The New York Times makes a funny:
Civil liberties and human rights groups — many of whom dislike any policy that involves holding prisoners without trial — reacted with ambivalence to the report that the Obama team has been working on an executive order to establish formal reviews.
Find me anyone who cares about civil liberties and human rights who likes policies that involve indefinite detention. But before you start pooh-poohing the president’s plan, consider the following:
However, almost every part of the administration’s plan to close Guantanamo is on hold, and it could be crippled this week if Congress bans the transfer of detainees to the United States for trial and sets up steep hurdles to the repatriation or resettlement in third countries of other detainees…
…Provisions in the defense authorization bill, which has passed the House and is before the Senate, would effectively ban the transfer of any detainee to the United States for any purpose. That rules out civilian trials for all Guantanamo detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His potential prosecution had remained possible even though the administration had balked in the face of political opposition to a trial in New York.
The defense bill, if it passes the Senate, would effectively force the administration to conduct only military commissions and at Guantanamo Bay, which would also have to remain open to house those held indefinitely. The bill would also create new requirements before the administration could repatriate or resettle detainees who were cleared for release by the interagency task force.
“If it passes, it is the final, decisive blow to the president’s plan,” said Tom Malinowski, head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.
Hey, this is another reason to pass DADT repeal in a stand-alone bill. But, seriously, this is the kind of crap the president has to put up with. He has a bunch of cowards in Congress who not only refuse to have his back on making tough decisions, but actually participate in tying his hands during wartime. If he doesn’t want to leave the troops in the field with no supplies, he has to sign the Defense Bill. But the Defense Bill enshrines the Guantanamo system of injustice in perpetuity. So, the president is coming up with some patchwork band-aid to try to make this all consistent with our values. Go ahead and blast him, but make sure you blast Congress first. Blast anyone who voted for (or will vote for) the Defense bill.
Here’s a question: if we’re too scared to hold a trial or relocate an inmate to our maximum security prisons, why would some other country volunteer to take these prisoners off our hands? Being a nation of cowards has consequences.
Well, if the president used his incredibly large microphone and power to stand up and tell the public the truth instead of ceding everything to Republican mythology, maybe the public would be swayed. But the president is a coward, too. So what difference does it make?
As if he hasn’t done exactly that. Only to be cut off at the knees by his own caucus.
seriously, he lost the vote like 98-0, didn’t he? A little rhetoric woulda fixed that, I’m sure.
Just a bit more pounding on that bully pulpit would have done it I’m sure.
Seriously, I am beyond sick of people calling Obama a coward. He is about as far from that as I can imagine.
LOL. Obama has tremendous power to sway the public but that runs smack into the fantasy meme of “Obama’s doing his best.” I said that he can sway the public, not the senate. If you’d rather disparage that by calling it “rhetoric,” that’s your right, but If Obama stepped out of his insular, incestuous bubble, he’d be able to speak directly to The People. But Obama doesn’t want to do that because it would actually show that he’s more than a showhorse and then people would expect something other than the poor-powerless-Obama shtick. Obama and his coterie of Democratic kiss-asses ignore the public at his peril. Contrary to popular opinion, it was the public who kicked the Dems out of power in the House, not Citizens United.
‘typing his hands during wartime’?
There is no war and the state of emergency or whatever you might want to call the situation (previously the war on terror, now a war on anything that comes to mind) is permanent—their so-called wars are not going to end. So where’s peace time gone to? It will never be.
The US has been in a state of permanent war ever since WWII. What else is new? You really expect Obama to turn that upside down all by himself? Who believes in the black messiah meme now?
Republicans are going to paint themselves in a corner.
If they try to shut down the government by refusing to pass a new debt ceiling, Guantanamo could be the first thing closed. Then those prisoners could be sent to a SecureMax prison in Kentucky or Ohio or Texas or…
Where they could be deposed about the treatment that they received at Guantanamo.
Just saying all of these political shenanigans are going to eventually tie Republicans into a pretzel.
But, seriously, this is the kind of crap the president has to put up with. He has a bunch of cowards in Congress who not only refuse to have his back on making tough decisions, but actually participate in tying his hands during wartime.
Come on, Boo!! Where did the President serve before becoming President? Oh, that’s right, he was a Senator!! So he knows how all these games are played. I know you seriously dislike a certain female that runs another blog, but what you can’t deny is that she knows politics too(Unless you don’t think there are politics in Hollywood .. and I don’t mean the “D” & “R” type). Have you ever thought that the President might actually be okay with the above outcome? After all, he hasn’t actually cut back on “Security state theater” has he?
I despise Bush all the more for this.
Obama is doing what he can in this nasty situation.
Calvin, in case you missed it, when Obama came in he got rid of Bush’s ability to declare anyone an enemy combatant,or Bill of Attainder as it used to be called.
I’d like to see Homeland Security gone, but I don’t see Congress going for that.
How about a signing statement saying that part of the bill does not apply and he can do what he wants.
Bush/Cheney would have done it that way if they didn’t get what they wanted from Congress.
Yes, the Congress are the cowards, but there is a way to do this to where it doesn’t violate Geneva or the Constitution (I wouldn’t agree to it, as I am an absolutist, but it could be done). This falls far short, and could quite likely be a war crime.
The detainees, unless something has changed, are not POWs.
The Geneva Conventions don’t apply.
This is such a huge legal nightmare.
Lol, George Bush, is that you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdan_v._Rumsfeld
If they are not POWs, they should be released. Under what authority except “If the President orders it, it’s OK” are they being held and do they continue to be held.
Authorities all the time release guys who have restraining orders on them, who might or might not kill the person who took out the restraining order on them.
Safety is looking less and less like the reason for continued detention.
If it’s a legal nightmare, they should be released.
But it is also a political nightmare in which the Republicans, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney have maneuvered President Obama into a position that he now shares the guilt and the risk of trial. And I would not put it past Republicans to do to Obama what the Democrats should have done to Bush between 2006 and 2008 — put all the dirty linen out to air. And then impeach. But impeachment was “off the table” for unexplained but probably purely political reasons.
the president is probably signing an executive order that allows for indefinite detention without charges (part of the reason we revolted against britain, and a bruising offense to our constitution).
And the reaction at BMT is “ooh ooh, congress is so awful!”
and as quentin said, when was war declared? are we at war?
and what the fuck does it matter if Gitmo’s closed, when we’re doing the same shit at bagram and making the same arguments about why it’s OK. We’re still keeping people held without charges.
Good to know the “bright shiny objects” tactic is still alive and well.