The Obama Presidency: Empty Promises - Preview

Before President Obama white washes his legacy in his book, we need to set the record straight.

Yesterday, President Obama announced that his new Memoir A Promised Land will be available in November shortly after the election. In light of this memoir, we feel it is important to highlight some of the most important aspects of his presidency. He started with “Hope and Change” and in the end, we got “some hope” and not much change. Today’s installment will review President Obama’s Promise to Close Guantanamo Bay.

Part 1: Too Big to Jail

Former Guantanamo Bay Guard Brandon Neely recalls waiting in Guantanamo Bay in January awaiting the arrival of detainees.  He said, "I was told that they were very dangerous people. But, at that point, in my mind, a terrorist was something abstract like a martian." A few moments before the arrival, he mentions, "I started getting really nervous; almost scared. I keep thinking–Here it comes. I am fixing to see what a terrorist looks like face-to-face–I remember my escort partner saying over and over "I got your back, man, if anything happens." I could tell he was as nervous as I was. Everyone in the camp that day was nervous and scared; you could literally hear a pin drop moments before that bus full of detainees arrived.

"The first person who got off the bus, I will never forget. It was a man with one leg." Brandon Neely goes on to elaborate, "I kept on thinking, how could this small man be a threat to American national security?"  

It turns out that this man, like most of the others in Guantanamo Bay, was not a threat to national security. Wikileaks documents would later reveal that the the US government had a policy of offering a $5,000 per head bounty to anyone who handed over a member of either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. In a country where the median income was $314, $5000 is a windfall. Naturally, the groups of warlords and Northern Alliance forces routinely kidnapped innocent men and boys and sold them to the US government.

There were six elderly men, including one 89-year old man with prostate cancer and dementia who was barely lucid. The group also included twenty children, mostly from poor backgrounds, who were kidnapped. Some were wanderers. Two detainees came to Pakistan for a wedding, and they wanted to buy some marijuana to enjoy the festivities. In their excitement, they had accidentally stepped over into Afghanistan, and soon they were sold to the US forces and sent over to Guantanamo Bay. 

The existence of Guantanamo Bay itself was on shaky legal ground. George W. Bush's attorney general created a new category, not recognized by any of the war conventions, of "unlawful enemy combatant" and then deemed that the Geneva conventions did not apply to them. The administration also legalized "enhanced interrogation techniques" which was an Orwellian code word for torture.  Former inmate Martin Mubanga described the utter inhumanity in his treatment. He said:

The seemingly interminable questioning had already lasted for hours. 'I needed the toilet and I asked the interrogator to let me go. But he just said, "you'll go when I say so."

I told him he had five minutes to get me to the toilet or I was going to go on the floor. He left the room. Finally, I squirmed across the floor and did it in the corner, trying to minimise the mess. I suppose he was watching through a one-way mirror or the CCTV camera. He comes back with a mop and dips it in the pool of urine. Then he starts covering me with my own waste, like he's using a big paintbrush, working methodically, beginning with my feet and ankles and working his way up my legs. All the while he's racially abusing me, cussing me: "Oh, the poor little negro, the poor little nigger." He seemed to think it was funny.

On the campaign trail, then-senator Obama repeatedly iterated his intention to shut down Guantanamo Bay within the first 100 days. It was a breath of fresh air in comparison to Bush, who created, established and continued to defend the existence of the torture chamber under the guise of national security. 

On January 22, 2009, Obama issued an executive order that appeared to lay the groundwork for closing Guantanamo Bay:

Executive Order requires closure of the Guantanamo detention center no later than one year from the date of the Order. Closure of the facility is the ultimate goal but not the first step. The Order establishes a review process with the goal of disposing of the detainees before closing the facility.

Many on the left felt a deep sense of relief and excitement. Obama ordered that Guantanamo Bay be closed by January 2010, or so it seemed. The experts would review the situation, devise a solution, and then Guantanamo Bay could be shut down.

But, like many other things related to Obama, this too had a catch.

This is a preview of a full series that is only available to subscribers. To get the rest, sign up and read it here.

Listen to our interview with Brandon Neely, a former Guard and a whistleblower who talked about the conditions at Guantanamo Bay.