Obama plans Guantanamo deadline

Barack Obama has said he aims to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and put a clear end to torture in the US within two years of becoming president.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7789005.stm

Oh that soon :sarcasm:

edit - I had misinterpreted something in the narrative and so changed the header. As a result responses above may no longer make sense.

who said "He also justified using water-boarding on some detainees during interrogation" and that the "technique...was an appropriate means of getting information."

Poor layout - I hadn't picked up that those were Cheney's words.

Don't change the fact there appears to be somewhat less than a rush to close Gitmo.

Give me a break, you were wrong. Admit it and fix your post.

to fix all of Bush's disasters, mistakes, misjudgments, gaffes and fumbles overnight. He's only human after all.

:hi:

Obama needs to give the lawyers time to do their thing. He has set a firm deadline and that is acceptable to me.

Time asks: 2 years from now how will we know you are succeeding?

Obama: among other things; we would have closed Gitmo and ended torture

Obama never said he plans to do it "within 2 years". He has always said he would do it ASAP.


snip "US President-elect Obama was speaking to Time having been named its Person of the Year for having what the magazine called "the confidence to sketch an ambitious future in a gloomy hour".
Asked how voters would know whether his administration was succeeding in two years, Mr Obama listed a series of benchmarks his team had set during his presidential campaign.
"On foreign policy, have we closed down Guantanamo in a responsible way, put a clear end to torture and restored a balance between the demands of our security and our constitution?" he said."

as I would've done in an LBN item for example.

Any continuation after he takes power is implicit acceptance of torture being right - which it isn't.

edit - I've now realised you wrote while was doing the correction. Sorry.

The headline is BS.

He isn't quoted anywhere saying he would continue torture for any period let alone 2 years.

The sensationalist headline is akin to saying "Deadline for Malia and Sasha: Obama will send his kids to a DC school within 2 years". Yeah its technically true, but you wouldn't think he was going to send them to school in January 2009 with that kind of headline.

... and asking

WTF?