Oh, yeah, the statements or lack thereof by Gibbs…
IMO they are meaningless. He either didn’t have an answer prepared, and refused to specualte; or the prepared answer WAS to refuse to answer. I think the administration doesn’t want to address this issue right now, as they will get flack no matter what.
The time to debate their answer is when they finally provide it.
Bush was bad because he initiated a short-sighted policy of extra-legal detention and interrogation that not only failed to anticipate that it may be a good idea to convict, and imprison (or execute) the masterminds of 9-11, but also failed to account for the fact that some detainees may not be terrorists and also greatly narrowed the options for all of his successors to pursue justice, whether through convictions or release of those who didn’t do anything wrong. Bush later acknowledged that it was probably a better idea to secure some sort of trial so that the worst of the worst could be imprisoned forever under legally justifiable means (in Bush’s estimation, this was through military tribunals). The additional problem was that the tribunals that were established by Congress at Bush’s insistence for these limited circumstances failed to meet muster due to the fact that there were serious constitutional problems with them, and were not viewed as legitimate.
Obama is now dealing with a huge legal mess that Bush created. It is plainly obvious that KSM and perhaps a small number of others are seriously dangerous characters. The best option is, again, to have a legal proceeding to establish that these people have committed horrible crimes, and they would answer for them by being put in prison forever (or executed). Since Bush’s policies have called into question the legitimacy of some evidence against these people, there is a chance that the evidence may be excluded and the charges might not stick.
This does not change the fact that the evidence that KSM and a few others is overwhelming that they are seriously dangerous people, and if they were to be released, they would ally themselves with Al Qaeda again and almost certainly return to the battlefield and plan major attacks against the US and its allies. This, for me, is unacceptable.
The difficulty is that accountability for past actions isn’t a free pass for the military necessity of preventing future attacks on the US armed forces, or even US (and other) civilians. In the case of these handful of terrorist ringleaders, it makes sense that because Bush has handed his successors a big, fat, flaming legal mess, that a limited number of the detainees not be released upon acquittal until there could be a plan B formulated in the event they are acquitted.
There is no current means for Obama (or McCain, had he been elected) to slice through the Gordian Knot that Bush has created by his initial policies that he could hold people with no evidence, no legal review, and no end while submitting them to immoral and illegal interrogation techniques. But admitting that there is no comprehensive plan to deal with every eventuality for what may happen with these small number of terrorists is a very politically sensitive point while the Administration is trying to figure out a way to close Guantanamo – a policy objective shared by Obama and McCain.
How many more times do you need it explained to you?
No. You were criticizing the administration for what you imagined they might do, based on a spokesman’s refusal to respond to a Gotcha question. How many more times do you need *that *explained to you?
When did you see anyone asked that? Or is that your imagination, too?
To the contrary. Everyone but the OP is.
When you don’t even have table-pounding left, use personal invective, huh? :rolleyes:
You can’t even state that honestly, can you? You are *entirely *able, even if you *choose *not to do so. And do please note (A) the board’s guidance against mentioning use of the Ignore feature, and (B) how you look when you fail to respond to posts because of it.
Based on your claim that Obama is doing the same thing, no, you don’t get yet that it’s your own fucking imagination at work. You don’t even realize that you’re making up the thing that you’re objecting to. That is even more pathetic than the ordinary RO. Anyone indulging you with an answer anyway has had no more obligation to do so than does Gibbs.
Someone once said, “Guantanamo has been closing since the day it opened.” There were well over 700 detainees there at one time. We are now down to the low 200’s and the President appears to have plans to deal with them either in the criminal courts or military tribunals.
People can spin that anyway they choose.
I disagree. The time to debate it is before it becomes a fair accomplì.
You are then reduced to debating whether an adminstration spokesman should answer a particular question at a particular time. That is a pretty lame thing to debate IMO.
What exactly do you want to debate?
First – really good post. Thanks.
Second: could it be that there would simply be no evidence, rather than tainted evidence, if Bush had not pursued his course?
In other words, you argue that because of Bush’s percipitous actions, we are now left with a mess; I suggest that it’s possible that absent his actions, we’d have a void and a dearth of usable evidence just the same.
I’m suggesting that a reasonable inference to be drawn from his failre to answer the question is (as echoed by some posts above) that KSM will not be released, acquittal or no. That because the political cost (and the actual risk to the safety of the country!) is so high, he doesn’t go free, regardless of the results of a trial.
That’s what I wish to debate.
As I posted earlier, there are questions about what is going to happen to a big chunk of the remaining prisoners. Trials are planned for about 40 of the 215, and while 90 could be released to other countries, I’m not sure anybody wants them, so there’s the question of what happens to them if there aren’t any takers. And then 75 could be held indefinitely.
If he had no evidence then he should have released them.
Holder is saying they have enough clean evidence to convict, though.
Muhammed wasn’t being waterboarded for lack of evidence on his 9-11 involvement, but because Cheney was trying to get him to say there was a connection to Iraq. No matter how many people they tortured or waterboarded, the adminstration was never able to connect those dots.
What would be the risk to the country? Do you think KSM has superpowers?
KSM will not be released after a hypothetical acquittal because there are other jurisdictions he can be tried in. There is no need to infer anything more than what is most obvious.
Frankly, in the million-to-one-shot he is acquitted, I don’t really see him as much of a danger anymore. No country will take him, and he wouldn’t last long on the streets of the US. I suspect we’d have to put him, at his request, in some sort of protective custody.
