President Bush Admits Guantanamo Sucks, Feigns Inability To Close It

President Bush pretends to be concerned about the horror he has created down in Guantanamo Bay-

President George W. Bush acknowledged on Wednesday that the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where three detainees committed suicide, has damaged the U.S. image abroad and said it should be shut down.

But he said a plan for relocating the prisoners was needed first and he also was awaiting a Supreme Court decision about the forum for handling detainee cases.

"I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people there that are darn dangerous and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush told a news conference in the White House Rose Garden...

Translation: "Oh sure, I'd like to close Guantanamo, but as President of the United States, I don't have the authority."

So he needs to wait for the Courts to force him to close the prison, but he doesn't need (or want) to listen to the Congress or the Courts or anyone else to continue his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program or any of his other misdeeds. He even goes out of his way to try and stop them from doing so. I see how it works.

Of course, this I-hate-Gitmo-but-it's-outta-my-control line is the same talking point President Bush has been spewing for months on the issue. They know the world sees the prison as the aberration that it is and he wants to protect himself from the fallout, hence distancing himself from it rhetorically. But closing it would be a direct admission that its existence was a bad thing and that it many of its inhabitants are not the villains he insists they are. Doing so would further expose what a power-grab of a farce he has reduced the war on terror to and that would destroy what's left of his credibility. So, much like the Iraq war, he's going to continue to pay lip-service to the problem, wait out the remainder of his term, and leave the problem for the next President to clean up.

What a joke.

Meanwhile, the administration is working hard after the recent suicides to get the prison out of the press. A new report states that "The United States military has ordered all independent media off the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base following the suicides of three detainees". All media were ordered to be off the base by 10am this morning. It's time to push the prison back into the shadows. This move has been highly criticized by the press, of course, not that the President ever cared what they had to say about anything.

And so the nightmare continues...

[PS- Andrew Sullivan takes a look inside life at Guantanamo Bay prison.]

[PPS- Michelle Malkin expresses her sympathies to the inmates who committed suicide.]