Obama = Bush?!

Hm, now isn't this interesting...

The most in over its head administration continues to realize the world is a wee bit more challenging than a campaign of just words (caution...link to NY Times).

Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies because the troubled system became an emblem of the effort to use Guantánamo to avoid the American legal system.

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies.

...“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

You don't say?

Hm. Isn't it amazing how certain things change when one suddenly becomes responsible for one's actions? While it's absolutely the right thing to do, shouldn't we follow leaders who got this one right the first time rather than after a flip-flop? Here's a quick video of his initial position:

But there's more:

Barack Obama on April 29, 2009:

We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals, by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and banning torture without exception.

The Washington Times five days later:

House Democratic leaders Monday dropped President Obama's request for $81 million to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, bowing to strong Republican criticism that the administration lacks a plan to relocate terror suspects detained there.

Mr. Obama requested the money as part a spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Democratic appropriators left it out of the bill circulated Monday among House Appropriations Committee staffers.

This just on the heels of reports that the administration is considering "reviving the military commission system that the president criticized in the past for prosecuting terrorism suspects held at a detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

On the one hand, the administration should be commended for maintaining certain elements of the war on terror infrastructure that have worked so effectively over the past eight years to keep Americans safe. Obama's attempts to close Gitmo are now exposed as purely symbolic -- he would maintain essentially the same process for adjudicating the status of most detainees, and the rest would be held without due process until they are no longer a threat to this country. Obama has also continued the rendition program, though in a manner that offers a symbolic victory to the left by ending the system of extraordinary rendition, which didn't require even a phony warrant from a third-world dictatorship.

On the other hand, the fact that Obama has achieved so little change in our war on terror policies has, perhaps, created greater political incentives for shifting the focus to the alleged misconduct of the previous administration.

Once again, it's great that Obama flip-flopped into the right answer on this issue, but what happens when he has to make a decision that doesn't allow a do-over? He doesn't exactly have much in the way of a sterling resume on this stuff.

Now, the Senate is giving him cover on his initial (wrong) position:

In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison.

...Obama is scheduled to give a major address Thursday outlining in more detail his plans for Guantanamo, but it's already clear that Congress has little appetite for bringing detainees to U.S. soil, even if the inmates would be held in maximum-security prisons.

The vote came out 90-6. There must have been some focus group data revealing what common sense already saw: Americans don't want these terrorists on U.S. soil, period. Now, with the Dem-led Senate overwhelmingly opposing the closure of Gitmo -- which was one of Obama's key campaign promises -- he can plausibly say that he tried hard, but that Congress didn't play along. Naturally, the White House is downplaying the policy screw-up:

Let's just make sure we remember how all this actually went down, okay?

There's my two cents.