From the New York Times:
The Defense Department official in charge of closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has resigned after only seven months in the job, the Pentagon said Tuesday.Phillip Carter, who was named deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy in April, resigned last Friday because of “personal issues,” a Pentagon official said. Mr. Carter could not be reached for comment and no other reasons were given for his departure.
The Times notes that Carter's resignation comes as the administration has acknowledged that it will not be able to close the prison by Jan. 22, the self-imposed deadline Obama announced immediately after taking office.
I said when President Obama set that hard and firm deadline that it was a mistake. He did it as a reaction -- well, a concession, really -- to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and as an olive branch of sorts to the international community, which condemned the terrorist detention facility at Gitmo. The president had no plan to close the facility, including no idea about what to do with the suspects housed there -- an inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase, that he encountered as his administration tried to find post-Gitmo homes for the detainees. As it turns out, that same international community that had been so vocal about its opposition to Gitmo wanted less than nothing to do with relocating the detainees within their borders.
Shocking, really.
Anyway, this is just the latest in a line of Gitmo-related trouble that the president has encountered as he tries to close Gitmo. As the Times also notes, Greg Craig, the White House counsel in charge of detainee policy for Mr. Obama, also announced his resignation this month.
Most folks would realize the error of a hasty, ill-conceived pledge like this one. If they didn't, they would probably notice the warning signs along the way.
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