Guantanamo more complicated than Obama hoped

The suspicion keeps growing that when it comes to national security policies -- even those that Obama has promised to abandon or change from the bad old Bush days -- Obama is turning out to look a whole lot like GWB. The atmospherics are different, of course, as are some of the priorities. But as noted before, he's maintaining dragnet electronic surveillance and using the state secrets flim-flam to keep cases from going to court, just like Bush.

Now the delay of two panels, one on interrogation and one on closing Gitmo, engeenders further skepticism. There's no reason, in my view, and as this Register editorial contends, to delay a report on torture -- just announce you're fgollowing the Army Field Manual. Guantanamo, on the other hand, embodies some legitimate complications. There are probably some -- fewer than the government thinks, I suspect, but some -- there whom almost nobody would want released, yet who can't be tried in a U.S. court for various reasons.