Reality sets in as Obama ponders “indefinite detention” of Gitmo detainees

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Ah yes… the campaign trail and easy promises, shrouded in smug moral equivalence, must look very inviting to Obama now. Apparently reality is setting in now that Obama has direct intel briefings by the pros instead of the media. And I, for one, and happy to see a more realitic approach to his impulse decision to close Gitmo.

Evan Perez at the WSJ discusses Obama’s self-inflicted quagmire INRE 50-100 detainees that just cannot be set free, nor tried in civilian courts or military commissions.

The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil — indefinitely and without trial — as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The proposal being floated with members of Congress is another indication of President Barack Obama’s struggles to establish his counter-terrorism policies, balancing security concerns against attempts to alter Bush-administration practices he has harshly criticized.

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The administration’s internal deliberations on how to deal with Guantanamo detainees are continuing, as the White House wrestles with how to fulfill the president’s promise to shutter the controversial prison. But some elements of the plans are emerging as the administration consults with key members of Congress, as well as with military officials, about what to do with Guantanamo detainees.

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at a hearing last month, hinted at the administration’s deliberations, saying that there were “50 to 100 [detainees] probably in that ballpark who we cannot release and cannot trust, either in Article 3 [civilian] courts or military commissions.”

It was Nov of last year that I posted here about Obama and his buds, quietly laying plans for a new national security court…. a hybrid between civilian and military justice.

But this new judicial entity has been called into question by many as dangerous to Constitutional protections. From Deidre Jurand Jurist blog post back in June of 2008:

[JURIST] Special national security courts to try terrorism suspects are “unnecessary” and “dangerous to traditional constitutional protections,” according to a report [text, PDF; advocacy press release] issued Monday by the Constitution Project [advocacy website]. The report was endorsed by a panel of national security experts and legal scholars including General Wesley Clark, Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, former FBI director William Sessions, and former Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Patricia Wald. It criticized proposals for a hybrid court system [Salt Lake Tribune editorial] that would withhold certain traditional constitutional rights from terrorism suspects, saying that such a system would threaten the Constitution and the judicial process:

The idea that national security courts are a proper third way for dealing with such individuals presupposes that the purported defects in the current system are ones that cannot adequately be remedied within the confines of that system, and yet can be remedied in hybrid tribunals without violating the Constitution. We strongly disagree. Traditional Article III courts can meet the challenges posed by terrorism prosecutions, and proposals to create national security courts should be rejected as a grave threat to our constitutional rights.

JURIST Contributing Editor, Jordan Paust, also makes his own case against such a hybrid court system a few months later in October of 2008.

All arguments against such a court lead back to the same quandary we have with the military and civil systems in place… can you admit evidence that was obtained under coercive techniques?

Thus we have those who define waterboarding as “torture” as being the same group that will oppose any new judicial creation… and we that includes the ACLU.

Candidate and occasional Senator Obama has now had over 100 days to come to grips with the same reality that faced his predecessor. That delicate balance between compiling enough admissible evidence about enemy combatants that can be safely admitted into any trial in any venue, but still doesn’t endanger the US security by exposing too much classified information.

And evidently Obama is now convinced that not all those Gitmo detainees were innocents, picked up off the fields while engaging in a family picnic.

Bush saw the non-sovereign territory of Gitmo, plus the MCA, as a possible solution. Obama has now eliminated Gitmo, and replaced it with his own version in Bagram.

So what will Obama do? Will he backtrack on his EO to close Gitmo? Will he transfer the worst of the worst to the heart of his prime battlefield, Afghanistan, to be held at Bagram?

No matter what he decides, he’s going to be royally PO’ing his O’faithful.

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Could this sudden change of policy have anything to do with the fact that murders committed by these thugs would then be the sole responsibility of Hussein the Great? NAH!

There’s a simple solution to the Club Gitmo problem. Release them.

They then revert to their original status as illegal combatants.

Shoot them.

So, who wants to be first out the door? 🙂

Once any of these enemy combatants hit US de jure and defacto soil, they will be forcibly released by the ACLU and the Courts. The only reason they haven’t had the full panoply of rights is because technically they aren’t on US soil. However, Mr. Constitutional Scholar in Chief must realize that, and so once they are here, the habeus corpus and all other remedies that the socialist anti american lawyers have at their disposal will be brought out big guns in the most liberal judicial districts to free these ‘wrongfully detained prisoners of conscience’. Since no country will accept them, they will then live for how ever many years before being rearrested or involved in some bloody nightmare, on the public dime.

Paging Daily KOS….Paging Daily KOS

Waiting for the malcontents to rip a new batch of hate blogging. 🙂

eaglewingz The detainees have already been given the right to habeas corpus in June of 2008 under Boumediene. As far back as 2004 under Rasul The SCOTUS ruled that Gitmo was NOT beyond US Law and that the executive Branch could NOT deny access to the US courts of any of the captives there. 7 of the 9 justices were nominated by Republican presidents

@John ryan:

I’m guessing you did not read the information provided. Question, if the captives have been guaranteed access to US Courts, how is it that Obama is even pondering indefinately detaining even one of them let alone over 50…….somewhere? Surely the Constitutional lecturer can read and understand “Boumediene and Rasul” or, perhaps he can get clerification of the SCOTUS rulings from former Bush attorneys. Looks like that’s the route he’s traveling. Snicker.

I’d be willing to wager that when The Vapid One received his first intelligence briefing after becoming the Dem nominee, he was scared. Really scared. I’ll bet that for the first time in his life, he maybe, just for a second, doubted Bill Ayers.

BB,

I saw an article about Obie’s first in-depth briefing immediately following election day when the DNI actually flew to Chicago to brief him.

If I remember correctly, the term “stunned silence” was used to describe it.

Indefinite detention is a No Go. Bringing them onto US Soil gives them rights that their status does NOT entitle them to. Read the Geneva Conventions and lets knock off the asinine crap about the US Constitution because it does NOT apply. You outhouse legal experts out there need to do do your homework. They were not captured on US Soil, they are not subject to being brought to the US in any case.

Send them back to where they were captured and let the Host Nation try them. Obama’s dolt of an AG, Holder, can’t figure out how to adjudicate their cases since they are not common criminals and he’s trying to do turn it into a civil rights issue. The Geneva Conventions apply, not the UCMJ or any other codes.

Obama ran his mouth on closing GITMO and is learning that he failed to do his homework. Now Military Tribunals look good. He does not have a clue about how they work either. He won’t close the Cage in Afghanistan either and rendition will continue by his refusal to halt it. Constitutional Scholar? He does not understand the applicable Treaties. What an idiot!