US to Close Gitmo?
posted at 9:35 pm on May 13, 2006 by Bryan
Send to a Friend |
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly
The ACLU may have finally won its long-running battle to free terrorists from Gitmo:
Behind last week’s statement by President George W Bush that he would “very much like to end Guantanamo”, intensive negotiations have been going on to repatriate prisoners, according to a British human rights lawyer.
Clive Stafford-Smith, legal director of Reprieve, the prisoners’ rights group, and who represents 40 detainees, said that in March he had been taken to lunch in London by an official at the US State Department and spent it “talking through how to close Guantanamo”.
Why?
Thwarted in its attempt to keep terrorist suspects out of the American courts, and sobered by the realisation that few detainees out of a total of 485 can be brought before a military tribunal, the Bush government is seeking a way out.
Judges have effectively taken over the war. Back in late 2001, the hawks in the administration lost out to the Justice Department over what to do with Zacarias Moussaoui. The hawks wanted him treated as an enemy combatant and tried by a military tribunal. Their argument was straightforward: Moussaoui wasn’t a US citizen, and was demonstrably a member of al Qaeda, which had been waging a terrorist war against the US for years. Therefore, he was an enemy combatant and should be tried outside civilian courts. The Justice (and State iirc) departments wanted him tried in civilian court. They won the argument. And look where we are. We have set precedent after precedent trying al Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts, and judicial rulings have made it nearly impossible to treat them in any other way. That these terrorists aren’t citizens of the US seems to matter not at all; they’re being given de facto citizenship by gaining access to the same courts and rules citizens would be tried in.
Fwiw, prior to 9-11 risk-averse and negative publicity-averse lawyers (as opposed to experienced intel and counterintel officers) essentially ran our intelligence and counterterrorist operations. Now judges are running the war post 9-11. We know where the lawyers got us. It’s hard to see the judges getting us anywhere that would be an improvement.
But this Gitmo story gets even worse.
Washington has been soliciting advice on how to rehabilitate detainees who might otherwise rejoin the jihad if freed. One of those consulted, Rohan Gunaratna, the author of Inside Al-Qaeda, said: “The Americans are now seriously thinking of rehabilitation.”
That’s foolish. Dangerously foolish. They’re jihadis. If you free them, they’re going to end up right back where they became jihadis, and the vast majority will become jihadis again. We’re going to be playing catch and release with dangerous terrorists for decades to come.
UPDATE: Thought I’d poke around Reprieve’s web site. That’s the British “human rights” outfit to which the lawyer quoted in this story belongs. Interestingly, in a world in which Cuba, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Russia, Venezuela and scores of other countries hold bona fide political prisoners and execute them routinely for various crimes against the state that would be protected by the First Amendment if they occurred here, Reprieve focuses most of its work on the USA. That’s not a surprise, but it is a tell. A real human rights group would pick on several dozen other governments before criticizing the US. You want to know something else about Reprieve that’s not a surprise? One of its big supporters is none other than George Soros.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Simply a replay of what the left did during the Cold War. Ignore the gulags. Go after what America did/does to fight evil.
Had a sinking feeling the evening of 9/11 when the Communist Party USA website blamed the USA for the attacks, warned of “xenophobia”, the pending loss of our so-called “civil liberities etc…etc.
Figured sooner of later we would see the same type of rhetoric concerning those who attack us on the front pages of the New York Times.
And we did.
Essex on May 13, 2006 at 9:50 PM
So, when the federal government falls, as it probably will, all that’s left is our individual skills and marksmanship! The anarchists might feel they’ve won but their victory will be fleeting at best.
Maybe it’s for the best that Iran is developing the bomb as that might give our government focus and once we’re hit, the resolve to stand up and fight back. Maybe?
Jeez, the damned Democrats want to surrender, the Republicans don’t know how to stand up, the Libertarians don’t know their A%% from a hole in the ground. Maybe all there’s is Pete Seeger and Cumbyya! Yippie!
DougW on May 13, 2006 at 10:58 PM
When in doubt, blame Israel. If can’t blame Israel, blame the United States. Rinse, repeat.
hadsil on May 14, 2006 at 12:59 AM
The United States, and the GOP in particular, can’t really “win” at anything anymore. We can’t even seem to decide when democrats and liberal judges are guilty of sedition. On the positive side though, Kerry could be running the show right now. Wow, isn’t that a sobering thought.
NRA4Freedom on May 14, 2006 at 1:22 AM
“Says a British “human rights” lawyer. Why don’t “human rights” lawyers ever go after terrorists, the ChiComs or other real abusers?”
As I noted in a long post the other day, where are these “human rights” lawyers while UN workers systematically rape 8 year old girls around the globe?
http://www.rightwinged.com/2006/05/un_raping_children_again_this.html
RightWinged on May 14, 2006 at 5:21 AM
The USA could have prevented all the noise about Gitmo. All they had to do was load the terrorists onto an airplane and halfway across the ocean open the door and kick them out. No one would ever miss them, or know they were gone. Case closed.
clyde on May 14, 2006 at 5:54 AM
The answer is simple: Take no prisoners. Grill ‘em and kill ‘em. End of discussion.
