[Steko]

The truth is with a bad economy the more a president with lagging approval ratings gets involved in some issues the less likely their passage.

More importantly there's a limited amount of political capital you have as POTUS. While you may think Obama should have directed more of this to closing Gitmo, I think the big ticket accomplishments he spent that political capital on such as ACA were more important.

[pdeuchler]

How can you honestly say the ACA was more important than shutting down a US run gulag that actively commits war crimes on a daily basis with approval from the entire chain of command?

[Steko]

I can honestly say it is not even close: access to health care via ACA saves more lives every year than the population of Gitmo by nearly two orders of magnitude.[1]

And it's not clear at all that Obama could have successfully closed Gitmo even had it been a higher priority of his. It is clear that he immediately ended interrogative torture [2] and made efforts to close it. There's still force feeding but that's also an issue in us prisons so closing gitmo and sending the detainees to other prisons is not necessarily solving anything there.

[1] one early study here: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-obamacare-w...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13491

[vfdfv]

It's clear that he issued an executive order, which may or may not be utterly meaningless.

And Gitmo was just an example, not necessarily saying it would even be at the top of my list. Of course sending the detainees to other prisons is not the answer. These people need to be freed, now. Same deal with the multitude of other US military prisons and CIA black sites.

[Steko]

The word you used above was 'disingenuous' and I think that deeply mischaraterizes the issue. The overwhelming blame for gitmo being open today falls on the GOP.

[vfdfv]

Agree to disagree, but I see democrats and republicans as two sides of the same murderous, thieving coin.