Obama. Guantanamo. Lies.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama, the president for the last seven years, demonstrated what can happen when you are so convinced of your own correctness (and are protected by a lapdog press)  that you feel you can say anything you want to.  That occurred as he made a little speech outlining his plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the USA is currently holding a large number of Islamic terrorists -- not counting the ones Obama sent back to the battlefield with nothing in return.

In trying to defend the indefensible proposal, we were treated to this example of packing multiple untruths in a single paragraph -- read carefully:

“I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president, whoever it is,” he said.  "With this plan, we have the opportunity, finally, to eliminate a terrorist propaganda tool, strengthen relationships with allies and partners, enhance our national security and most importantly uphold the values that bind us as Americans.”

It is really interesting that every single part of that paragraph is -- let's call it what it is -- a lie.  That's "lie", as in "intentional untruth."  So let us pick it all apart, because it is simultaneously fun to do so and saddening that we have to.

"I don't want to pass this problem on to the next president ...".  Lie.  Sure he doesn't want to pass Guantanamo on to the next president, but it is not a problem.  Guantanamo (the prison part) in and of itself is there to house Islamic terrorists.  The prison is not a problem; Islamic terrorism and, thus, the need still to have a prison is.  We have that problem because Obama himself, by bailing out of Iraq while we still had an opportunity to protect our interest and that of the Iraqi people, and by ignoring the Syrians with his "red line" weakness, allowed ISIS to happen.  We have prisoners there who have been in Guantanamo since long before ISIS existed, but by making the world far more unsafe, Obama has forced our hand to need to hold people who would immediately return to radicalism.

"With this plan, we have the opportunity to:

"... eliminate a terrorist propaganda tool".  Lie.  Until Obama repeated this mantra a dozen times, ISIS never tried to wave Guantanamo around as a way to attract recruits, and there is still little or no evidence that they are actually doing so -- certainly not to where we should lift a finger to close it because of recruitment.  That is a flat-out, made-up piece of nonsense, and he can repeat it until the cows come home, but that won't make it true.

"... strengthen relationships with allies and partners".  Lie.  What allies and partners is he even talking about?  Israel?  The U.K.?  Jordan?  Egypt?  Exactly what country with whom we are remotely friendly benefits by our closing Guantanamo -- or even cares?  Whether that specific prison is open or closed, or whether the prisoners are in Cuba or held elsewhere, is of no consequence or concern to any ally or friend.  What is of consequence is when Obama releases even one of the terrorists held there to fight again, as he has done over and over.  And that, dear readers, only weakens any relationship with another country that we ever might care about.

"... enhance our national security".  Lie.  Our national security, whatever its status when 100 Islamic terrorists are held on an island from which they cannot escape, is only diminished when those terrorists are alive anywhere else -- especially if even one is moved to a prison in the USA itself.  There is absolutely no way in which national security is a shred better.  It takes some brass cogliones even to suggest that it somehow is.

"... and, most importantly, uphold the values that bind us as Americans."  Lie.  Fat lie.  Your values, Mr. Obama, are "keeping a campaign promise."  They are not the same as those that "bind us as Americans."  The binding values are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; they are the freedoms that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  Your contempt for the Constitution is palpable, Mr. Obama, as we know, and your unwillingness to protect our citizens is frightening.  And I can tell you, as surely as I am writing this, that there are no American values that are threatened by keeping a set of vile Islamic terrorists in a Cuban prison.

And you think, Mr. Obama, that we don't see through you.  But when you provide us an entire spoken paragraph, lying in each and every phrase, you have to know that we do.  May we never, never again let anyone close to the Oval Office with even a hundredth of the contempt for the truth that you have.

That, sir, is the truth.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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