Pablo on May 14, 2006 at 7:11 AM
Clyde, Pablo, you two be de Man! Why don’t you two run for President of our almost disappearing country. At least you two would stand up for something other than being elected! Boys, don’t disappoint me now!
It’s almost like it’s too damned difficult to run this country anymore cuz there’s too many kooks in the woodwork and cuz the NYT and LAT would hate us! Maybe we’ve already elected our first woman to the presidency and we didn’t know it. I used to think el Presidente Bush had a BIG HAIRY BUNCH of cajones but maybe I was wrong. And, if he doesn’t have, you know Kerry/Gore/Hillary don’t either!
DougW on May 14, 2006 at 11:41 AM
GITMO should be closed because it’s not fair that we have it and our enemies don’t!
And we can’t use nukes to win wars because it wouldn’t be fair!
We’ll investigate ourselves to paralysis while conducting a war…TO APPEAR FAIR! We’ll hear media from our own side calling us liars, war criminals, cheaters, human rights abusers, so that they can call themselves fair!
ENOUGH! Nuke Iran tomorrow! Tell Syria that for every act of interference in Iraq will add one more kiloton on Damascus! Pull 99% of troops from Korea and replace them with a nuke! Let’s fight to win like our forefathers did. Leave the “fairness” to the girls on the schoolyard!
Our bloated government plods along failing EVERY mission it’s been given! Yet Evil men like Soros keep ramming even bigger government down our throats. If it don’t work, make it BIGGER! That’s government worker’s and the MSM’s motto.
We want a border wall, they offer us their own failures as a remedy in the form of a “guest worker program”. We want help with out of control medical costs, they try to sell us insurance. We want to win the war on Islamopsychos, they are more concerned with being labeled as fair.
I’d fire ‘em all! America has taken her place as the leader of the world not because we have always been fair, but because we have always believed in winning!
Gault on May 14, 2006 at 11:45 AM
I say we place those at Gitmo under house arrest. Whose house, you ask? Why, the lawyers’ and human rights activists’ house, of course. Then we’ll see just how much these phonies really care about the ‘rights’ of terrorists.
As mentioned above, why don’t look into abuses at the gulags? Well that a rhetorical question and we all know the answer, don’t we?
Continue the war on islamofascism, vote for Condi!
Tony737 on May 14, 2006 at 3:42 PM
My apologies for all of the above typos, I am on a Treo cell phone and the keys are too small for my thumbs!
Tony737 on May 14, 2006 at 3:55 PM
This has got me googling some things…
“We are in a time of worldwide transformation, and unless a miracle intervenes, we could experience a quantum leap more radical than when the Renaissance appeared, driving the Dark Ages out of history.”
and:
“Yet it is also true that the growing Leviathan of world government cannot break through as long as America and the free world stand in its way…”
http://scp-inc.org/products/detail.php?ProductId=171
plausible? scary, but plausible. I sure dont know.
shooter on May 14, 2006 at 6:55 PM
The solution to Gitmo is quite simply: “No more prisoners! We do not take prisoners! Either each battlefield captive gets a lead pill or he, or she, is instantly released, subject to immediate review by the next higher rank!”
This change will remove all doubts about how well, or not, we treat battlefield prisoners and place our forces on the same level playing field as the opposition’s forces! In other words, we no longer pretend to be any better than the opposition, just the same there as! We’ll still be better, more humane, than them since I seriously doubt too many of our forces would use the opposition’s preferred method of neck chopping! This last opinion might be modified over time, perhaps!
Don’t understand why this took so long for me to state the new policy but time salves all such mistakes!
DougW on May 14, 2006 at 9:17 PM
Before shutting down Gitmo’s jihadi prison, those inmates must be tried by a military court on the charge that they were and are illegal combatants, spies or saboteurs as defined by the Geneva Convention. As almost everyone reading Hot Air knows, these three categories of combatants have no protections under the Geneva Convention whatsoever. Almost every other country but the USA (and Israel) executes such combatants. I suggest that the USA resume executing anyone adjudged guilty of being one of these types of combatants by a military court.
chsw
chsw on May 14, 2006 at 10:49 PM
A lot of wannabe Keyboard Rambo’s on here talking tough about killing terrorists…all from the comfort of your living room.
Back in the real world (where most of you obviously don’t live), for every Gitmo terrorist killed, a vengeful Iraqi insurgent or Talibani sets off an IED killing more US troops. But I’m sure you folks don’t really think that far in terms of consequences or really care what happens to US troops to begin with, as long as your wet dreams of killing brown-skinned Arab-looking men, women, and children are fulfilled.
better off blue on May 19, 2006 at 11:37 AM