Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges

[Zebo]

Everyone laughed at Zebo calling Obama 'Black Bush' prior to election and day by day people are laughing less. So in Obama's 'tortured reasoning' all you have to do now is torture a prisoner and we can hold them for the rest of their life without charges.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/22/detention/index.html

One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration's indefinite imprisoning of "War on Terror" detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a "legal black hole." Liberal editorial pages routinely cited the refusal to charge the detainees -- not the interrogation practices there -- in order to brand the camp a "dungeon," a "gulag," a "tropical purgatory," and a "black-hole embarrassment." As late as 2007, Democratic Senators like Pat Leahy, on the floor of the Senate, cited the due-process-free imprisonments to rail against Guantanamo as "a national disgrace, an international embarrassment to us and to our ideals, and a festering threat to our security," as well as "a legal black hole that dishonors our principles." Leahy echoed the Democratic consensus when he said:

The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that the other day. If that is true, there must be credible evidence to support it. If there is such evidence, then they should prosecute these people.

Leahy also insisted that the Constitution assigns the power to regulate detentions to Congress, not the President, and thus cited Bush's refusal to seek Congressional authorization for these detentions as a prime example of Bush's abuse of executive power and shredding of the Constitution.

But all year along, Barack Obama -- even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo -- has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush's due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May "civil liberties" speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President's power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already "implicitly" authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda -- thereby, as The New York Times put it, "adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies."

Today, The New York Times' Charlie Savage reports:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

The Washington Post says that these decisions "represent the first time that the administration has clarified how many detainees it considers too dangerous to release but unprosecutable because officials fear trials could compromise intelligence-gathering and because detainees could challenge evidence obtained through coercion." Once that rationale is accepted, it necessarily applies not only to past detainees but future ones as well: the administration is claiming the power to imprison whomever it wants without charges whenever it believes that -- even in the face of the horrendously broad "material support for terrorism" laws the Congress has enacted -- it cannot prove in any tribunal that the individual has actually done anything wrong. They are simply decreed by presidential fiat to be "too dangerous to release." Perhaps worst of all, it converts what was once a leading prong in the radical Bush/Cheney assault on the Constitution -- the Presidential power to indefinitely imprison people without charges -- into complete bipartisan consensus, permanently removed from the realm of establishment controversy.

There are roughly 200 prisoners left at the camp, which means roughly 25% will be held without any charges at all. Using the administration's perverse multi-tiered justice system, the rest will either be tried in a real court, sent to a military commission or released. What this means, among other things, is that the President's long-touted policy of closing Guantanamo is a total sham: the essence of that "legal black hole" -- indefinite detention without charges -- will remain fully in place, perhaps ludicrously and dangerously shifted to a different locale (onto U.S. soil) but otherwise fully in tact. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Military Commissions Act unconstitutionally denied the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees -- a principle the Obama administration has vigorously resisted when it comes to Bagram detainees -- but mere habeas corpus review does not come close to a real trial, which the Bill of Rights guarantees to all "persons" (not only "Americans") before the State can keep them locked in a cage.

Numerous Democrats have spent the year justifying Obama's desire for indefinite detention with dubious excuses that would have been unthinkable to hear from them during the Bush years. I addressed all of those excuses in full back in May, here. As but one example, the claim most commonly cited to justify Obama's actions -- these detainees can't be convicted because the evidence against them is "tainted" by torture -- is: (a) completely unproven; (b) completely immoral (it's one of the longest-standing principles of Western justice that tortured-obtained evidence can't be used to justify imprisonment); and (c) completely contradictory (Democrats spent years claiming, and still do, that torture doesn't work and produces unreliable evidence; if that's true, who could possibly justify indefinitely imprisoning someone based on torture-obtained -- i.e., inherently unreliable -- evidence?). Whatever else is true, both Obama's policy and the rationale -- we must imprison Terrorists without charges because there's no evidence to convict them but they're somehow still deemed too dangerous to release -- is exactly what the Bush/Cheney faction endlessly repeated to justify its "legal black hole."

But no matter. If there's one thing we've seen repeatedly all year long, it's that many Democrats simply do not believe in the axiom best expressed by The New York Times' Bob Herbert when he said that "Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention." As Herbert wrote: "policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House." That precept should be too self-evident to require expression and yet is widely rejected. Hence, exactly that which very recently was condemned as "a dungeon, a gulag, a tropical purgatory, and a black-hole embarrassment" is now magically transformed into a beacon of sober pragmatism from a man -- a Constitutional Scholar -- solemnly devoted to restoring America's Standing and Values.

