Earlier this month President Obama fired Greg Craig, his main counsel on matters concerning the Guantanamo Bay Facility. And this week Obama sheds another one of his GITMO team with the resignation of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense for Detainee Policy Phillip Carter.
It appears that Obama’s GITMO team is being systematically eliminated. One has to ask, why? The only real answer has to be that Obama is setting up some plausible deniability by firing or forcing the resignation of officials involved with GITMO policy. Once enough of these people are gone, Obama can look wide-eyed to the public and claim that he was badly served by his GITMO advisers and, therefore, it isn’t his fault.
Unfortunately for Obama the failure is not with the henchman but with the chief hench, Obama himself. Obama has allowed Attny Gen. Holder to reveal his utter ignorance by pushing for civilian trials of some GITMO detainees while at the same time arbitrarily denying such a privilege to others. Obama has also backed this plan despite that there is no precedent in American history for such trials.
And now the officials in charge of these decisions are being let go with no replacements announced leaving mounting questions about just what the administrations policies are and who is responsible for carrying them out.
With Carter so unexpectedly gone many questions remain unanswered about Obama’s detainee policy and now there is no one to answer these questions. By what legal authority does the administration hold some 75 detainees without civilian trials? On the other hand, what is the legal authority that some are getting civilian trials? How will these detainees that are getting civilian trials be secured and where?
In any case, it seems pretty obvious that Obama is getting rid of as many people on his GITMO policy team as possible so that he claim that his failures are not his fault but are the failures of the departing team members. But will the American people buy this deception?
Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
