Friday marks the one-year anniversary of President Obama's pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within the year. And, as anyone who has paid any attention to national security matters knows, the deadline will not be meant.
In fact, on Thursday the White House announced that they did not have a time frame for shutting Gitmo down.
"I don't know when the process will be done," Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said during the daily briefing. "I know they made great progress... establishing first and foremost case files and recommendations of who indeed was there and why. There has been progress on that. There has been progress on issue of citing a new detention facility. The president won't meet the deadline he laid out a year ago, but the president, his national security team, the generals in Iraq and Afghanistan understand the support for al Qaeda that Guantanamo provides them, in recruiting, in attracting those that seek to do us harm.
"To keep the American people safe the president pledged to close Guantanamo Bay and he will do that," Gibbs added.
There has been progress on many of the issues Gibbs noted: including pinpointing the Thompson facility in Illinois as a replacement site. But as the one year anniversary of Obama's call to close Gitmo approaches, the issue seems far from settled in the realm of politics.
If anything, the recent election of Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) makes it abundantly clear that Cheney-like national security policy (of indefinite detentions, waterboarding, and militarism) is still very much is the crux of the GOP platform -- and that the American public doesn't necessarily find that all too repugnant.