“I don’t want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo,” President-elect Barack Obama told  George Stephanopoulos during an interview on January 11th, 2009.

On his second day in office, he signed an executive order to close the base within one year. ”We will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who are held there,” he said.

He then sent Attorney General Eric Holder to our “allies” like Germany, and Hillary Clinton around the world to try and find someone to take the prisoners off our hands. Big surprise, no one wanted them. So through his Congressional yes-men, Obama floated the idea of putting the enemy combatants/terror suspects into the general U.S. prison system. When that didn’t fly with the voters, they needed a plan, and quick.

Obama was only going to close the base to publicly take a swipe at the Bush administration, and also to appease the far-left crowd of Daily Kos followers and Code Pink loons who were frothing at the mouth over the “torture” the Gitmo detainees were receiving. (Such horrible atrocities as leaving the lights on all night, blasting heavy metal music, or putting a fuzzy caterpillar in a cell with a detainee. And as for waterboarding? No one died during the brief sessions of waterboarding that a few prisoners received; it’s a good thing the prisoners weren’t snowboarded, though… an average of 10 people die every year in the sport.)

Now, the majority of Americans knew that closing Guantanamo was a bad idea, if it was even possible, but far be it from Barack Obama to do what the majority of Americans think is right, especially when it comes to national security. And anyone with common sense would have addressed the questions of “What are we going to do with the prisoners?” and “Where will we put the prisoners if no other country takes them?” before issuing an order to close the base. Obviously, these questions were not addressed and the decision to close the base was a political one, and not a logical one. And now it’s come back to bite him.

So, since the prisoners have to remain at Guantanamo, how is Obama going to not close the base, but still avoid being seen as clueless? Simple: inform your Congressional surrogates to vote “no” on funding the base closure, so you can say “I gave the order to close the base, but Congress wouldn’t appropriate the funds. Not my fault!”

We have news for you, Mister President: your Congressional smoke screen is as thick as the secondhand smoke in New York City bars, which is to say non-existent. Your bumbling and incompetence, and that of your staff, will seal your fate as a 1-term president with a trail of failures leading back to your first day in office. Unfortunately, it will be the rest of the country who has the pay the price for your bungling, and we will be paying that price for several generations to come.