I’m not sure how to provide such evidence. It isn’t like there’s a blog I can link to that details my conversations with Inside the Beltway types. For example, some months ago I had a discussion about asylum provisions of our immigration law and how those laws would effect an effort to move some detainees into the United States, which would probably require Congress to act to waive some of those immigration laws to allow the closure of GTMO to move forward. Although a cynic could look at that matter and say, “Oh, posh, it’s all politics and re-election efforts! Obama is just looking out for those damn Democrat lawmakers by not asking them to pass that law!” I would say that it is a technical and legal matter that is the root of the problem. I’m not sure how I can provide evidence that I am right and the cynics (and the WaPo) are wrong.
If you are arrested by the police, and tortured for a confession, but in the intervening time you are in the lockup before a trial, does a governor get to say, “I declare a do-over! Shodan was never tortured and judges are instructed to pretend that all evidence stemming from his waterboarding at the hands of the LAPD didn’t come from torture!”
They wouldn’t approve - they would indulge in a little of the tepid disapproval seen here and then change the subject as soon as they could.
Up until next January, most of those cuntbags are Democratic cuntbags. I assume you wouldn’t accept as an excuse that Bush couldn’t release KSM because the GOP controlled Congress until 2006.
Not to mention that your post is simply wrong. Obama could close down Gitmo and release those who can’t be tried by executive order. The Democrats in Congress who were foaming at Bush for holding detainees aren’t going to stop him (if they have any principles, which I grant you is questionable), FoxNews can’t stop him, nobody can stop him.
But he doesn’t do it, despite his promise.
I never bother starting threads about Obama of the sort we used to get about Bush, where the OP asks non-liberals “what does Bush have to do before you stop supporting him?”
Didn’t the administration know that by June of 2009?
Because I seem to recall a press conference on that day in which Robert Gibbs asserted that the Justice Department COULD prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed properly.
While I generally agree on this, don’t forge that Holder is on record saying that if KSM was tried and found not guilty, that didn’t mean the administration had to let him go free.
Obama should have stuck to his guns and had a civilian trial in NYC. But a military trial is better than no trial at all. Keeping him indefinitely without trial is not acceptable in my view and tarnishes my feelings for Obama. Mind you, that image needs a LOT more tarnishing before even approaching my disdain for Bush.
AFAICT, if it is a Republican governor, I should be released without trial, and if I am not, the governor is evil and should be impeached and sent before the World Court at the Hague and so on. If it is a Democrat, I can be held indefinitely, and it’s the fault of the previous governor.
Most were not saying the policy was wrong because Bush did it. The policy is wrong if Jesus Christ himself was doing it.
I’m not American but you’d have to look hard to find a bigger supporter of Obama. I’m disgusted that his admin are also standing behind holding anyone indefinitely without trial.
If there is not enough evidence then the man has to be released. If the evidence is tainted by torture then the man has to be released. This isn’t nice or an easy decision to make but democracy isn’t easy, Dictatorship and opression is easy. No western power should be doing this no matter who the accused is and no matter what his crime.
I don’t understand why that’s not an option, either. I don’t think Obama is opposed, he just recently used the military commissions (tried Khadr who was a 15 year old kid during the crime no less).
However, the article stated a reason against it as “little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” because it would “alienate liberal supporters.” That’s kind of misleading because he wouldn’t be resurrecting it. If trying Khadr doesn’t alienate liberal supporters, trying the matermind of 9/11 can’t possibly; surely you can’t alienate any further.
It’s so easy to be funny in a debate when there are no substantive points one attempts to make. (ETA: I did laugh a bit at that comment.)
But do you have any positions on this issue that you wish to put forward for debate? Or is it just a sense of whimsy that restricts your comments to making “neener-neener” noises in the general direction of lib’rlz?
Sure I would, if Bush had wanted and attempted to hold a criminal trial, and was stymied by Congress, I would have blamed Congress, not Bush. Bush never made any effort, though. Obama did.
Asking when KSM was proven to be a terrorist is like asking when George Bush was found guilty of being an idiot. Truth can reside outside a court decision, you know.
To quote that article, “in a hearing at Guantanamo Bay”; in other words, when he’s in the hands of torturers. Which makes all those “confessions” meaningless. I’m sure he’d have confessed to being a lizard alien too. He might be a terrorist, but nothing said while he’s at Guantanamo can qualify as evidence of that or anything else.