* * * * *

Yesterday, prior to this decision being announced, I conducted a 20-minute interview with ACLU Exeuctive Director Anthony Romero regarding that group's newly released report on Obama's civil liberites record after the first year in office, pointedly entitled: "America Unrestored." I'll post that discussion later today. Additionally, I will have an analysis of the Supreme Court's obviously momentous decision in Citizens United -- invaliding restrictions on corporate and union election spending -- posted later.



UPDATE: Just to add some thick irony to all of this, today is the one-year anniversary of President Obama's Executive Order to close Guantanamo within one year -- an anniversary the administration decided to celebrate not by fulfilling its terms, but instead by announcing that the central feature of Guanatanamo -- indefinite detention with no charges -- will continue indefinitely.

 

[OutHouse]

wait for the left loons come in and make all kinds of stupid analogies comparisons and excuses for their dear leader.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It was un-American when Bush did it, it's still un-American when Obama does it.

We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard than China, Iran, etc.

 

[cubeless]

Everyone laughed at Zebo calling Obama 'Black Bush' prior to election and day by day people are laughing less.

nah, he was calling michelle that...

and poor barry is sooo out of his league that he's probably going to explode soon...

 

[Ozoned]

Obama has options. He kept rendition in tact. These people will slowly be exported to countries that will take care of them.

 

[StageLeft]

It was un-American when Bush did it, it's still un-American when Obama does it.

We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard than China, Iran, etc.

this

 

[Fern]

It was un-American when Bush did it, it's still un-American when Obama does it.

We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard than China, Iran, etc.

So it's wrong to detain people attacking your country until the conflict ends?

I'd correct your remark like this:

It was un-stupid when Bush did it, it's still un-stupid when Obama does it.

BTW: I'm almost surprised we haven't seen a thread on how bad the administration cocked up with the Christmas bomber. The senate hearings were interesting.

Fern

 

[PJABBER]

BTW: I'm almost surprised we haven't seen a thread on how bad the administration cocked up with the Christmas bomber. The senate hearings were interesting.

Fern

They were. Lots of emotion and finger pointing. Funny how no one wants to admit who gave the order to Mirandize before someone like the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) got their time in. It's not like there wasn't sufficient evidence available to prosecute this guy without his statements being admissible.

FWIW, whenever they are involved, the FBI, as a matter of course, is Mirandizing even overseas captures so it may have been an on-the-spot knee jerk response. Just another indication that they take the LE approach now, pretty much as they did pre 9/11.

On bombing suspect, tough questions for Eric Holder

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
Washington Examiner
January 22, 2010 It seems like a pretty simple question. Who made the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused terrorist arrested for trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, as an everyday criminal, as opposed to an enemy combatant?

After all, Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda, equipped with an al Qaeda-made bomb, and dispatched by al Qaeda to bring down the airliner and its 278 passengers. Even though the Obama administration has mostly abandoned the term "war on terror," the president himself has said clearly that the United States is at war with al Qaeda. So who decided to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian, read him the Miranda warning, and provide him with a government-paid lawyer -- giving him the right to remain silent and denying the United States potentially valuable intelligence that might have been gained by a military-style interrogation?

This week that simple question -- Who? -- became more complicated after several of the administration's top anti-terrorism officials testified on Capitol Hill. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, said he wasn't consulted before the decision was made. The director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said he wasn't consulted, either. The secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, said she wasn't consulted. And the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, said he wasn't consulted.

"The decision was made by the agents on the ground," Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, referring to the officials who apprehended Abdulmutallab when the plane landed in Detroit. American agents questioned the accused terrorist briefly before he was taken to a hospital to be treated for burns suffered in the attempt to set off explosives hidden in his underwear. After that, Mueller testified, "in consultation with the Department of Justice and others in the administration," the agents read him his rights.

And that was that. "Isn't it a fact, that after Miranda was given ... the individual stopped talking?" Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked Mueller.

"He did," Mueller answered. But Mueller declined to say who made the decision to grant Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent.

The issue is enormously important because Abdulmutallab, newly trained by al Qaeda in the terrorist group's latest hot spot, Yemen, likely knows things that would be very useful to American anti-terrorism investigators. He's not some grizzled old terrorist who's been sitting in Guantanamo Bay since 2003 and doesn't have any new intelligence. He's fresh material. Yet he is protected by U.S. criminal law from having to answer questions.

