“Out of the loop” Joe Biden says decision to shut Guantanamo was “like opening Pandora’s Box” :: Toby Harnden

“Out of the loop” Joe Biden says decision to shut Guantanamo was “like opening Pandora’s Box” :: Toby Harnden

Thank goodness for Vice President Joe Biden. In one of the few amusing parts of the Wanda Sykes comedy routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, she said: "God forbid that Joe Biden falls into the hands of terrorists....We're done. Oh, they won't even have to torture him. All they have to do is go, 'How's it going, Joe?'"

Indeed. It seems that all a reporter has to do to find out about the pickle Barack Obama's is really in over his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison is to ask the veep, who was talking to the press at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo on the final day of his trip to the Balkans.

So will Obama fulfill his vow - announced amid great fanfare in an executive order on day two of his presidency - to close the facility by January 2010? "I think so," Biden responded, according to Newsweek's Holly Bailey.

So perhaps he will. Or perhaps not. We'll see.

Biden continued: "But, look, what the president said is that this is going to be hard. It's like opening Pandora's Box. We don't know what's inside the box."

He also said that "to the best of my knowledge" the number of prisoners "who are a real danger who are not able to returned or tried" has "not been established" by the Obama administration.

So he basically just confirmed his predecessor Dick Cheney's analysis that the decision was taken "with little deliberation, and no plan".

For those citizens who might be a tad concerned about hardened Islamist fighters being housed in jails on the American mainland, the veep suggested they should visit the Unabomber or Richard Reid at the Colorado's Supermax.

"There's a bit of a hysteria about, well, my God, these guys are so dangerous. Go to some maximum security cells if you want to know some dangerous people. Matter of fact, it might be an awakening to them."

Got that? Stop being hysterical and go buy a Greyhound ticket to the Supermax.

Rest assured though, Biden said that during his visits to Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo he'd discussed "the prospect of a detainee coming back to the region".

That's "a detainee", singular. There are currently some 240 at Gitmo.

Of course, the vice-president might have it all wrong. He prefaced his remarks by stating that he was "out of the loop".


To think, If anything happens to Obama this idiot is in charge.