Apparently shutting down the terrorist detention center isn’t as simple as the left made it seem during the campaign. Turns out it’s a complex legal situation and viable countries aren’t exactly lining up to accept the most dangerous terrorists in the world. Go figure.

The task force, set up on Obama’s second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21 outlining a long term detention plan for detainees captured in counter terrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantanamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a “few months,” a senior administration official told Newsweek.

A separate task force report on interrogations—also due this week—is being put off as well, said the official, who, like others quoted in this article, asked not to be named talking about private deliberations…

Three administration officials familiar with the process said the detention task force, which is jointly run by aieds to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, did agree that the Obama administration should continue to claim the right to hold some Guantanamo inmates indefinitely as “combatants” under the “laws of war,” without charging them either in criminal courts or in military commissions. That proposal is sure to prove controversial among human rights groups, which say any such “indefinite detention” violates civil liberties and is virtually indistinguishable from legal claims made by President Bush.

And now for the length of the delay:

Senior administration officials said Monday that the report on detention will be delayed six months and the report on interrogation and transfer policy will be delayed two months…

Six months after President Barack Obama signed the closure order, fewer than 20 of about 245 inmates have been transferred out of the U.S. military base in Cuba. Currently, there are 229 detainees at Guantanamo, and the administration, by its own clock, has six months more to remove them.

So…the report on what to with prisoners is being delayed until the prison is scheduled to have been completely shut down? Are we pretty much determined to ship the terror detainees to prisons on American soil in that case? It would appear so.

Your government at work.