Obama to restart military tribunals for Gitmo detainees, dismaying liberals
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29 Comments
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0
yabits
You do what you think needs to be done, President Obama.
0
tigris
No surprise. People always talk about things they don't have: poor people always talk about money, Americans babble on and on about freedom liberty and justice.
0
likeitis
The score: Bush 254 Obama 13 The game: Human Rights golf. I would much prefer a perfect score of zero, but this is certainly an improvement.
0
realist
Maybe there is hope for President Obama after all. Maybe he is not the raving communist many thought he was.
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timorborder
I used to be indecisive but.....
Not a good move on the part of Obama. Considering how badly rigged the whole process was under the previous administration, any attempt to restart this process is a public relations disaster from the get-go. If the US is truly intent on bringing these people to trial and the cases against them are strong enough, why not just try them in normal courts and meet out punishment accordingly (in many I would assume this would mean the death penalty). Furthermore, for those cases that cannot be proven, perhaps the perps should be renditioned to countries with fine human rights records like Egypt, who would be more than willing earn brownie points with Washington via the use of "rigorous interrogation" techniques.
Just out of interest, I cannot really get my head around the idea of these military tribunals. In addition to appearing to be kangaroo courts (if you consider some of the arguments that have been put forward by the people involved), I think the whole military tribunal gives the prisoners a level of legitimacy that they do not deserve. The high level prisoners at Gitmo are either terrorist or "enemy combatants." There is no way they can be considered to represent members of a nation state's military structure. As such, all the pomp and ceremony of having these clowns appear in front a military tribunal gives them a level of legitimacy they do not deserve. Treat them like the common scxm (criminals) they are. Give them due process through the civil court system and exact punishment accordingly.
BTW - The US should stop making distinctions between American detainees (that chap Lind) and foreign national detainees. If some US citizen is dumb enough to engage in acts of war against the US, then I think they have effectively forfeited any rights that have to hiding behind their US citizenship. Such people should be handled no different from other detainees.
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SuperLib
Obama is not a liberal, he's a moderate. I told people who consider themselves to be liberal that Obama was going to be a nasty surprise....
0
SuperLib
Because they represent a unique type of danger that our court system isn't set up to handle.
When you or I go to court there is a process, and part of that process includes seeing the evidence against us and information about how it was obtained. Considering that we're just one guy and can't really use the information for our benefit other than preparing for our trails there's a limit to the danger that that situation brings.
International terrorists are a different case. Any evidence, or especially ways that the evidence was collected, will go to the suspect, to his lawyer, then overseas to groups who can use the information to plan more terrorist strikes. There might be a conviction but in the end the entire court process turns into intelligence gathering for groups like Al Queda. They'll be able to know what the government is doing, who is involved, if any communications are compromised, what plans the government knows or doesn't know about, etc. These things are kept secret for national security reasons and bringing these guys to Florida or wherever and giving them the same rights as you and me basically opens up their files to Al Queda.
We might get one conviction but in reality the entire process might give Al Queda information that causes more Americans to die, at which point it's so counterproductive that we'd be better off not even arresting them in the first place.
0
Den Den
timoborder-please don't forget that the majority of tortured and released detainees were actually innocent and never charged with any offense. The guilty ones must be charged in a court. Until that happens, our country will continue to be an axis of evil.
0
skipthesong
I forget the poster who mentioned it, but that poster said that in time, O would prove to make more people in the middle happy than those on the left. This past week has proved that poster correct.
super: "Obama is not a liberal, he's a moderate. I told people who consider themselves to be liberal that Obama was going to be a nasty surprise...." Why do you say nasty? There were many, especially black conservatives and very conservative at that, who went ahead and voted for O. Maybe the surprise isn't so nasty.
Also, you say our courts are setup for people like AQ, would you be meaning that our court system is weak? Why not give them an Islamic court?
0
VOR
Dick Cheney still calling the shots.
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Badsey
Obama-Change = same old, same old.
Since we "are at war" with the terrorists you can expect these prisoners to be held until the "terrorism war" is over. -That could be 2050 or longer.
=0bama is correct, but I would take a year off for any suspect that agrees to be "water-boarded" -In honor of Pelosi.
0
sailwind
Good to see him just improving on Bush's initial program on dealing with these guys. Good job Mr. President.
0
SuperLib
Sources?
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Badsey
Actually, I am sort of amazed that Obama has not put Dick Cheney in charge of the whole G-Mo waterboard program.
How many Pelosi's does it take to waterboard a detainee? ???
(??? - is the answer -sort of a trick question)
Did you know?: Did you know that Dick Cheney got Waterboarder of the Year Award (WYA) in 2006 from the Waterboard Society of the U.S., its' respective Colleges, Animal House(tm), and the CIA.
0
jeancolmar
The mess that Bush made is very much with us, and Obama, unfortunately, has become a part of it. What will it take for the US to admit that the "war on terror" is hype and either charged the people it has detained or let them go. I predict that the good vibs that Obama started will not last long internationally. And that is a great pity.