Why? Republicans on the Judiciary Committee increasingly believe there is only one person who can answer: Attorney General Eric Holder.

It was Holder who made the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a criminal trial in New York. It is Holder who has expressed his desire to grant full American constitutional rights to foreign terrorists. It is Holder who is leading the administration's sputtering effort to move some Guantanamo inmates to the United States. And it is Holder who is apparently cutting other parts of the government out of crucial terrorism decisions like the treatment of Abdulmutallab.

"These days, all roads lead to the attorney general," says one well-placed Republican source in the Senate. "They seem to have aggregated quite a bit of power inside Main Justice." The problem is, the Holder Justice Department appears to be handling terrorism issues from a defense-attorney perspective, and doing so without the input of the government's other terrorism-fighting agencies.

That was the message of Wednesday's testimony from Blair, Leiter, Napolitano, and Mueller, all of whom were out of the loop on the Adbulmutallab decision. Their accounts left a number of Republican senators shaken; as the GOP lawmakers see it, the decision to read Abdulmutallab Miranda rights was a dreadful mistake, one that could have serious consequences down the line.

There should be some accountability.

So on Thursday all seven Republicans on the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Holder asking for a full explanation: Who made the decision and why, and whether the administration now has "a protocol or policy in place for handling al Qaeda terrorists captured in the United States."

Republicans were troubled by the decision even before Wednesday's testimony showed that major administration figures knew nothing about it. Now, the lawmakers want to know what happened, and they believe the only person who can tell them is Holder.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...s-for-Eric-Holder-82305397.html#ixzz0dOZJjbYd

 

[Jiggz]

Give him a break! It's only been 365 days since. His OJT doesn't end until 2012!

 

[BladeVenom]

It wasn't OK for Bush to do it because he's a Republican. Obama on the other hand is a Democrat so that makes it OK. He's locking them up without a trial out of liberal compassion.

 

[StageLeft]

So it's wrong to detain people attacking your country until the conflict ends?

The conflict will never end, not until all of humankind is gone. Terrorism in the larger sense has been a staple of mankind since creation.

 

[Dari]

So much for 'false choice'...

 

[Vic]

So it's wrong to detain people attacking your country until the conflict ends?

When does this conflict end?

 

[Corn]

I'd like to hear the thoughts on this topic from some of the resident lefties who were so vocal against their opposition to Bush regarding this issue. I wonder, will their criticism of Obama sting as much as their criticism of Bush? We'll see.

Considering the Traitor In Chief's demonstrated disrespect for the Constitution and the rule of law, I have no doubt they would continue to do it until someone stops them.

The next U.S. Citizens to be shipped to cells at Guantanamo should be George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their tyrannical gang of traitors, murderers, torturers, war criminals and war profiteers.

GWB&co are incredible hypocrites on this whole issue. When one of their own stands accused of anything, they insist on innocent until absolutely proven guilty, but any charge, however tenuous, is enough to throw someone else in jail for many years without even a chance to question the charges. Such a President would not even be able to lecture someone as bad as Hitler on morality because GWB has long ago proved his administration is morally bankrupt.

Its simply why almost no one outside of the US considers GWB credible in any way. And while most of the world is waiting for the GWB term to end, the rest of the world basically humors GWB into thinking they even remotely are willing to follow his lead. At this point, any world diplomacy by passes Washington, because when GWB&co is included, no agreement is possible.

Our next President will have to play catch up to even partially rebuild the very damaged US international reputation.

Far better that we never held any of them and killed them on the field than that we soiled our honor by allowing Bush to commit these crimes. Bush has destroyed the one thing this nation had, a place of honor and decency in the world. He's a big piece of shit on our history.

The following post is delightful in its irony.

Criticizing Bush - right on schedule, at the end of his presidency after he got two terms.

There's more to just criticizing, there's criticizing when it's justified.

If it'll make you feel better:

That darned Obama, I'm opposed to all his policies to greatly increase secrecy in government, to sell out to the corporate interests, to neglect the environment, to put cronies in power, to support the torture and indefinite detention of people, to support the corrupt politicization of Washington, to erode the barrier between Church and State. Darn him!

Hm, doesn't sound right somehow.

Don't worry, it's just our fundamental civil liberties.

I don't know why we bother fighting a war for freedom and civilization with the terrorists...as bad as those assholes are, the only people destroying those things in this country seem to be members of our own government.

