As you know closing down Guantanamo Bay has been on Obama's list of campaign promises. In the first few days of his presidency Obama has taken quick and hopefully effective measures to abide by his committments. President Obama has issued five executive orders in his five days in office and four of them are linked to undoing the political and legal damage caused by the Bush administration's policies in the war on terror. By the way you can see all of his proclamations and executive orders here on his website.
Obama has addressed interrogation techniques demanding that the all US agencies (including the CIA) be held legally responsible to interrogation methods as layed out in the Army Field Manual and the Geneva conventions. He has catagorically denied the argument that prisoners being held outside of American territory by American forces do not have legal, and humanitrian protection under the AFM and the GC (this was a major argument for the Bush administration).
What is more, Obama has revoked the CIA's right to hold their own detention facilities. THIS IS HUGE. The biggest worry that I have had about closing Guantanamo has been that it is often likened to the tip of the iceburg. Because the CIA hold secret prisons (thought to be in five different countries in Asia and Eastern Europe) we know that they hold prisoners there that are have little to no legal assistance and have no reason to believe they will ever be released. It doen't make sense to talk about closing Guantanamo if you do nothing to curtail the ability of the CIA to keep secret prisons around the world that are basically lawless black holes. So Obama did something about it:
"Sec. 4. Prohibition of Certain Detention Facilities, and Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals.
(a) CIA Detention. The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future."
These short sentances have HUGE ramifications. It remains to be seen how this is carried out and what the consequences are in the future. I am proud of Obama.
What is more - Obama has invalidated the executive orders of Bush that made access to Presidential records almost impossible for decades to come. About a year back it was reported that Bush had closed his presidential files to the public for 100 years. The short version of what Bush ordered is that any living member of the family of a former president (and sometimes officials within that administration) could ask that any of the presidential papers be kept from public review. Obama has revoked this executive order and written in it's place that when there is a request for presidential documents the former president (if living) is notified and has 30 days to deny the request. If he does this then the request goes to before the attorney general and before the head of the national archives to determine if the denial is valid. Only documents that are concerning current national security are allowed to be kept from public scrutiny.
Obama has shown in his first five days in office wisdom and intention to really be the post transparent administration yet. He has worked out tons of new ways to allow citizens to be a greater part of government. One example: he has agreed to post all non-emergency legislation on the whitehouse website for five days before he signs it so that it is open to public comment and citizen opinions (I'll get you the link asap). Further more for his economic recovery plan he has set up the page recovery.gov that (once the bill is passed) will allow americans to see how their tax money is being used and to comment on it so as to help reduce wasteful spending.
I really encourage you to go to the website and see the other things the Obama administration is doing.
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