January Gitmo Closure Won’t Happen, Obama Finally Admits

President Gives No Firm Date If/When Closure Will Actually Happen

by Jason Ditz, November 18, 2009

Delivering the bad but hardly unsurprising news on the other side of the planet in Beijing, President Barack Obama finally admitted today that his pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by January simply isn’t going to happen.

Its “just technically hard,” Obama insisted in his interview with Fox News, adding that he was “not disappointed” that the facility was going to remain open for the forseeable future and expressing hope that it might close at some point in 2010.

But President Obama stopped well short of setting a new date for the closure of the facility, saying that a lot of it would “depend upon cooperation from Congress.” Congress has recently blocked efforts to close the facility, but has done so with the president’s blessing.

Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo by January 2010 was long cited as an example of the president keeping campaign promises, and officials were loathe to admit that the plan had broken down. With just two months left, it seems the president couldn’t keep the policy change a secret any longer.

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