In three parts: The current President of the United States campaigned on a platform that included the closing of the prison for international terrorists at Gitmo. Gitmo is, in fact, still open. But they’ll get to it Real Soon Now (SPOILER WARNING: they won’t). The Right noted at the time that Gitmo was going to remain open. On more than one occasion. We, in fact, | Read More »
Mind you, you wouldn’t know that from the Washington Post’s article on the arrest of John Kiriakou. While the Washington Post – from appearances, somewhat reluctantly – reported that Kiriakou (a former CIA officer and Senate Foreign Affairs staffer) had been arrested for revealing names, operations and investigations to the media back in 2008-2009, the paper completely neglected to mention who Kiriakou ended up working | Read More »
They’re readying an executive order right now that will confirm that certain detainees – read: the murderous, terrorist scum that we already weren’t releasing – can be continued to be held indefinitely without trial. The fig leaf here is that the new proceedings (unlike those of the wicked, wicked Bush administration!) will be ‘more adversarial’ – which means whatever you want it to mean, of | Read More »
‘Zounds (Via Hot Air Headlines): Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013. The “‘zounds” (which, by the way and in case you ever wondered, is short for ‘God’s wounds’) is not quite sardonic, | Read More »
(H/T: @andylevy) Amazing what one Senatorial election can do. Like, say, make a Presidential administration pay attention to local political concerns for a change. The Obama administration has abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials. The reversal marks the latest setback for an administration that has | Read More »
The lack of self-respect in the Obama administration astounds me, sometimes. From the (probably-now abortive) pushback on the call to shut down repatriating AQ terrorists to Yemen: “I am aware of a lot of people pointing back at the way the transfers were handled under the Bush administration that apparently they have some concerns about that,” said the official, who had not seen the senators’ | Read More »
(Via Hot Air) Took him long enough: President Obama acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that his administration would miss a self-imposed deadline to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by mid-January, admitting the difficulties of following through on one of his first pledges as president. [snip] On Guantánamo, Mr. Obama said that he now hoped to shut down the detention facility | Read More »
They’ve got a deadline coming up, but the Democrats are confident that they can let the clock run out without actually closing the facility that they’ve carefully turned into the symbol of all American governmental evil over the last eight years. It’ll require a tremendous amount of baldfaced lying and epic-level hypocrisy, but the Democrats are up to the challenge. They were born for this. | Read More »
It wasn’t until I read this AoSHQ post about the delay in the detention report (preliminary details here) that I started counting off the months on my fingers. Six months from July 21st makes… January 21st, more or less. The work of a Justice Department-led task force, which had been scheduled to send a report on detention policy to President Obama on Tuesday, will be | Read More »
That’d be the one mandated by the President’s 01/22/2009 Executive Order that was supposed to reflect a clean break with the past; it’s supposed to be a review and critique of our detention policy, particular those of illegal combatants. It and a review of interrogation techniques (mandated by this Executive Order) were scheduled for today, and both are absolutely necessary for the administration to have | Read More »
Let’s see: Mark Sanford’s disgraced, Michael Jackson’s dead, that couple that everybody else in the universe obsessed over divorced or something, and the Democrats in Congress managed to pass the Twenty-First century’s answer to Smoot-Hawley – yes, this would be a nigh-perfect time to break the news that indefinite detention’s back on the agenda. The only way that it would have been better timing would | Read More »
You know, it’s not the fact that we’re apparently on the verge of toppling another foreign government that bemuses me, per se; toppling foreign governments is one of those things that the United States of America simply does, as a byproduct of our very existence. Whether or not that’s an inherently good thing is going to be a matter of some debate – particularly if | Read More »
As Track-A-’Crat notes, the administration is at best spinning its difficulties to get anybody else to take the Uighurs. The President is claiming that there have been no hard commitments, which implies that negotiations for giving some over to Germany are still going on: Strictly speaking, that may be true. But according to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Germany has long since blocked the idea of | Read More »
Now that it’s come out that the President’s stance on Gitmo is deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people (via @BrianFaughnan): WASHINGTON — Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to closing the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and moving some of the detainees to prisons on U.S. soil, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds. By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantanamo shouldn’t be closed. | Read More »
Hardin, Montana – a very small, very poor town with a very new, very empty jail, is willing to take on the responsibility of holding Gitmo detainees: Hardin borrowed $27 million through bonds to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility in hopes of creating new employment opportunities. The jail was ready for prisoners two years ago, but has yet to house a single prisoner. | Read More »
Another good bit from Liz Cheney: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Allahpundit is a little surprised that Liz’s popularity with the base has risen so quickly; I’m not. For whatever reason, a full-throat defense of Bush’s decisions on how to fight the GWOT were few and far between during the Bush administration itself, and that grated with Republicans. | Read More »
“The rule is – jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today.” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There Fresh from Senator Webb’s decision to play bellwether – or Judas goat? – on the retreat from Gitmo (see also here) we have this latest word on the Matter of Gitmo: AP source: Democrats won’t fund Guantanamo closing By ANDREW TAYLOR – | Read More »
Oh, Webb is saying that he’s merely against the timetable, but that’s just political-speak for ‘I need to start laying down the groundwork for my retreat on this issue.’ By this time next year he’ll be telling everybody how he’s fully satisfied that Obama’s ‘reform’ of Gitmo addresses the issues brought up during the campaign, etc, etc, etc. Amazing how quickly some of these guys | Read More »
(Via Just One Minute) Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, you know: U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself. [snip] When President Obama suspended Guantánamo cases after his inauguration on Jan. 20, many participants said | Read More »
And objectively speaking, the refs should have stopped the fight about halfway through. Not that either I or Brutally Honest would have thanked them for that: this was just too choice for words. If you’re wondering who won this exchange, either you haven’t watched it yet or you’re not willing to admit the answer. When the room shuts up to listen to one person over | Read More »
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