President Obama’s postponing of his promises to close Guantanamo Bay has upset human rights groups while his conservative critics lobby to keep it open.

On his second day in office, Obama made said there is no time to lose in closing Guantanamo Camp X-Ray prison.

“The United States can fight terrorism without sacrificing our values and our ideals,” he said in January 2009. “I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture. Second, we will close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there.”

While the prison is smaller than any time since 2002, delays in Obama’s plan to replace the site with a maximum-security prison in Illinois mean the original Jan. 22 deadline to close the site will not be met. Funds to refurbish the prison with proposed security repairs have not yet been secured.

The first 20 detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay on January 11, 2002, and activist group Witness Against Torture used the anniversary to protest the delayed objective. Dressed as hooded detainees in orange jumpsuits, the group marched outside the White House on Jan 11, 2010.

“The law needs our president as an authentic advocate-not just in words but in deeds-when times are ‘hard’ and war rages,” wrote organizer Frida Berrigan in a groups press release that day. “This is the case right now. To do anything else is to condemn this nation to a free fall into the “dark side” where Dick Cheney seems so comfortable.”

Yet in the wake of the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, public opinion seems to have become more in line with advocating rigid security and indefinite detention.

A nationwide poll conducted by CBS between Jan. 6 and Jan. 10 indicated that 55 percent of Americans wanted to keep Guantanamo Camp X-Ray open for detainees. Only 32 percent said they wanted it closed and 13 percent said they don’t know.

In contrast, 46 percent of Americans thought the prison should remain open in February 2009.

Since the attempted bombing appears to have been masterminded in Yemen, Obama has suspended the release of detainees who are natives of that country for fear that they will join terrorist groups there. Nearly half of the 198 terror suspect detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay were slated to return to Yemen.

Part of the pressure for that decision came from Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., when they drafted a letter to President Obama on Dec. 29.

“Given the security situation in Yemen and the failure of the Yemeni government to secure high-value prisoners in the past, we believe that any such transfers would be highly unwise and ill-considered,” the letter read.

While the Obama administration maintains it will close Gunatanamo, other government detention facilities continue to operate, such as Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Kabul, Afghanistan. A BBC investigative report from June included interviews with former detainees who accuse them of physical and mental abuse.

“They poured cold water on you in winter and hot water in summer,” said an inmate who identified himself as Dr. Khandan. “They used dogs against us. They put a pistol or a gun to your head and threatened you with death. They put some kind of medicine in the juice or water to make you sleepless and then they would interrogate you.”

When the findings were shown to the Pentagon, the Lt. Col Mark Wright, the US Secretary of Defense’s spokesman, responded that conditions at Bagram “meet international standards for care and custody”.

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