This is something I think is actually a huge story, but it is getting very little play. Patterico wrote about it, earlier today, and on his very well-trafficked site, it has attracted a whopping 22 comments so far. I mentioned it on a slightly old thread on Pandagon, comment number 323, and the thread, formerly very active concerning the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, just flat died. As I’m working on this article (7:28 PM EST), Think Progress hasn’t a word on the subject. The one article touching the topic on the very popular leftist site the Lost Kos didn’t mention it. Neither our good friends at the Delaware Liberal nor the Iowa Liberal caught it. Even the seemingly tireless Donald Douglas has missed it:
In Senate vote, signs of shift on detainees
Democrats reject ban on using funds for U.S. facilities to house Guantanamo prisoners
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 18, 2009The Senate on Tuesday rejected an attempt to bar using funds from a defense spending bill to build or modify prisons in the United States to hold detainees from Guantanamo Bay, a move that suggested congressional Democrats may be lining up behind President Obama’s vision for closing the military prison.
The Senate vote, largely along party lines, came days after the administration announced plans to bring five alleged terrorists, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to New York for trial. The GOP-backed measure was attached to a $134 billion plan that funded programs for veterans and military construction. The overall bill was passed unanimously.
But way down, in paragraph 12, comes the part I find interesting:
Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions. About 90 others have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in a third country, and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material.
I would have thought that our friends on the left would be howling about this: President Obama seems to have decided, as did his wiser immediate predecessor, that we know that some of the bad guys we captured are really, really bad guys, but we don’t know it in a way that is provable in federal court, so it really didn’t matter what Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) said in criticism of President George Bush during the 2008 presidential campaign, now that Senator Obama is President Obama, and actually has the responsibility for keeping America safe, he’s going to do pretty much what President Bush did.
Of course, perhaps to our friends on the left, it’s just OK if a Democrat does it.
It’s not okay if he does it. Not to me. (Bush wiser? Heh.)
But let’s for a moment envision a couple parallel universes where Obama didn’t decide what he decided in our a) universe.
b) he decides to let them go free. How would this post read on this blog? Favorable to Obama?
c) he decides to try them, knowing they could be exonerated and go free. How would this post read on this blog? Favorable to Obama?
This is a pointless post. It’s null and void because you’d have to hate him no matter what he did, and we already know you hate him.
On Bush being wiser… He’s the one that put Obama into this unwinnable situation.
Nang, in keeping the 75 most dangerous locked up, President Obama is doing the right thing; it’s what he should have done with the ones being put on rial as well.
President Obama is creating a legal mess here: if we can simply hold the bad ones indefinitely, ten the only point to putting KSM on trial is because you want to execute him.
So far, we have two of President Bush’s options being used: military trials and simple indefinite imprisonment. President Obama has added a third option, federal court trials, which actually muddies the legal waters even worse.
But, you’re right about one thing: we’d criticize President Obama no matter what he did, because almost everything he does is wrong anyway!
I see your point about the right thing. It’s the least bad of the choices. I disagree that trying some of the slam dunks is a bad thing. I trust the court system this far, and certainly trust the prison system. It’s utterly amusing that Republican politicians are fighting this so hard. They’ll be the first to shout out that the American (blank) system is the best in the world, but when it comes down to trusting their courts and judges and jailers, they’re fouling their pants in hysterical fear.
Either that, or they just oppose Obama on principle. I still think Obama ought to go on television to state that breathing is a good thing and all Americans are required to do it, per his orders. That will thin out the ranks of his more rabid naysayers in about five minutes!
Oh, and we already have terrorists in prison. Even Muslim ones. Boo!!
people are super-livid about this, you’re just not listening. Obama partisans do exactly as you say: use Bush-era justifications for indefensible acts, only now they’re supposed to be all right because hey it’s a Democrat at the helm. They’re not all right; Bush’s policy was evil, and so is Obama’s. I know calling evil out for what it is in a situation like this causes lots of “but the criminals are more evil! so no act inspired by revulsion for their evil can truly be called evil!” grade-school crap, but that’s just what it is – when you do evil to an evil person, your evil isn’t somehow lessened. if you care about good and evil, then detention without charge needs to be understood as the very fascism with which our friends on the right are so concerned that they see fascists in the drapes.
this is really another one of those issues about which people of conscience want to ask the purportedly devout: “which Bible are you reading?”
