“Resign” actually meaning “thrown under the bus” in Washington speak. Expect him to say something about spending more time with his family or moving on to pursue interests in the private/non-profit sector. He’ll probably even throw something in about how grateful he is to President Obama for allowing him this opportunity to serve an important cause.

And then he’ll be off to the Center for American Progress or American Civil Liberties Union to fade into obscurity as that guy who served as White House counsel for 9 months at the beginning of the Obama Administration. He’ll be known on Wikipedia and (maybe) in political circles but will be largely forgotten elsewhere.

Why the departure? Obama put Craig in charge of closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year — a deadline that will be missed by all accounts. As we’ve learned by now, closing a facility holding murderous terrorist suspects isn’t as easy as Obama waving his hand and making it so. The administration overestimated the willingness of other countries to accept terrorists just because The One requested they do so.

His continued presence would be an embarrassment for both the administration and Craig himself. So here he goes, as if everything is somehow fixed now. He’s a scapegoat for Obama’s utter failure to live up to one of his main campaign promises.

Which isn’t to say that Craig was somehow an excellent public service who was just used as a Patsy by Barack Obama. His short tenure, as noted by Ed Morrissey, was disastrous:

After Craig damaged US-British relations by sticking four Gitmo detainees on a plane to Bermuda, and after he dumped less than a dozen more on the island nation of Palau, the pickings for release became mighty slim. Even with the US sending five 9/11 plotters to New York City to face a criminal trial, the Washington Post estimates that 75 prisoners remain that simply cannot be released, sent elsewhere, or tried normally — a situation Obama’s critics predicted all along.

But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s now a scapegoat for an administration that overestimated its Hope’N'Changey abilities and made promises it couldn’t keep. You can fire as many worker ants as you want, but the main problem — the leadership –remains.