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Badsey
Makes me wonder why Pelosi doesn't just adopt all the detainees, jet them to California in her private jet and open up a McDonalds/Fast food joint. We already hire many criminal illegals who have probably done much worse than these detainees. -I can see some marketing pull by hiring these "terrorists"
0
JoeBigs
Glad to see that the prisoners of war have rights under the Geneva convention again. What a great difference from the Gestapo style treatment under the far right wingers.
Good move by the President, Bravo Zulu to him!
0
Wolfpack
Just another policy flip-flop on the part of Obama. He got elected by condemming Bush and now he is just following Bush's policies. It's funny how he just keeps doing what Bush did and his fan's in the press just ignore his hypocrisy. He will not close Gitmo within one year as he promised his allies on the Left. Good for Obama for not yet deciding to unleash the terrorists of Gitmo onto the communities of America. However, I believe that there will be mounting pressure for him to release every jihadist in Gitmo on America soil. That is basically what his foreign and domestic cheerleaders want him to do and only a riot in Congress will be able to stop him from doing so.
Obama's historic levels of deficit spending unseen in the history of the nation and his imposition of government control over numerous private businesses put the lie to any such contention that Obama is a moderate. Obama was the most Liberal member of the Senate and he is now the most Liberal president in history. Nationalizing the health care system is not a moderate position - it is a socialist position that is plainly not moderate.
0
Wolfpack
Yeah, I heard. He broke Pelosi's string of winning the award four years in a row from 2002 to 2005; a record of support for "torture" thought to be unbeatable.
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yabits
likeitis hits the nail squarely on the head.
0
VOR
Obama knew he was painting himself into a corner with his campaign promises; particularly the pipe dream of the ignant left to close GITMO, He knew it was a bad idea as he was placating the blame America first crowd and even made a show of it in the opening days of his administration knowing full well he couldn't release this assortment of enemy combatants and sworn terrorists into the wild without culpability. Anyone that knows how this world operates is resigned to the fact that the next Islamic attack is on its way. While it may be easy to blame the previous administration on everything known under the sun, it will not be so easy to blame Bush and Co. on any new attack on American soil, so while it disappoints his mindless supporters, Obama is actually being quite shrewd.
0
yabits
We are still months away from September 11, 2009. As we recall, the Republicans fluffed the blame away from Bush in 2001 -- saying it was all Clinton's fault.
No matter what move Obama makes, we know that mindless conservatives will say he's painting himself into a corner. This is just the way they are.
I, for one, am not disappointed in the slightest that President Obama has decided against military tribunals for 254 of the Gitmo inmates.
0
VOR
The proof is in the pudding yabits. When George Bush came into office his intelligence arm was in complete disarray after 8 years of Clinton. Restrictions put into place prevented one agency from sharing intelligence with the other. Political attacks and under-funding of the intelligence community contributed to low moral and loss of seasoned professionals. George Bush rebuilt the intelligence community from the ground up which is credited for preventing any further attacks on American soil. Obama is wise to take a second look at the policy changes that were implemented by George Bush before he goes out and changes any of them simply because the pansies on the left are uncomfortable with some of the techniques used to extract the very information that has led to the arrests of terrorist and prevented any further attacks against private citizens going about their lives across America. If such attacks do occur, how culpable Obama will be largely depends on what he did and didn't do to prevent it. Last I heard, George Bush was enjoying his retirement down in Texas. Can't see anyone blaming him other than the yahoo loudmouths on the left.
0
yabits
And you've made my point: the right-wing Republicans as apologists for the incompetence of their party and their leadership. The American people know better. When a highly suspicious Middle-Eastern person was pulled out of flight school and detained by the FBI a month before the attacks, it was Bush's AG who denied granting them a complete search of the person's computer.
Moussaoui did not have to be tried by military tribunal.
0
VOR
yabits, do i have to remind you that political correctness pervaded everything the government did prior to 911. There was very little the intelligence community or law enforcement could do in that politically correct state to prevent the 911 attacks. We are slipping back into that pre 911 politically correct group think mushpit that unfortunately once again is being forced upon us by the goofballs on the left. We will just have to see where the Democrats take us and deal with the consequences of it when god forbid we have to relive another day like 911.
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yabits
Wow, a Republican using "political correctness" as an excuse for Republican failure. So, when the FBI wanted to perform due diligence on a detainee, the reason they could not was that AG Ashcroft was bowing to "goofballs on the left?"
Are you surprised that the vast majority of Americans do not buy your logic?
0
TexasAggie
So, Bush does it, it's bad, because Obama tells his dreamy eyed followers it was bad.
Now Obama does it, despite condemning it and denouncing it while running for president, and liberals back pedal as to not make themselves look like hypocrites or the Campaigner-in-Chief look like liar.
0
TexasAggie
Translation: Buyers' remorse to startin' to set in.
I'm lovin' it.
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