Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

But even to Senator Carl Levin, the real reason Guantanamo won't close:



=="There's a lot of inertia" against closing the prison, "& the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see," said SenatorCarlLevin, the MichiganDemocratic chairman of the SenateArmedServicesCommittee . . . . .



Levin portrayed the administration as unwilling to make a serious effort to exert its influence, contrasting its muted response to legislative hurdles to closing Guantánamo with "very vocal" threats to veto financing for a fighter jet engine it opposes.



Last year, for example, the administration stood aside as lawmakers restricted the transfer of detainees into the UnitedStates except for prosecution. And its response was silence several weeks ago, Levin said, as the House & Senate ArmedServicesCommittees voted to block money for renovating the Illinois prison to accommodate detainees, & to restrict transfers from Guantánamo to other countries -- including, in the Senate version, a bar on Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan & Somalia. About 130 of the 181 detainees are from those countries.



"They are not really putting their shoulder to the wheel on this issue," Levin said of WhiteHouse officials. "It's pretty dormant in terms of their public positions."==



That's at the heart of the critique of the ObamaAdministration which defenders refuse to address, opting instead to beat the same strawman over & over no matter how many times it's pointed out what they're doing.



http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/26/guantanamo/index.html
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