Now that the inauguration is history and Obama has said “I do” to America twice, taking the oath of office Wednesday in front of nine onlookers after first taking an ill-administered “oaf” of office on Tuesday in front of a few million onlookers — great job Chief Justice Roberts! — the next one hundred days, history informs us, will be the rookie president’s time to get in the game and show us what he can do, whether through the coercion of Congress or the exercising of executive orders.

Given the negative state of the nation, which Obama’s inaugural speech did not gloss over by any means — he said “crisis” four times — he will assuredly swing for the fences. Now is the time for brashness, at least economically and with a mandate — perhaps not from the popular vote, but at least from the electoral college. Obama and his team are going to do their best to demonstrate that change has come to America — not simply in the new executive positions that they now occupy, but in the issues that they tackle and the policies with which they tackle them.

But in an Obama-nation of seemingly limitless optimism and unattainable expectations, what he and his team, not to mention the Senate and the House, do in their first hundred days, not to mention the 1,360 days after, must be looked at under the most powerful of microscopes.

Even I, an Obama optimist, recognize the media cannot claim it has been very tough on the guy. Aside from Fox News, which continued to demonstrate its endless Bush-love even after his presidency — the network covered his flight back to Texas and his parade-upon-arrival — CNN et al. were still talking about the inauguration’s amazingness and the Obama family’s attractiveness this past weekend, as opposed to talking about his executive actions.

Thus my Barack Obameter, which will measure the major actions of the president’s first hundred days.

This past week’s most major Obama-action was his executive order titled “Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities.” Conveniently, the Washington Post was provided with an immediate release of the executive order, demonstrating Obama’s intention of public accountability and transparency. Regardless, the content of the order and all of those to come is as important — if not more important — than the transparency.

Regarding content, Obama’s order states Guantanamo’s detention facilities, where approximately 800 “enemy combatants” have been detained over the last seven years, must be closed “no later than one year from now” in a manner “consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.” Although 500 detainees have been released to either their home country or a third country, the government — calling for the participation and agreement of the attorney general, the secretaries of defense, state and homeland security, the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the joints chief of staff — will have to figure out what to do with the 245 detainees still there.

Clearly the detainees have to go somewhere when the prison closes, but what is “practicable, prompt, and appropriate” — adjectives all called for by the order — is quite a question. The possible futures of the detainees are quite straightforward: they will be released, transferred or prosecuted. But even if all of the above agencies put all their effort into determining the just futures of these detainees, what if they get it wrong?

Yes, this can always happen in the judicial system, but these aren’t your average alleged criminals. Although an incorrect release of any murderous criminal is horrible, and could result in numerous repeated crimes, wrongfully releasing an anti-American terrorist could result in hundreds, or even thousands, of lives lost.

Perfect justice simply does not exist, and the aspects of these detainees’ cases, unfortunately, point to a strong likelihood of potential future terrorists going free.

First, a large number of detainees’ cases, whether prosecuted in the United States or elsewhere, could likely be thrown out due to tainted, torture-induced evidence or inadequate intelligence material.

Secondly, such detainees who cannot be prosecuted may be determined as too potentially dangerous to release, meaning that they will have to continue to be detained. It’s unlikely any U.S. state is going to welcome them, let alone some random country in Europe.

Thirdly, detainees released to their home countries, whether to go free or be detained in their prisons, pose a definite threat. The threat of an incorrect release is evident, but the threat from an in-home country incarceration is fully threatening as well.

Just one day after the order was issued, this potential danger was proven, as Said al-Shihri, a former Guantanamo detainee, was confirmed — by al-Qaida, a U.S. counterterrorism official and a Yemeni journalist who had been told his Guantanamo detention number in an interview — as a current top al-Qaida deputy who had helped direct last September’s bombing of the U.S. embassy in Yemen, which killed ten civilians.

Most importantly, Shihri — whom the Pentagon believed had visited Iran in order to help extremists enter Afghanistan, yet who claimed he had visited to simply purchase carpets — had been released from Guantanamo and sent to a jihadist rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia in 2007. Although every current detainee will not go to such a program and even those who will might reform, Shihri seems to prove there are no risk-free answers to this issue.

The Obameter’s conclusion, then, is twofold. Yes, Obama’s first order of business inarguably sends a good message of moving forward from a tainted past and seeking justice to the international community. It also begs the perennial post-Sept. 11 question, however, of what risks we should really be willing to take.

– Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.