Time Mag: 'Pretty Much All Americans' Want Gitmo 'Headache' to Go Away; Polling Data Show Otherwise
In a 10-paragraph January 11 Battleland blog post marking the 10th anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Time magazine's Mark Thompson called the prison "the persistent headache that pretty much all Americans would like to go away."
Thompson failed to back up the claim with polling data, however, which actually runs squarely against his claim.
A CBS News poll from November 2011 shows a full 52 percent of Americans want Gitmo to remain open. A 2010 poll by CNN found 60 percent of Americans favor keeping the prison open.
"President Obama’s pledge to shut down the prison within a year of taking office passed two years ago," Thompson complained, and "It has been a year since any of the remaining 171 detainees left, because of congressional bars on bringing them to the U.S., and the willingness of the U.S. government to sanction indefinite detention."
"Is the White House any closer to closing Gitmo today than it was on January 20, 2009, the day Obama became President?" Thompson rhetorically asked in his penultimate paragraph before providing what he saw as the White House's unsatisfactory answer, "'This this is a process that faces obstacles that we’re all aware of,' Carney said Monday when he was asked, 'and we will continue to work through it.'"
"That’s White House-speak for don’t count on it," Thompson groused.
- Ken Shepherd's blog
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Comments
Based on my polling
Submitted by Bodini on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 5:45pm.
Based on my polling all non-Marxist Americans want Time Magazine to go away.
We do want the headache to go away
Submitted by optimist on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 5:46pm.
However, the headache isn't the prison itself or the POSs that they keep there. The headache is fools like you that continue to undermine the US by continuing to paint this necessary prison in nothing but a negative light.
Agreed. But in Thompson's
Submitted by Ken Shepherd on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 5:47pm.
Agreed. But in Thompson's mind, the "headache" is Gitmo itself, not those who are detained there.
Sure, I'd like a more long-term solution, but it doesn't keep me up at nights. And it seems that right now Gitmo is a perfect long-term solution, coupled with military tribunals to dispense with terror suspects in a just manner.
I think we're on the same page, Ken
Submitted by optimist on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 5:56pm.
It just really amazes me that some of these people don't realize that at the end of the day, they are the problem.
I just realized that my
Submitted by optimist on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 10:01am.
I just realized that my original post sounded like I was talking to you, Ken. My apologies, I was referring to Thompson as the fool.
Precisely...
Submitted by PrairieSky on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 6:14pm.
My guess is that this "headache" that Thompson refers to, is not really a huge problem with "pretty much all Americans," but only with "pretty much all Americans..." that he knows, talks to, works and socializes with.
Reminds me a bit of that blindly ignorant and very revealing statement made by the politically liberal Pauline Kael, film critic and writer for the New Yorker, following Nixon's landslide victory in '72...She said that she couldn't believe that Nixon had won, and that 'no one that she knew had voted for him'. I'm sure that for Ms. Kael this was true, given her political proclivities and who she no doubt worked and socialized with.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction...It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them (our children) to do the same." ~President Ronald Reagan
optimist
Submitted by Prisondog1776 on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 7:15pm.
We have "Gitmo`s" within our borders. They are called C.M.U`s, i work in one.
The real Gitmo gets all the press, but make no mistake there are terrorists we house in our Federal Prisons.
I dont recall being asked my opinion.
Submitted by Newsbubba on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 5:45pm.
I vote to keep it open, and expand it.
I would like to see Sheriff Joe Arpaio put in charge of the facilities planning however. He could add warm touches like pink uniforms, only C-Span on TV, only classical music, and bar-b-q pork sliders four nights a week for dinner.
Maybe it can be used to lock up Eric Holder when he goes down for gun running and contributing to the murder of a Border Patrol agent.
For what it's worth
Submitted by John Francroix Jr on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 6:16pm.
I'm fine with Gitmo remaining open, just as long as Haley Barbour isn't in line to run the place.
The "headache" WILL go away.
Submitted by almostacowboy on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 6:26pm.
The minute the last moooslem who doesn't believe in killing anyone who won't conform to islam is dead.
GITMO is reserved for Rush
Submitted by lrgon on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 10:07pm.
Rush Limbaugh was going over all of the president's broken promises and said that the reason that he felt that Obama had not closed GITMO was that Obama wanted to "put us in there." By "us" he meant his fans and by way of inference all conservatives. Rush was being half serious but nailed the reason why the prison remains open.
In the 16th century England, the king and his advisors had their GITMO. They were intolerant of anyone daring to criticize the government and breaking their rules like praying to saints and conducting religious services banned by the King. The kings favorite "enemies of the state" to use a modern term, were Catholics,epecially priests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Martyrs_of_England_and_Wales#The_Fort...
Shhhhh boys and girls. Don't feed the loon.
Submitted by The Vet on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 1:30am.
Otherwise, loons go into full on paultard mode.
Like this ---
The Loon lrgon: I suppose Jesus would also approve of "enhanced interrogation?" Would he also approve of drawing and quartering people? How about bringing wives and daughters to a GITMO cell and forcing the "detainee" to watch as his wife or daughter is abused by stripping them naked and having the brave men and women in uniform abuse them with sticks and dogs? If it saves a town or a city from a bomb it should meet with the approval of the Master shouldn't it?
When our brave men and women abuse the wife and daughter with sticks and dogs, do the dogs hold the sticks? Or is there some kind of fetch game with the the sticks and the dogs? And also, would Jesus play fetch with the sticks and the dogs?
The Loon lrgon: ...a POTUS using an unsavory character with alleged ties to al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda plots, to terrorize the Bill of Rights...
Say, do the sticks and dogs terrorize the Bill of Rights too or is it just the unsavory characters?
Vet,
Submitted by Agnostic on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:50pm.
can't we just give him/her a couple of places to hatch some plans from conspiracies or a gulag in which to contemplate 'The End'.
He didnt get around
Submitted by misterbee241 on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 10:57am.
to closing Gitmo because he was too busy destroying America.
It's only a "persistent headache"...
Submitted by CobraMan on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:21pm.
It's only a "persistent headache" to people like Mark Thompson, who just can't seem to let it go. The rest of us understand the necessity of housing dangerous foreign enemies in military encampments, like Gitmo. To us, releasing them would become a huge, persistent headache.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
The so-called Journalists/reporters/newsreaders/talking heads
Submitted by texasborngranny on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 2:42pm.
The so-called Journalists/reporters/newsreaders/talking heads of today are incapable of writing/reporting anything other than fiction. At that, it's mostly the same old fiction repeated over and over.