You misunderstand.

Closing Gitmo, at the end of the day, isn't about the rights of the prisoners as much as it is about remembering what it means to be American. America is not a nation that permits people to be "disappeared." Gitmo - along with so many policies and practices post 9/11 - is a stain on our national identity. It must be closed.

said water boarding was nothing compared to "electric shock to testicles". I guess s/he'd know. But I think interrupted drowning certainly reaches the "cruel and unusual" threshold.

I actually wiki'd "poor executive leadership" and you know whose picture was there? (Hint: it wasn't Obama's).

But to you point: Sometimes leaders make sweeping statements in order to make them possible.

I'm betting when JFK said "We will have a man on the moon in 10 years" he had no idea how complicated it would be. I bet when Reagan said "Tear down that wall!" he had no idea how complicated it would be. Certainly the Framers had no complete idea how complicated building a nation would be, and that was their full-time job for over a decade (Articles of Confederation, anyone?). That's not to say it's wise to simply blurt out hopeful statements ("Mission Accomplished!") without any thought or planning at all.

I'm sure Team Obama understood closing Gitmo would be messy and complicated. And I'm sure no one was giving them particulars until the last possible second. But Team Obama wanted to heal the great damage from the previous regime, and closing Gitmo is important both in substance and in symbol. It's complicated, but not impossible. And I cherish hope that all the detainees will find real justice, despite the current imperfect plans.

It wasn't naivete ("I hope this works!"), but a gauntlet thrown down to us all: "make this possible."

of creating policy from Hollywood plots.

We had 8 years of "24" anti-terror policy.

Now we might have detainee policy driven by avid watchers of "The Rock" and "Con Air."

Agreed.

We should not be complacent. We should not accept everything Obama says and does as the best course of action. We should criticize when we think he oversteps.

But we should remember where we came from.

They'd really freak out over my kid. I pumped roundd-the-clock for her for several months. When her sister was born, I pumped enough for me to go back to work part-time (3-4 bottles a week).

One day I found my toddler cupping a Play-Doh funnel to her breast, cooing to her doll "Just a minute baby, I'm almost ready to feed you your bottle." I laughed and wrote it down in her baby book.

Poster, and the message behind it, is utterly harmless.

I don;t hold Bush/Cheney responsible for everything wrong in the world.

I do believe the evidence shows that Bush/Cheney handled everything post 9/11 in the worst way possible.

I never said "Clinton is completely blameless" either. I simply showed 1 instance where, confronted with an act of terror on American soil, he managed to use existing law and intelligence-gathering methods to get a legal conviction.

Sure, if 9/11 had never handled, things would have been different (Bush/Cheney would have been a 1-term presidency, for starters). But since we're playing "what if ..." does anyone think an Al Gore presidency would have played their cards in the same way as Bush/Cheney? Is where we are today made completely inevitable by 9/11? I say "no." It was the Bush/Cheney response to 9/11 that got us here.

Ummm ... Clinton said "Hey! Let;'s waterboard suspected terrorists!"? Clinton said "Let's create secret prisons!"? Clinton said "Let's cook intelligence to make our case for war, and screw any one who says otherwise!"?

Because, IIRC, Clinton tried the 93 WTC bombers in American courts. They were found guilty and are serving prison sentences in American prisons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/opinion/22brooks.html?_r=1&em

David Brooks seems to be saying that Cheney is really POed at Bush, but is lashing out at Obama instead, because, well, why?

And Obama should be thanking Bush for giving him the powers of a despot.

Oh. Kay.

As displeased as I am with some of Obama's proposals, I recognize he's trying to work with a crappy hand of cards. I am running out of metaphors, but here goes. Bush/Cheney basically trashed the house: they set fire to the couch, peed on the rug, tossed the dishes on the floor, and tore up the floorboards (and beat people with them). Now Obama has been hired to put things back. But they're broken. And people are claiming that, since they can see the tears/stains/cracks, that Obama is as much an animal as Bush/Cheney.

I think it's important - necessary - to criticize Obama, to push him to do better, to call him out when he reverses himself or falls short of stated goals.

But to cal him "another Bush" is shallow. And to assume he should "thank" Bush is lunacy.