No. :rolleyes: You are flatly stating it as fact, and refusing even to acknowledge that any other “inference” could possibly be drawn.
No again. :rolleyes: You show no interest whatever in debate, only in partisan excoriation, and personal attacks on anyone who dares to point out reality to you instead.
But then you supported Alberto Gonzales, the primary author of the legal and moral mess you’re hammering a Democratic administration for having to deal with, for the Supreme Court. So, little better can be expected, sadly.
I’m a bit curious here. You say that the actions of Bush limited the options of his successors to pursue justice to only convict or release. It seems to me that that is the standard set of options. What other options do you think Obama would have had? The only thing I can thing of, is that your are saying that if Bush wasn’t so ham-handed about it, Obama should have been able to just hold them indefinitely without political flak. I.e, that it is Bush’s fault that holding them indefinitely as enemy combatants, although a good policy, is politically unfeasible?
Oh, I suspect both Japan and the Philippines might well want to try him for the Bojinka plot, don’t you?
It is a reasonable inference to make, but not necessarily the correct one. It is equally reasonable to infor that the Administration knows that saying, “We will release KSM if he is found innocent” would open up a huge shitstorm of criticism from the right, and they want to defer this to a better time. When? Who knows – maybe after health-care reform passes or some other high-priority issue is dealt with.
There is already at least one call (from Bill Kristol) to simply declare him guilty and execute him. I think Sarah Palin said something similar.
Of course, there could be other answers as well, like “We will deport him to country X”, which maybe has its own charges to make against him. Or, “If these charges don’t stick, we have some other charges to bring, so he will be detained pending resolution of additional charges”
IMO there are more than one reasonable inferences to make, but only one (and not even necessarily from among those I’ve thought of) will turn out to be the correct inference.
I must say I’m rather disturbed by the blithe certainty by many posters here that KSM will never walk the streets again, trial or not, conviction or not. I have to agree with you, Bricker, that if indeed the Obama administration simply throws KSM back in a cell after a finding of innocence, simply on the claim he is too dangerous to release, they will deserve all the condemnation of the Bush people, and more, as I would expect better of them.
Maybe he could go to work for ABC News, as a blogger who is not a journalist but is also the Senior White House Correspondent.
Oh, wait. Is that position taken already? I forget.
Let me back up and very roughly sketch out the types of people who I think were/are at Guantanamo:
Of course, there are gradients between the groups. In general, I think the first group ought to be put on trial for their crimes. The second group are probably worthy of some sort of long-term military detention, somewhat based on the principle that combatants who planted IEDs targeting our troops would be a danger to our troops again. (There should be some policy on the circumstances under which they could be released, but that’s another discussion.) Group 3 should probably be examined for whether they committed any crimes (e.g., financing terrorist attacks) but almost certainly not subject to detention along the same lines as group 2. Group 4 should be released.
Because the Bush administration failed to draw any distinction between any of these people, and commented publicly and repeatedly that everyone in Guantanamo was the “worst of the worst,” and many, if not all, were subject to torture/enhanced interrogation, and unable to receive a competent hearing on whether they had done anything wrong at all, I think there’s a very reasonable presumption that any evidence taken from any of these people is suspect, unreliable, or inadmissible for using against group 1 in some sort of trial.
Had Obama, or Gore, or McCain, been in the Oval Office in 2001, I think there would have been a much more coherent policy in treating each of these groups differently. That would have preserved the options that any of these men, or any future president, would have had in determining how to dispose of the cases of any of the detainees.
For example, non-coercive interrogation of groups 2 and 3 may have yielded useful, reliable, admissible evidence against group #1. As it stands, any evidence from interrogations of groups 2 & 3 against any other detainee (including those in group 4) is at least suspect.
I’m not sure I’m answering your question directly, but this is the answer I wanted to give. 
Here’s the thing, though. As a candidate, Obama was willing to criticize the Bush team for such calculations. As a candidiate, Obama promised transparency. If that indeed is the actual motivation – and I agree it’s at least as reasonable an inference as mine was – it doesn’t seem to fit in the mantle of transparency.
Yeah, we should never have elected Bill Kristol to anything.
Not quite. (At least as far as I can find). She seems to have said, after criticizing the decision to try KSM criminally, that KSM:
So she’s not saying execute him without a trial. She’s saying IF WE HAVE THIS BAD TRIAL, I HOPE HE’S CONVICTED AND EXECUTED.
Thanks. That is a fair and honest response. It’s obvious you consider the prospect unlikely, but you’re willing to say it’s wrong if it happens. I appreciate it.
Not to speak for Ravenman, but IMO the Bush administration’s actions severely lessen the chances of success of some options. The use of torture to question prisoners, in particular, but probably other things as well, are going to make court trials much more difficult. I recall from the very first days of this administration that Justice Department lawyers were sent in to evaluate the case files of many Guantanamo defendants; and found that in many cases, there were no real case files. There were things like scribbled notes referring to vague accusations from unnamed witnesses and such. So the Bush administration’s failure to apply the basic rules of evidenciary and trial procedures to these people is going to make things much tougher.
Bush and Gonzales apparently thought all that stuff was a waste of time because they intended to create the military kangaroo courts in which they could write their own rules and ram convictions through. Their proposed rules were so egregious that numerous career military lawyers protested, and in some cases resigned.