I kid you not.
A story by Steven Lee Myers in today's NYT signals a turnaround (we hope) in the NYT's 8-year "Cheerleaders for Bush" Phase because he doesn't even begin to pull punches, spin the truth so it sounds better for Bush, or ignore the implications. The fire is in the very first graf.
Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials.
Is that a departure from the usual semi-quasi-propaganda the NYT has been dishing out under Nagourney and the like, or what? Myers avoids actually calling Bush a liar by simply connecting the dots made by facts (something the blogs have had to do since the day the would-be Emperor was selected because the press was too afraid to): he said he was going to close Gitmo and then didn't. What is that if it wasn't a lie? Confirmation: he didn't even bother to look at the plans the Pentagon drew up for the demobbing.
This is the sort of stuff that, until recently, you had to go to the foreign press to get. All of a sudden the NYT, which granted was never the war and Bush booster the WaPo has been, allowed somebody to lay out the facts without manipulating them or whitewashing Bush and His Gas House White House Gang. I was beginning to think I wouldn't live to see one of our last remaining major papers turn back to genuine journalism. It was a very pleasant surprise to be wrong - assuming, of course, that this isn't a one-off that slipped by the publisher's blue pencil.
I'd like to see a lot more 'cause it gets better.
Mr. Bush’s top advisers held a series of meetings at the White House this summer after a Supreme Court ruling in June cast doubt on the future of the American detention center. But Mr. Bush adopted the view of his most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo would involve too many legal and political risks to be acceptable, now or any time soon, the officials said.
The administration is proceeding on the assumption that Guantánamo will remain open not only for the rest of Mr. Bush’s presidency but also well beyond, the officials said, as the site for military tribunals of those facing terrorism-related charges and for the long prison sentences that could follow convictions.
The effect of Mr. Bush’s stance is to leave in place a prison that has become a reviled symbol of the administration’s fight against terrorism, and to leave another contentious foreign policy decision for the next president.
(emphasis added)
Whew! Did you ever think you'd see this again?
But to leave off grooving on the shock of a legitimate, straight-ahead approach coming from the Times and get back to the actual subject:
This is, without doubt, one of the most clearly cowardly acts of Bush's chickenshit presidency. What "legal issues"? The otherwise flaccid and pliable Supreme Court gave him no legal choice but to close it down, not once but twice, so what possible "legal issues" could have weighed against that heavily enough for him to ignore their decisions?
Answer: None. There were no "legal issues" against which the SCOTUS decisions were as nothing. There were, however, tangentially legal issues which might be more properly considered (from Bush's POV) as financial issues.
Lawsuits.
If the prisoners remained imprisoned while minions of the Cheney Administration continued to run around claiming that only "the worst of the worst" were locked up in Cuba even though the Pentagon itself said the majority were innocent of any wrongdoing, they couldn't very well sue the Admin for unlawful imprisonment.
That's what Bush is passing on: they'll have to sue the Democratic administration that lets them out.
That's beyond cowardice.
But if the "legal issues" were really about $$$, the "political issues" are real enough. If the Emperor had allowed himself to be forced to admit his detention policy was wrong, his Red Meat, Soviet-style base would have fried him on a sliver of torchlight. He avoided losing the (then) 1/3 who still approved (barely above 20% at last count) of what he was doing and delayed the final implosion of his lame duckness for a couple of extra years.
And behind all this chickenhawk hiding from responsibility? Who else?
Mr. Bush’s aides insist that the president’s desire is still to close Guantánamo when conditions permit, and the White House has not announced any decision. But administration officials say that even Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the most powerful advocates for closing the prison, have quietly acquiesced to the arguments of more hawkish advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney.
Who no doubt, in true Corporate America CEO style, threatened to pull off their legs with a team of horses and beat them with the bloody stumps if they didn't go along.
So they went along to get along (a reigning axiom in Corporate America) and allowed innocent men, women, and children (as young as eleven) to remain in prison for an extra 2 years so Bushie wouldn't be embarrassed and Cheney wouldn't have to admit he was a heartless Gorgon without a shred of human decency to call his own.
Why haven't these horrible people been locked up yet?
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