 2nd day in office.

Read the fine print. 

Obama’s orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact
- by Tom Eley

THE 27,000 MUSLIMS DISAPPEARED BY THE US

Now Guantanamo is to be closed, the important question is now the DISAPPEARED.

ROBERT FISK

“There is just one little problem, though, and that’s the “missing” prisoners. Not the victims who have been (still are being?) tortured in Guantanamo, but the thousands who have simply disappeared into US custody abroad or – with American help – into the prisons of US allies. Some reports speak of 20,000 missing men, most of them Arabs, all of them Muslims. Where are they? Can they be freed now? Or are they dead? If Obama finds that he is inheriting mass graves from George W Bush, there will be a lot of apologising to do.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-obama-has-to-pay-for-eight-years-of-bushs-delusions-1001092.html

Fisk, the same incensed honourable man who fearlessly reported the Sabra and Shatila genocide of Ariel Sharon who, after the Israeli inquiry, was fired as Israeli Defense minister.

Would that there be such an inquiry again, in the U.S.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH

Clive Stafford Smith: “US Holding 27,000 in Secret Overseas Prisons; Transporting Prisoners to Iraqi Jails to Avoid Media & Legal Scrutiny,” on Democracy Now.

Clive Stafford Smith, British born lawyer for over fifty detainees in Guantanamo Bay. He is the legal director of the UK charity Reprieve and has defended prisoners on death row for over twenty years. He is the author of Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/19/clive_stafford_smith

Paolo—I am not a libertarian, but, I cautiously agree.

I didnt expect President Obama to do “what I wanted”—I knew that he wouldnt, on most things. But, this is a positive step. I dont know if it “ends the war on terrorism”. After all , we are adding troops to Afghanistan.

The ACLU says that it should not take a year—-lets see if it does.

I will say that I agree with the INTENT on this one. Please do not let fear derail it.

Re: Pissed of [sic] American

Your comment assumes that they’re terrorists.  Calling someone a terrorist means they’re guilty of a crime.  Guilt is supposed to be established by a trial.  These people are being held for years without a trial.  The presumption of innocence is a principle of fundamental justice.

Closing gitmo for the next four years is not doing away with it completely.

As a libertarian, I have to say this is an encouraging step in the right direction. We’ve still got a helluva long way to go to end the insane idea of a world American empire. But this is a good, first step.

I’m surprised, but pleased.

Dihey:

While I sort of sympathize, I think you are being too cynical.

First, Obama is not only closing Gitmo, but ending torture, forcing the CIA to close secret prisons, ending “special rendition,” and generally bringing back the “rule of law” to this aspect of policy.  And he is supported in all these things by Gates, Clinton and other top staffers.

Second, give him time.  Given that he was a constitutional law professor, I would find it odd if he did NOT begin to undo many of the outrageous intrusions on civil liberties, freedom, privacy, etc.  Habeus corpus, posse comitatus, etc. are all likely on the drawing board.  But they are not all going to get done overnight, either politically or socially.

Be patient.

Peace.

Nothing will have changed until President Obama states unequivocally that he will restore “habeas corpus” to its full and original power. He should stop playing with the idea of yet another kind of court to try inmates of Guantanamo.