Thanks, Sophie and Walter. Good points, although in the specific context of Guantanamo we need to focus on five things that ought to be achievable (I’m not saying they will be, but they’re tangible objectives):
1) federal court trials or nothing else for the 40 or so prisoners the government wants to try (i.e. no Military Commissions)
2) persuading Congress to allow all the prisoners to be moved to the US mainland
3) persuading Congress to allow cleared prisoners to be settled in the US if no other home can be found for them, and repatriating others who can return home safely
4) allowing the prisoners’ habeas petitions to proceed until the District Court judges have whittled down the remaining prisoners to however many dozen it will be who have lost their habeas petitions
5) and then asking why those who have lost their habeas petitions — people who were, for the most part, peripherally connected to al-Qaeda or the Taliban and were not actual terrorists — can continue to be held, apparently forever

I like the quote and I’m sad that the American govt is just a front, but that’s just how it is.

There is a movement here as well by the power elite to curtail our rights once and for all but there is an awareness of that among the general public and because we love our rights and freedoms so much it’s going to a battle which the power elite may not want to fight. And if they do they will have a fight on their hands.

You are so right Sophie. Our government is nothing more than a front for the ‘Ruling Corporatocracy’ aka ‘Military Industrial Complex’. Whether bought and paid for, or otherwise coerced, the politicians service the agenda of their Corporate Masters at the expense of all else.

The difference between Candidate Obama and his intentions and President Obama and his actions can be explained by the following insightful and quite probably true words of the late, great Bill Hicks, “I often think that every new American President is sworn in; they’re taken down into the basement of the White House and they’re shown the real film of what occurred at Dealey Plaza in 1963.”

Obama not closing the camp by the deadline he set is not a surprise at all. I knew he wouldn’t be able to do that, so when everyone started to say that Guantanamo was no longer an issue I was a bit surprised to hear that and thinking how naive people really were.

You can’t blame Obama, he has good intentions, it’s just the power elite who really control America that don’t. Their agendas are dangerous and immoral and at the moment unstoppable.

Ah yes, I don’t know what I was thinking when I thought that he might err on the side of the skeptics. Instead, he’s left that to the District Court judges, and neither he nor AG Holder has done anything to make the Justice Department lawyers hurry up the habeas cases, or, for that matter, check that they’re not utterly risible before sending them before the judges. This is still the mind-blower:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/09/30/a-truly-shocking-guantanamo-story-judge-confirms-that-an-innocent-man-was-tortured-to-make-false-confessions/