Eric Holder

al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Gitmo, Guantanamo

Gitmo well-run, professional, to close anyway: AG Eric Holder

by  • 

AP reports:

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Guantanamo detention center is a well-run, professional facility that will be difficult to close — but he’s still going to do it. Holder visited the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday and spoke to reporters about his trip during a news conference Wednesday.

Closing Guantanamo, he said, “will not be an easy process. It’s one we will do in a way that ensures that people are treated fairly and that the American people are kept safe.”
…
He said he did not witness any rough treatment of detainees, and in fact found the military staff and leadership performing admirably.

“I did not witness any mistreatment of prisoners. I think, to the contrary, what I saw was a very conscious attempt by these guards to conduct themselves in an appropriate way,” he said.

In other words, AG Eric Holder said Gitmo aint broke so President Barack Obama is fixing it. I’m sure they both hope that al Qaeda will change its ways, close its 150 terrorist training camps in Pakistan, and stop butchering people in the many places they are operating in response to Guantanamo closing.

al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Gitmo, Guantanamo, New York Times

Gitmo complies with Geneva: al Qaeda’s lawyers slam Bam, Pentagon report

by  • 

Click the image to watch a 30-second slide show about Guantanamo Bay

No less than the New York Times reports:

A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concludes that the prison complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva conventions, but it makes many recommendations for increasing human contact among the prisoners, according to two government officials who have read portions of it.

The review, requested by President Obama [emphasis added mine] on the second day of his administration, is due to be delivered to the White House this weekend.

Unsurprisingly, the Times editorialized in its news report and accused the current administration of ordering a report, with a predictable outcome, to further its political agenda:

The request, made as part of a plan to close the center within a year, was widely seen as an effort by the new administration to defuse the power of allegations during the Bush administration that there were widespread abuses at Guantánamo, and that many detainees were suffering severe psychological effects after years of isolation.

“Widely seen” by whom? The obvious answer is widely seen by the editors at the Times and al Qaeda’s lawyers. Yet the hilarious part the Times saved for the end, one of those lawyers slamming President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:

“This is really running the risk that the review is just a big whitewash,” [a lawyer for Guantánamo detainees at the Center for Constitutional Rights Gitanjali] Gutierrez added, “and we expect more of the new administration.”

In law offices big and small across the nation, 500 lawyers must be hyperventilating into small brown paper bags.