NBC Ignores Todd Grilling President Over ObamaCare 'Train Wreck' to Hit From the Left on Gitmo

While NBC's chief White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd pressed President Obama during a Tuesday news conference on the possibility of ObamaCare being a "train wreck," the network coverage of the presser completely avoided any mention of the question, instead seizing on Obama being pressured from the left to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Anchor Brian Williams lead off Tuesday's Nightly News by declaring: "The hunger strike at Guantanamo that's now gotten so bad prisoners are being force fed, as the President faces tough questions." Introducing a report on the topic, Williams lectured: "We don't get to see them or know their names, and most Americans actually prefer not to spend a whole lot of time thinking about the men who've been rounded up as enemy combatants and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba."

Williams sympathetically added: "And tonight those prisoners are back in the news because a hundred of them are on a hunger strike, apparently preferring to take their own lives and do it slowly to the life they have under heavy guard at Guantanamo Bay." Correspondent Andrea Mitchell explained: "Their lawyers say they're protesting years of detention, most without being charged, and no release in sight."

After Mitchell's Nightly News report on the terror detainees, Williams did speak with Todd, noting: "Those Guantanamo comments you just saw, part of a wide-ranging news conference today." However, the only other topic Todd spoke to was Obama's statement on the conflict in Syria.

Mitchell laid the blame for Obama failing to close the prison on Congress: "The President promised to close Guantanamo as soon as he took office, but years later he has been blocked by Congress, the military court system, and now facing that hunger strike by the prisoners, he's clearly frustrated."

During a report on Wednesday's Today, Mitchell included a sound bite of Lieutenant Colonel David Frakt of the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General Reserves Corps fretting: "The fact that we have kept these men at Guantanamo for years makes them essentially political prisoners. And there's no place for political prisoners in the United States."

7:00PM ET TEASE:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: The hunger strike at Guantanamo that's now gotten so bad prisoners are being force fed, as the President faces tough questions.

7:01PM ET SEGMENT:

WILLIAMS: We don't get to see them or know their names, and most Americans actually prefer not to spend a whole lot of time thinking about the men who've been rounded up as enemy combatants and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. We think of them when they become an issue, like when candidate Obama vowed to close the facility. And tonight those prisoners are back in the news because a hundred of them are on a hunger strike, apparently preferring to take their own lives and do it slowly to the life they have under heavy guard at Guantanamo Bay.

Some of them are being force fed now, and now the President is facing some tough questions about what to do. Our chief foreign affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, watching it all from our D.C. newsroom today. Andrea, good evening.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Good evening, Brian. The President promised to close Guantanamo as soon as he took office, but years later he has been blocked by Congress, the military court system, and now facing that hunger strike by the prisoners, he's clearly frustrated.

Guantanamo Bay, where 100 of 166 prisoners are on a hunger strike, some since February. Their lawyers say they're protesting years of detention, most without being charged, and no release in sight. Today President Obama agreed the prison needs to be closed.

BARACK OBAMA: The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.

MITCHELL: Extra doctors and nurses arrived today to help force feed 21 of the detainees. This despite the American Medical Association's protest to Defense Secretary Hagel, that force feeding, quote, "violates core ethical values of the medical profession" once a prisoner makes a rational decision to refuse food.

LT. COL. DAVID FRAKT [U.S. AIR FORCE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL CORPS RESERVE]: The administration seems to be more worried about the bad publicity from a detainee dying than they are from the bad publicity of force feeding the detainees.

OBAMA: I don't want these individuals to die. Obviously, the Pentagon is trying to manage the situation as best as they can. But I think all of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this?

MITCHELL: The military says dozens of prisoners clashed with guards two weeks ago and were hiding makeshift weapons.

COL. JOHN BOGDAN [U.S. ARMY]: We hit the point where, you know, I felt we were accepting too much risk, and it was time to take action.

OBAMA: By the authority vested in me as president.
MITCHELL: The President tried to close Guantanamo two days after he took office. What happened? Congress fought him at every turn, blocking a plan to build a supermax prison in Illinois, or try prisoners, like alleged 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in lower Manhattan, or send them home. Eighty six prisoners, low-level detainees, mostly from Yemen, were cleared to be sent back three years ago, but either Yemen won't take them or can't satisfy U.S. security demands for their transfer. Guantanamo costs taxpayers $800 million a year, with no solution for the prisoners or for the President. Brian.

