Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m missing something, but am I the only one who sees a massive contradiction between what President Barack Obama said today at the Naval Academy and what he said I just don’t see how this statement — his commitment to the “enduring truth”: “The values and ideals in (the Constitution) are not simply words written into aging parchment, they are the bedrock of our liberty and our security.”
We uphold our fundamental principles and values not just because we choose to, but because we swear to; not because they feel good, but because they help keep us safe and keep us true to who we are.
And yet, he is planning to create a class “detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.” This group of detainees, he said yesterday at the National Archives, “are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.”
I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture — like other prisoners of war — must be prevented from attacking us again. Having said that, we must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded.
Essentially, the president has bought into the underlying argument that has underpinned every bad decision we have made as a nation for the last eight years — that we are in a state of war, that terrorism, rather than being a law-enforcement or intelligence issue, is a military problem that demands military solutions. That has put us in the position of using our howitzers to kill a scorpion.
Yes, the Obama plan is better than the Bush plan. But just about anything would have been an improvement. It doesn’t mean that Obama has found a way of mixing pragmatism and principle.
As I said, same as the old boss.
Hank Kalet 
Not only should we close down the detention center in Cuba, we should also get the hell out of Guantanamo and give it back to the Cubans. Why do we need this Cuban naval base in the year 2009? We \”lease\” it from the Cubans. That\’s quite a lease, it can only be canceled if we, the USA, say the lease is over. Cuba, the landlord of the patch of land upon which naval base is located, can\’t kick us out because of this BS lease that was imposed on the puppet government which we installed in Cuba more than a hundred years ago, long before Castro was born. Move the damn base to Florida where it might stimulate the FL economy.