By Jay McDonough
WASHINGTON(RushPRnews)10/11/08–President Elect Barack Obama met President Bush at the White House today.  Now that must have been one awkward meeting.  Particularly given the news that Obama has gangs of people working on identifying all the Bush Presidential directives to turn over as soon as Obama takes office. From the NY Times:

President-elect Barack Obama is poised to move swiftly to reverse actions that President Bush took using executive authority, and his transition team is reviewing limits on stem cell research and the expansion of oil and gas drilling, among other issues, members of the team said Sunday.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for Congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that,” John D. Podesta, a top transition leader, said Sunday. “He feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.”

Also reported today were Obama’s plans to close Guantanamo Bay as soon as he takes office.

Mr Obama is planning to ship dozens of terror suspects from the prison to face criminal trial in the US as part of a plan to shut the jail down. It is a controversial move but one that demonstrates how abruptly he plans to change Washington in terms of policy, personnel and tone the moment he enters the Oval Office.

Under plans being put together in Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.  A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. (Link)

While it’s terrific news the new administration plans to shut down Guantanamo, this third group of detainees continues to pose some serious moral issues for the nation.  There are an unknown number of detainees falling into this group, but we can be fairly certain this is the group whose detention has been shaded by extraordinary renditions, torture by U.S. forces and a bogus, ad hoc judicial process designed to cover up detainee mistreatment and insure permanent detention, regardless of guilt or innocence.

Developing another ad hoc judicial system, even if it’s on the mainland, does nothing to address the legal issues surrounding these detainees.  This is one of the most horrific of the Bush doctrines – a whole group of people who will remain in prison forever to coverup the crimes commited by our government.

Source: Examiner

Photo: Associated Press