If the Bush administration’s transgressions were so obvious, why are the fixes so hard to figure out? The kind of outrage we saw over Guantanamo Bay surely was backed by a certainty of purpose, right? After all, holding terrorist suspects there wasn’t a mere matter of inexact solutions; it showed an anti-American disregard for human rights and due process. The answer should be a simple matter of course correction.

So, what’s holding things up?

Bipartisan opposition to Barack Obama’s willy-nilly Guantanamo everything-must-go close-out has solidified. Not only did the House version of the relevant bill refuse the administration’s $80 million request to shutter the detainee facility, the AP now reports that the Senate has made important changes in its bill:

President Barack Obama’s allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison next January, a top Democratic official said Tuesday.

With debate looming on Obama’s spending request to cover military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official says Democrats will deny the Pentagon and Justice Department $80 million to relocate Guantanamo’s 240 detainees.

The problem is our new brilliant, empathic, accountable, transparent, and noble administration hasn’t the first clue as to what to do with the detainees. Democrats say they’ll revisit the issue when and if there’s a relocation plan in place. Good luck with that. Unlawful enemy combatants occupy unique legal status. Any new blueprint for their detention and trial would have to be similarly unique. Dropping them in Virginia doesn’t quite answer the call and our moralizing allies have told our new beloved president to get lost.

And let’s revisit, for perspective, the presidential signing process that declared the closing of Gitmo:

President Obama: “And we then, we will then, uh, provide the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed no later than, uh, one year from now. We will be… Uhhh … Ummm. … Is there a separate executive order, Greg, with respect to how we’re going to dispose of the detainees? Is that it, eh, uh, what we’re doing?”

White House Counsel Greg Craig: “We’ll set up a process.”

Glad to hear it.