Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch writes:
It is an iron law of American government that institutions created to meet a temporary contingency are almost impossible to dismantle once the contingency has passed. If not for the Soviet threat, for example, the United States hardly would have established multiple intelligence agencies, military bases in Germany or a massive nuclear weapons complex. Yet 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, these elements of the Cold War national security state are still with us.
The institutions cobbled together after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks may be just as resistant to change, as President Obama is finding in his struggle to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
In 2008, presidential candidates Obama and John McCain promised to close Guantanamo. (McCain said he would move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on his first day in office.) But last year, Robert Gates’s Pentagon fought to preserve the facility’s military commissions. Then, Congress restricted transfers of prisoners to the United States for detention or trial. Last week, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that closing Guantanamo would “depend on the Republicans’ willingness to work with the administration,” which, if true, is a nice way of saying “never.”
Now Obama is reportedly weighing an executive order to clarify the rules for detaining some four dozen Guantanamo prisoners whom his administration deems too dangerous to release but who cannot be tried. These men pose a unique problem left over from the Bush administration, when evidence was poorly maintained, some detainees were tortured and others radicalized by their years in prison. If Obama’s order gives them better process, it will be a step forward.
Some, however, are urging Obama to take a more fateful step: to issue an order covering not just the hard cases he inherited in Guantanamo but also allowing detention without trial of any terrorism suspect who may be apprehended in the future, even if far from a battlefield. Such an order could transform the Guantanamo system from an unfortunate, improvised response to Sept. 11 into a permanent feature of our legal landscape.
Obama: “Yes, I lied!”
Shocking, Obama is the same Bush, if not worse…. No worries, all part the plan to crush interest in voting by the people since in the end both parties are really the same. Therefore, the fewer average Joes voting, the easier the interests groups can vote their lackeys into office… Democracy my ass. Same crap, different label.
Can’t wait for campaigning season to start and booya Sarah can run for office, and the trained tv monkeys will vote for her, because of her wonderful Sarah Palin’s Alaska tv show… Wonder if other politicians will figure out her trick to making their own “Reality” tv shows… Sounds like a far cheaper way to get your face on tv then paying for all those
negative ads….
Doesn’t seem much worse than the legacy he already has. One step forward, ten back.
The shamocracy is acting as intended. Those ‘average Joes’ have forfeited their rights to control what’s done in their name ever since the earliest days of the Republic, when only a gentleman rated a vote. Without banding together and acting en masse, the majority of humanity allows itself to be palmed off with the leavings from the high table.
I have a solution; take those that are too evil to be released, & incarcerate them under the care of the Congress who squawk the loudest about how bringing them to the U.S. is too scary. What is needed in this Country, is for the Congress to serve as jailers for 1 year of the 2 years for the House of Representatives, 3 years for the Senate. Perhaps then they might get a better picture of what their actions are doing. I would also add that those same individuals be required to spend 2 years in combat, then perhaps they would appreciate the ravages of war & the consequences too.