Hey man, I totally feel Barack here. We’ve ALL been there. You make kinda a big promise. Like, say, maybe it’s to clean the house over the weekend. That’s comparable.
Then, the time finally comes to do it, and you’re hungover, and you’re like ugh, maybe I’ll just do next week. Then more and more dishes pile up, and the trash begins to reek, and the task seems insurmountable, so you hide from your roommates then next weekend. The next one rolls around, and you’re busy. By the time the next chance comes, you realize you only have two more months left before you move out and think, hey, what’s the point?
Barack Obama today introduced a bill to close Guantanamo Bay.
The blueprint comes seven years after Obama made an Oval Office vow to permanently shutter the prison for enemy combatants, but it already faces objections from Republicans and legal obstacles they have placed to transferring Guantanamo detainees to U.S. prisons.
Obama nonetheless said emptying the prison would move the country past what he described as a troubled era of wartime behavior.
The plan we’re putting forward today isn’t just about closing the facility at Guantanamo. It’s not just about dealing with the current group of detainees, which is a complex piece of business because of the manner in which they were originally apprehended and what happened. This is about closing a chapter in our history,” he said during short remarks at the White House.
Obama outlined a blueprint that involves transferring the bulk of remaining detainees to other countries and moving the rest — who can’t be transferred abroad because they’re deemed too dangerous — to an as-yet-undetermined detention facility in the United States.
This is the equivalent of half-assedly mopping the floor on your last of your lease and hoping your roommates eventually forget that you never cleaned up.
The plan was immediately met by resistance from Republicans, who believe the facility should remain open.
[Via CNN]