Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Obama's pledge to close the prison. Heather Horn rounds up the reaction. John Bellinger, a former legal adviser to Condoleeza Rice, observes:
President Obama has not only missed his self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo but will likely not be able to shutter the prison in 2010, and possibly not even during the next three years. Politically gun-shy Democratic majorities are unlikely to vote to move the Guantanamo detainees into the United States during an election year, and may be unwilling to do so at all.
And this is a function of three things: the chaotic state the Bush-Cheney crew left the paperwork in; the nihilism and fear-mongering of the GOP; and the usual lack of nerve among Democrats. The Bush inheritance, GOP cynicism and Democratic cowardice: three things that dominated Obama's first year.