“… if you care about good and evil, then detention without charge needs to be understood as the very fascism with which our friends on the right are so concerned that they see fascists in the drapes.”
Yeah, I guess my solution to the whole black detention centers thing is to try who we think we can convict and set the rest free. Yes, we’ll probably be setting killers free. We just have to suck it, because if we have any intention of regaining the moral high ground over these scum, (which we lost shortly after 9/11,) then we’ve got to play by our own rules.
Anyway, it won’t be the end of the world to set them free. Terrorists are simply criminals, not soldiers or heads of state or super-villains. We’ll do what cops are supposed to do, when a bad guy gets off on a technicality.
Barack Hussein Obama (SoA) has a higher duty to jihad than to any of his Constitutional responsibilities under US law. The Koran is clear on the point. Keeping Americans safe takes a back seat to giving Islamic terrorism the greatest most wondrous public stage in the entire history of jihad, and at the very epicenter of terrorism’s victory over the Great Satan. ABP.
Barack Obama (SoA) has replaced Osama bin Ladin (SoA) as the leading Muslim warrior of the modern era. We, the unworthy infidels, are privileged to be witnesses to an historical event of surpassing magnitude, albeit also of our own destruction at the hands of the faithful. We should be grateful to participate in our own small way. Generations of slaves will envy us.
How did we “Lose” the moral high ground to these scum? Your statement seems delusional.
Eric: “How did we “Lose” the moral high ground to these scum?”
We illegally invaded. We used bombs to kill and terrorize. We kidnapped. We tortured. We falsely imprisoned. We even executed, if you count the orgy of killing our contractors enjoyed. How are we better than terrorists? Because we have better weapons? Because we enjoyed all that evil stuff less? Or more? Are we better because we’re us and they’re them? Are we better because we went second?
Nang, in keeping the 75 most dangerous locked up, President Obama is doing the right thing; it’s what he should have done with the ones being put on rial as well.
it’s funny. They have never been tried and the only thing that leads you to believe that they are the “most dangerous” is that Cheney and the CIA said so. No evidence, no trial, not even tribunals. do you ever stop to ask why none of these things happen and yet they are defined as the worst of the worst?
It’s a pretty big gap in the credibility of the categorization of these guys. They aren’t criminals because they haven’t been tried for anything. Just the “because I said so” is fine by you is amazing to me.
Excellent point, donviti. I’m ashamed I didn’t see it.
Mr Viti wrote:
Unless I’ve been on a really bad Mountain Dew trip since January, Dick Cheney is no longer Vice President of the United States; George Bush has retired to the Lone Star State. Come tomorrow at noon, Barack Hussein Obama will have been our president for a full ten months. If the government says that these 75 guys are too dangerous to ever be released, it is President Obama and his Administration saying that, not George Bush or Dick Cheney or any of the Republicans.
Mr Tallis wrote:
Well, I certainly can’t check every liberal site, but I went to a few of the more popular ones, noted in the main story, and found nary a peep. Perhaps you could post a main article on the Iowa Liberal documenting some of that.
Yeah, I guess my solution to the whole black detention centers thing is to try who we think we can convict and set the rest free.
Welcome to 9/10. I’ll bet all the people whose lives you’re willing to sacrifice aren’t so comforted.
Actually, Dana, we’ve criticized Obama a number of times for this and similar stuff.
http://iowaliberal.com/?p=3507
http://iowaliberal.com/?p=3211
http://iowaliberal.com/?p=4092
Shouldn’t you be saying Obama wants to destroy America for putting KSM on trial in New York or something?
[Released from moderation -- JH]
Jeromy, the President’s decision strikes me as strange. Some of the Guantanamo prisoners are going to be put on trial in civilian federal courts, some are going to be put on trial in military courts, and some are going to be held indefinitely because they are too dangerous to release, but we don’t have the type of evidence to use against them for actual trials that would ever stand up in court.
If we can hold the dangerous 75 indefinitely, without trial, then why have trials for the others? Perhaps with a trial you can get a sentence of death, but even if you do, how likely is it to be carried out? With a trial, you also have the possibility of an acquittal or a mistrial.
[...] is virtually no chance that we will ever let these guys go free; the President is already planning to hold about 75 of them whom we know to be really bad guys but ca…. So, the jihadists are at the point, really, of proudly proclaiming their intentions and actions, [...]
[...] given the fact that the United States has already decided that there are some of these bad guys who …, no trials involved. If you can’t get death, if the most you can get is life imprisonment, [...]