I know, he is on record, saying he will.
But: a few problems:
many countries WILL NOT take their people back (Algeria for one; they are facing a civil war, and DO not want more islamic terrorists)
Afghanistan will take them back, but cannot guarantee their safety (or that the will not be subjected to torture!)
certain countries will take them back, but in these countries, these people face execution (for prior crimes)
So, the USA is really in a conundrum-we are damned if we do, and if we don’t.
Does this mean Obama will release them into the USA/ (witness protection program)? What is the government’s position/liability, if one of these releasee’s murders a US citizen in the USA?:smack:
I am not well informed on the topic, but it seems to me that either the USA can convict someone under a fair trial under the law or it cannot. If it cannot, then the detainee goes free… somewhere.
If the detainee is to go to some other country where he or she is at risk at the hands of someone else, then I don’t see how that is the problem of the USA.
We do have an ordinary federal detention and corrections system, you know. The only reason the Gitmo inmates weren’t put in that in the first place is that the Bush Admin reasoned they only have constitutional protections on American soil. Obama can simply reverse that. Then each prisoner can be disposed of – indicted, tried, convicted/acquitted, or simply nolle prossed and released – as he would have been if the Gitmo idea had never been conceived. Any released prisoner not welcome in his home country, or likely to be tortured there, should be given asylum – surely the POTUS has some discretion there.
many countries WILL NOT take their people back (Algeria for one; they are facing a civil war, and DO not want more islamic terrorists)
If they can’t be prosecuted in the US and can’t go back to their countries. They stay free in the US as legal refugees.
2) Afghanistan will take them back, but cannot guarantee their safety (or that the will not be subjected to torture!)
If they will be subject to torture and again can’t be tried in the US then they stay as legal refugees.
certain countries will take them back, but in these countries, these people face execution (for prior crimes)
Extradite them back and let them face trial if the legal threshold for extradition can be reached.
If they are legal refugees then the US is under the same position/liability as it is with all the other legal refugees in the country.
I think that the US government should transfer the inmates to a US-based civilian facility (purpose built for the inmates protection), under the direction of the DOJ. Try each inmate in an open civilian court using no secret information or information gathered through torture or coercion of any kind. Their defence costs would be covered by the government, and there would be no limit on the amount they could spend. If found guilty by a jury they would be sentenced to appropriate and proportionate penalties, and if found not guilty given US citizenship if they wish it and resettlement within the US along with witness protection or first-class airfare to the country of their choosing.
So let me get this straight. The terrorists in Gitmo will either be tried in civilian courts where our intelligence agencies will be forced to give all their secrets to the world or the terrorists will go free to continue the jihad after being fattened up on our dime? This does not sound like the wisest policy to me. If only someone had warned us our new president is soft on terrorists.
It is most certainly the US’s problem. They took these men and put them in this legal quagmire to begin with.
No civilised nation should send people back to torture. There are many refugees in all western nations who have been given legal status for this very reason.
Actually I do think there is some laws restricting the US ability to return people back to countries where they face prosecution for political reasons. I am being pruposefully vague because I am WAGging my ass on this one.
Would you accept it if Barack Obama ordered the arrest of everyone who owned a gun in this country and claimed they were all terrorists? But he couldn’t put them on trial or anything because that would reveal the secret information that proved their guilt so he’s just going to keep them in prison because terrorists don’t deserve a trial.
People aren’t terrorists just because the President says so. And people don’t lose their legal rights just because the President finds them inconvenient.
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in investigating taking one of them off your hands, and I think some other European countries wouldn’t oppose rescuing these people from you.
I actually think that the US has forfeited the right to protect any secrets with regards to Gitmo detainees. It either has to present this secret “evidence” in open court with no restriction on reporting, or it doesn’t present the “evidence” at all.
You do not arbitrarily detain hundreds of people in legal limbo for years and then get to dictate the terms of their release. Gitmo is an utter disgrace, and those responsible for setting it up should stand trial in The Hague.
Call me crazy, but how much land does the US control around the Gauntanamo Bay Naval Base? For those released prisoners who don’t want to go home and we don’t want in the US, how much would it cost to simply release them right where they are? We’d have to help them figure out ways to eke out a living, but would that be absolutely ridiculous?
How would a penal colony be any better than holding them in cells? “You’re not free to go, but now you have to work to feed yourselves. Suck it darkies”.
Well, it wouldn’t be a penal colony, it would be a former penal colony, more or less. There are what, 270 or so detainees still there? Of those, many I assume have someplace to go. How many have no place to go? It wouldn’t have to be a large community we created. We could build a rum plant or something (tongue in cheek).
Just to wax pragmatic for a moment – if this happens then you’d be looking at the mother of all Willie Horton situations and the absolute devastation of the Democratic party.
Look, for example, at Puddleglum’s mocking of the Limbaugh position. As he pointed out, despite the quite obvious anti-American nature of the place (e.g., secret evidence, presumption of guilt) and the complete lack of connection between one crime (the OP’s hypothetical crime of murder) and terrorism in general, unthinking voices will shout that Obama is soft on terror, that we need more Bush-like policies and procedures in and out of the country, and that four legs are good; two legs bad.
So in the end, heck, forget about murder, take vehicular manslaughter as one of them gets drunk and runs over someone. (Wasn’t Sean or the like all up in arms during the immigration debacle about an “illegal” immigrant who hit someone with their car? That that person shouldn’t have been here in teh first place, so the death was attributable to the Democrat’s stance on immigration?) That happens and Obama and the Dems are looking at massive losses – not necessarily NY or California, but in a lot of the places they made gains – and a clamoring for stronger “protections” and all the encroachments that come with them.
I’m certainly not suggesting that this is a reason to keep them in Gitmo or ship them off to be tortured, nor am I asserting that they are violent or likely to commit a crime (Bush’s enemy combatant proclamations aside). But the likelihood that they could have a devastating affect on civil liberties way out of proportion to their capacity to inflict physical harm should be considered in shaping the conditions of their release.
How those conditions should be shaped I’m not sure of…
So when they got picked up in a war zone in Afghanistan, they were just lost? I guess they shouldn’t have made that left turn at Albuquerque. That’s a great analogy between gun owners and terrorists, you should work for the SAT.
These people are not criminals they were captured while engaging in war against this country. The US has the right to keep them for as long as the war lasts and then repatriate them to their own countries. If they are wanted in those countries those are the breaks.