Every single Senator and Congressmen who voted for this bill or the house version, and every single one of their supporters, is an unqualified traitor to the ideals that have made this country great. If our critics are right, and this century does see the United States fall from our position as leader of the free world, it's not going to be caused by any outside force, whether Islamic terrorists or some other group, it's going to be caused by cowards like you, who seem to have forgotten just what makes this country worth fighting for in the first place.

...............

You know what's REALLY interesting about this? Republicans, for all their noise lately about how they aren't just a bunch of tools for the Bush administration, behaved EXACTLY like a bunch of tools of the Bush administration. Out of all the Republicans in the Senate, only ONE had the stones to go against the Bush administration.

I'll be honest here, I was going into this election not trying to get caught up in the party crap...if I saw a Republican I liked, I was going to vote for them. Not now...I refuse to EVER vote for a single Republican again. It doesn't matter what their individual views are, the fact that they view themselves as a rubber stamp for the President is scary enough for me to want them to never hold a public office above dog catcher again.

 

[Hacp]

Finally, Obama has some sense. A majority of these "innocent" terrorists who get released go back to ME and start killing again in very short order.

 

[brencat]

It was un-American when Bush did it, it's still un-American when Obama does it.

We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard than China, Iran, etc.

That kind of thinking is going to get a lot of innocents killed. If we are interested in self preservation as a nation, there are times when we must hold our nose and do some not so nice things.

But we should never be compared to China or Iran who are NOT free societies b/c we have the moral authority to defend ourselves from attack. The very fact of this nation's history...coming to the defense of freedom in numerous wars and conflicts throughout our history is proof enough of American exceptionalism.

It's just simply stupid to try and fight an unconventional war like terrorism with one hand tied behind our back (i.e. treating it like a law enforcement problem). They are unlawful enemy combatants and we have the right to detain them until the conflict is over. And if it never ends, well, then they'll grow old and die a POW under our care. My conscience is not so much bothered a bit.

 

[Zorkorist]

Er, um, excuse me while I change my pants...

Good post, Corn.

I mean, what can you do when a President drops his "Pledge."

-John

 

[Zebo]

snip







The following post is delightful in its irony.

 

[Zebo]

Finally, Obama has some sense. A majority of these "innocent" terrorists who get released go back to ME and start killing again in very short order.

Life changes when you get that morning national security brief and realize just how dangerous some people are. I have mixed feelings though and don't think Americans should be treated as such - which, as of now, they are not.

 

[PJABBER]

I'd like recommend a new book out by Marc Thiessen, a senior Bush speechwriter that had virtually unrestricted access to CIA enhanced interrogation methodology and results.

Thiessen would not have been able to publish the information he does without the Obama Administration's recent de-classification of information pertaining to the intelligence effort against terrorism. But the damage is done and Thiessen uses the opportunity to document the effort and results.

Well researched and well written, it is a must read for anyone trying to understand exactly what was done, why it was done, the legal and moral justification and what resulted.

White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was tasked to write President George W. Bush’s 2006 speech explaining the CIA’s interrogation program and why Congress should authorize it. Few know more about these CIA operations than Thiessen, and in his new book, Courting Disaster, he documents just how effective the CIA’s interrogations were in foiling attacks on America, penetrating al-Qaeda’s high command, and providing our military with actionable intelligence.

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack
by Marc Thiessen

http://www.amazon.com/Courting-Disas.../dp/1596986034

 

[ranmaniac]

"Embrace democracy or you will be eradicated!" - Liberty Prime

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

America. Fuck yeah.

 

[Zorkorist]

I'd like recommend a new book out by Marc Thiessen, a senior Bush speechwriter that had virtually unrestricted access to CIA enhanced interrogation methodology and results.

Thiessen would not have been able to publish the information he does without the Obama Administration's recent de-classification of information pertaining to the intelligence effort against terrorism. But the damage is done and Thiessen uses the opportunity to document the effort and results.

Well researched and well written, it is a must read for anyone trying to understand exactly what was done, why it was done, the legal and moral justification and what resulted.


Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack
by Marc Thiessen

http://www.amazon.com/Courting-Disas.../dp/1596986034

Elected officials have only one responsibility, and that is to Govern. Govern means a lot of things, but ocassionally you have exceptional governors.

Reagan is the first and only I can think of.

Bush, is generally forgettable.

-John

 

[PJABBER]

America. Fuck yeah.

Just out of curiosity - keep them in Cuba or send them to New Zealand?

 

[Hacp]

America. Fuck yeah.

Lets send them to NZ. I'm sure you natives would welcome these peaceful people with open arms.