You could be forgiven for thinking Barack Obama is intentionally screwing the Brits. It is hard to imagine a man who claims to be so smart doing something as dumb as sending GTMO detainees to Bermuda without Bermuda’s home government’s permission.

Because you are neither the President of the United States nor the Secretary of State of the United States, you could be forgiven for thinking that reaching out to Bermuda’s Premier would be an appropriate way to deal with the Uighurs.

The President of the United States and Secretary of State, however, should know or or have advisors who know that Bermuda is “a territory under the sovereignty of the UK, which is responsible for foreign and security policy.” In other words, the Brits are, yet again, angry with Obama for ignoring them.

The Brits are already unhappy with Obama for appearing to “undermine the tough stance adopted by the West towards Tehran” on the campaign trail, in addition to Obama’s weak stance on open trade.

But it is not just the Brits. It’s also the the people of Bermuda who do not take too kindly to Obama parking the Uighurs there. In doing so, Obama is disrupting the domestic political scene in Bermuda.

It boggles the mind to think this was negligence on the part of the American diplomatic corps. Not even Bush was able to bungle foreign diplomatic relations this badly — and this comes on the heels of Obama hacking off the French after snubbing Sarkozy publicly and privately.

The only question we must ask now is, how do you like him now?

You know, it’s not the fact that we’re apparently on the verge of toppling another foreign government that bemuses me, per se; toppling foreign governments is one of those things that the United States of America simply does, as a byproduct of our very existence.  Whether or not that’s an inherently good thing is going to be a matter of some debate - particularly if you’re somebody who’s never lived under one or another of the unpleasant regimes that we’ve absentmindedly obliterated, over the years*. So I’m not particularly startled at the thought that it may be about to happen again.

Still.  Bermuda?

Crockwell tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Bermudians are very concerned about the potential threat the Uighurs pose to the security and economy of Bermuda, and are outraged by the secretive and unilateral manner in which Bermuda premier Dr. Ewart Brown decided to accept the detainees.

“There’s a great deal of anxiety right now,” says Crockwell. “We have not received any information at all in terms of who these individuals are.”

“We hear reports that they have been associated with al Qaeda … that they were trained in terrorist camps,” as well as reports that the men are innocent. “So we don’t know” how much a security risk the former detainees pose. Crockwell says that the Bermudian people and members of parliament don’t know where the Uighurs are now being housed by the government.

“We think the premier, who made a unilateral decision, has put this country at risk. We believe that when there’s uncertainty we have to err on the side of caution,” Crockwell adds. Crockwell’s United Bermuda Party has already moved a motion of no confidence against Brown to remove him as the leader of parliament. He says that a “member of the backbench has stated not even the cabinet was informed of this decision,” which Crockwell described as a “unilateral autocratic decision made by one man who has created a national crisis for the island of Bermuda.”

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8,188.82 miles away from Washington, DC (if this site is to be believed), which is actually about 8,000 miles less than I expected. Then again, there probably isn’t anything there except empty ocean*, and if the administration was just going to dump terrorists into the water it would have said so.

Palau (Who?) to Take in 17 Uighurs

The obscure Pacific nation of Palau, one of the world’s youngest and tiniest countries, has agreed to take in the 17 Uighurs — Muslim Chinese — currently being held at Guantanamo.

President Johnson Toribiong announced in a statement to the Associated Press that Palau “agreed to accommodate the United States of America’s request to temporarily resettle in Palau up to 17 ethnic Uighur detainees.” He said their resettlement in Palau would be “subject to periodic review.”

[snip]

The US government has pledged $200 million in aid to Palau, but a White House official denied that money, for development assistance, had anything to do with the Uighurs going to Palau.

No word from Jake whether the official was able to say that with a straight face.  Well, that’s how the game is played.  See also Hot Air and AoSHQ for some healthy doses of cynicism; mine below the fold.

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As Track-A-’Crat notes, the administration is at best spinning its difficulties to get anybody else to take the Uighurs. The President is claiming that there have been no hard commitments, which implies that negotiations for giving some over to Germany are still going on:

Strictly speaking, that may be true. But according to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Germany has long since blocked the idea of accepting Guantanamo detainees — and has done so without having to issue an outright rejection.

In talks at the end of May, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble presented US Attorney General Eric Holder with a list of criteria to be fulfilled before Germany would take nine Uighur detainees. Schäuble said Washington needed to present a clear case as to why the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in north-western China, couldn’t be taken in by the US or other countries. He also said America had to offer proof that they weren’t dangerous, and that they had a personal connection to Germany. He told Holder that Germany was unable to accept people who couldn’t travel to the US on a simple tourist visa.

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