NYC Letter: More Awesome Change! IV Redux

Countdown 5,534 minutes to awesome change

Going...

OBAMA SAYS GITMO FACILITY SHOULD CLOSE
SAN ANTONIO June 24, 2007 (WaPo)

...going , going soon, very soon, real soon...

OBAMA TO ISSUE ORDER TO CLOSE GUANTÁNAMO
IN FIRST WEEK AS PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON January 12, 2009 (Guardian)

This executive order may technically honor his pledge, but it won't close the camp or end a single detention one day sooner than Mr. Obama indicated in his [January 11] Sunday interview.

Posted by Damian at January 12, 2009 05:30 PM

...going, going, going but not just yet, going...

RE-SETTING THE GUANTANAMO BAR VERY LOW

January 16, 2009 (NRO) - Today’s lead story in the Washington Post reports that President-elect Obama "will consider it a failure if he has not closed the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his first term in office."

Twenty-four intervening paragraphs later WaPo finishes up that Gitmo business:

Obama said he is confident that he can find a way to close the Guantanamo Bay prison while finding a way to deal with and house potentially dangerous detainees. Sources said an executive order will lay out a procedure for closing the facility, but strongly disputed reports that such an order will come on the first day of the new administration.

MORE CHOPE, DO LESS
Living Up To No Expectations

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air comments:

During the campaign, Obama often demanded the immediate closure of Gitmo and promised just that repeatedly. ... Now Obama has decided to set the expectation that it might take as long as four years to figure out how to fulfill his campaign promise. This stunning nugget that dropped into the Post’s lap was recognized as so newsworthy that the Post failed to even ask about the four-year shift in the timeline even once. Gitmo only gets one more mention in the 34-paragraph story — in paragraph 28. And in that paragraph, the Post tells readers that Obama is “confident” that he can make his new self-imposed deadline of whenever.

This tends to prove the notion that the throbbingly warm reception Obama received this week in the Post’s office was no fluke. If Bush promised to close Gitmo immediately and then shared the idea that “immediately” means sometime in the next four years, would the Post have buried that? Had John McCain won the election and pushed Gitmo’s closure to 2013, the Post would have headlined that and had 34 paragraphs about how McCain misled voters and betrayed his anti-torture principles.

But for Obama? We get to hear about his “confidence.”

...going, going, gone by 2013. [Hands fly up, palms out.] For sure.

CHOPE.

Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon. [Pause.] Or maybe later.