Obama facing problems in shutting down Guantánamo

He wouldn't be facing problems if he and the rest of the dunce pack surrounding him on this issue thought about it in advance.

With six months left before a White House deadline, the Obama administration is struggling with legal, political and logistical problems that are casting a cloud over President Obama’s pledge to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by January. As of this week, lawyers reviewing each detainee’s case have completed the initial sorting process for only about half the total Guantánamo population of 229 men, though officials said that by October they expected to complete the initial evaluations, determining who could be transferred to other countries, prosecuted or detained without charges. At the same, prosecutors are trying to decide who among the detainees, to be sent to detention centers in the United States for prosecution, would face charges in federal criminal courts and who would be tried by military commissions, though the evidentiary and procedural rules for those tribunals have not yet been completed. In addition, the administration has not yet decided on the federal prisons, military brigs and local jails where the detainees would be incarcerated after being sent to the United States. Some security officials said that the decisions were being made, but that they remained concerned that they were running short of time needed to designate prisons, prepare the detention units within them and assign required personnel. The proposal to relocate detainees in the United States has already provoked a bipartisan Congressional protest. After lawmakers expressed alarm that detainees, deemed not to be security threats, might be resettled in the United States, the House and Senate voted in May to bar the resettlement of detainees in this country and stripped $50 million from an emergency war spending bill for closing the Guantánamo prison until after the administration submitted a detailed plan. Over all, the accumulation of problems and the pace of the effort have led to a growing worry within the Obama administration that the president will not make his January 2010 deadline for closing Guantánamo, although senior officials said that they remained determined and that they were on track to close the prison that has symbolized what some see as the excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies.

I will call it now. He will make his deadline come hell or high water he has too for his own credibility on Gitmo. That will lead to more problems as plans are rushed in place that will fall apart. Its like the stimulus bill but with terrorists.