WILLIAMS: Andrea Mitchell starting us off from D.C. tonight. Andrea, thanks.

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White House blames Congress for Gitmo prison staying open

The White House on Monday blamed Congress for preventing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention prison amid a hunger strike and riots at the camp.

President Obama “remains committed” to closing Guantánamo Bay, something he said he would do in his first week in office in 2009, White House press secretary Jay Carney insisted.

“It is the president’s view that facility ought to be closed,” Carney said. “We have taken steps processing detainees, transferring them to third countries, but the obstacles to closing Guantánamo Bay have been raised by Congress.”

Violent riots broke out at one of the prison's camps this weekend after military authorities decided to end communal housing, instead moving prisoners to individual cells.

The Pentagon said the decision was made after detainees covered windows and surveillance cameras, a move that coincided with a hunger strike being staged by dozens of prisoners. At least one prisoner was injured by a rubber bullet in the clash with guards on Saturday.

The dispute reportedly began when inmates were angered by guards searching copies of the Quran issued by the military. The Pentagon said at least 11 inmates protesting their treatment were being force-fed.

Carney confirmed that the White House had been made aware of the planned move.

“We were informed by the Department of Defense by the steps it was going to take to move detainees from Camp Six communal situation to single cell living in order to ensure their health and security,” he said.

Saturday's violence has refocused attention on the administration’s failed attempt to close the entire detention facility in Cuba.

Congress has repeatedly attached provisions in military spending bills barring the White House from financing trials of Guantánamo captives on U.S. soil or opening a military prison on U.S. soil. Congress has also mandated military detention for most future al Qaeda cases, increasing the difficulty of closing the prison.

On Monday, Carney said Obama was trying to move forward with the prison’s closure.

“Congress has, as you know, raised obstacles to this legislatively,” he said. “And that has made it, obviously, more difficult to pursue this, but that does not change the fact that it is the president's objective, and we are, you know, constantly looking for ways to move forward on that objective.”

The Pentagon hasn’t allowed an extended visit to Guantánamo by defense attorneys for any of the prisoners.

In January, defense attorneys for the accused 9/11 hijackers requested a 48-hour visit to Camp Seven to examine the living conditions at the camp amid accusations of mistreatment by military officials.

Members of the International Red Cross were given special access to the Camp Seven compound in 2009, but their report was classified by the U.S. government and has yet to be released.

Officials at Guantánamo also came under criticism for revelations of covert surveillance of confidential attorney-client meetings between terror detainees and their defense teams at Guantánamo.

—This story was updated at 4:09 p.m.

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A not-friendly reminder to the Activist Left about Gitmo.

In three parts:

The current President of the United States campaigned on a platform that included the closing of the prison for international terrorists at Gitmo.Gitmo is, in fact, still open. But they’ll get to it Real Soon Now (SPOILER WARNING: they won’t).The Right noted at the time that Gitmo was going to remain open. On more than one occasion. We, in fact, told people time again and again and again and again that Barack Obama was not going to close Gitmo. Which means that nobody really has an excuse for being surprised.

Why am I mentioning this now? Isn’t it obvious? Because I’m trolling, that’s why! There’s a lot of people out there who are even now trying to pretend that President Obama ran on closing Gitmo, that the Activist Left pounded the tables and shouted about closing Gitmo, that closing Gitmo was supposed to be the central moral dilemma of our generation… and that the issue of Gitmo was quietly garroted to death in a narrow, dusty room* because it became an embarrassment to the Democratic Establishment. Better and better (from the Right’s point of view): the Activist Left has to pretend that this sort of thing is just fine with them. When we know that it’s not.

Not that it really matters whether the Activist Left is happy, of course. They are, after all, commodities whose utility begins and ends with how much money and underpaid labor they can contribute to the Democratic establishment – or, as the Democratic establishment itself probably puts it in private, ‘their betters.’ And it is a measure of their degradation that progressive activists will simply swallow their bile and go on with trudging in circles. It’d be almost pathetic, except that pity is mostly wasted on people who voluntarily choose to abandon their dignity and all sense of self-respect.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: So why did I bring this all up? – Because it’s my job as a conservative blogger/New Media activist to highlight these sorts of things. Plus, as noted earlier I am a bit of a troll. Or at least I am to trolls what wolfhounds are to wolves…

*Literary reference.

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