What Excuse Remains for Obama’s Failure to Close GITMO?

Fist Look ^ | 03 June 2014 | Glenn Greenwald

[Lorianne]

The excuse-making on behalf of President Obama has always found its most extreme form when it came time to explain why he failed to fulfill his oft-stated 2008 election promise to close Guantanamo. As I’ve documented many times, even the promise itself was misleading, as it became quickly apparent that Obama — even in the absence of congressional obstruction — did not intend to “close GITMO” at all but rather to re-locate it, maintaining its defining injustice of indefinite detention.

But the events of the last three days have obliterated the last remaining excuse. In order to secure the release of American POW Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the Obama administration agreed to release from Guantanamo five detainees allegedly affiliated with the Taliban. But as even stalwart Obama defenders such as Jeffery Toobin admit, Obama “clearly broke the law” by releasing those detainees without providing Congress the 30-day notice required by the 2014 defense authorization statute (law professor Jonathan Turley similarly observed that Obama’s lawbreaking here was clear and virtually undebatable).

The only conceivable legal argument to justify this release is if the Obama White House argues that the law does not and cannot bind them. As documented by MSNBC’s Adam Serwer - who acknowledges that “when it comes to the legality of the decision [critics] have a point” – Obama has suggested in the past when issuing signing statements that he does not recognize the validity of congressional restrictions on his power to release Guantanamo detainees because these are decisions assigned by the Constitution solely to the commander-in-chief (sound familiar?).

[AngelesCrestHighway]

He has to release all his Muslim buddies first!

[Steely Tom]

Waiting for more Bowe Bergdahls? Just a guess.

[Vinylly]

He's going to keep it open for all the white male extremists that don't toe his socialist agenda.

[Cato in PA]

The modern-day Ministry of Love.

[silverleaf]

One reason GITMO exists is because no civilized nation on earth would take that jihadi trash and offer it asylum or rehabilitation or whatever

remember the Chinese Uighura going to Bermuda? Wonder how that is working, maybe they are now running moped rentals

obama tried hard at dumping these psychos- FAIL
until now
apparently Qatar has no standards, so why not just turn them all loose there?
of course let obama take all the credit