Posted on 01/31/2009 12:23:24 PM PST by rhema
The first problem at Guantanamo is not the food or the cages or the interrogations or any extrajudicial powers allegedly claimed by the Bush White House. The first problem at Guantanamo is that justice has been so long delayed.
Had trials been held, verdicts handed down, cases closed, and punishment meted, we wouldn't need a debate over torture vs. "enhanced interrogation techniques." We wouldn't have a political feud unfolding from South Carolina to Fort Leavenworth to Washington to Brussels over where to imprison 60-80 of 245 remaining Gitmo inmates who according to the Pentagon should stand trial. We wouldn't have the pleadings of the 9/11 mothers pounding the apparently soundproof door of our collective conscience.
My heart is with the mothers of 9/11. The families of firefighters killed in those attacks blasted President Barack Obama for his decisions affecting the military detention facility.
More than announcing his intent to close it, Obama on Jan. 22 suspended legal proceedings at Gitmo for at least 120 days—three days after hearings finally opened in the cases of the five men accused of helping to carry out the 2001 attacks.
"My son cannot speak for himself, nor can the 3,000 individuals murdered on Sept. 11. It is our obligation as citizens of the United States to make sure that those who have committed these crimes are brought to justice," said a frustrated Maureen Santora, whose 23-year-old son Christopher was the youngest firefighter killed at the World Trade Center.
The right to "a speedy and public trial" and the due process provisions of the Constitution provide legally tested means for terrorists to be brought to trial. Yet the military tribunals the Bush administration jerry-built in 2002, followed by belated congressional action in 2006, provided fat targets to those looking to tie up cases in federal court—and handed Democrats and rabid Bush haters a political crutch in lieu of a needed solution.
The result: In six years since the first of over 800 inmates arrived at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, two terrorists have been found guilty and sentenced. One, Osama bin Laden's driver Salim Hamdan, was transferred to Yemen and freed. The other, bin Laden aide Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, is serving a life sentence at Guantanamo. Both men promised during their trials to attack Americans again at the first opportunity.
On March 10 it will be exactly two years since Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the self-professing 9/11 mastermind held at Guantanamo, told a military tribunal he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and admitted to at least 30 other acts of terrorism and murder.
If there's one thing Democrats and Republicans and all three branches of government should agree on, it's that all owe 9/11 victims an apology for straining at gnats while swallowing camels, and swift prosecutions in place of more delays. They can begin with Maureen Santora.
Prisoners of war, don’t need trials. They just are held until the war is over.
“The right to ‘a speedy and public trial’ and the due process provisions of the Constitution provide legally tested means for terrorists to be brought to trial”
Enemy combatants are not Constitutionally protected criminals. Bringing terrorists to justice is not what 9/11 families need for closure. That’s what the war is for.
misses the point entirely. The purpose of Gitmo is not to try these terrorists, much less try them in a constitutional manner. The point of Gitmo is to extract intel from them for use in the ongoing war.
One problem with having trials is that Democrat lawyers will try to force the government to reveal information that might aid the terrorists, or have their clients let go if the government won't do so.
One problem with having trials is that Democrat lawyers will try to force the government to reveal information that might aid the terrorists, or have their clients let go if the government won't do so.
...and had enemy combatants been shot, rather than captured, there wouldn’t have been a need for a prison.
I’m inclined to agree. Keeping people in military custody until ... whenever ... doesn’t make sense to me. I think something else should be done with them. If we can’t get them jailed legally in the U.S., then shoot them or turn them loose, preferably in a hostile tribal area.
The traditional law of war for hundreds of years has been that those who do not fight in uniform as an organized military force responsible to a nation state can be summarily executed and otherwise dealt with as is expedient. Contrary to the usual claim that “torture does not work,” it does, as do the merely coercive measures used by CIA interrogators.
Many Americans are alive today because of Gitmo and the ‘secret prisons’ so reviled by liberals. The effects of the closing of Gitmo and the new interrogation standards will eventually come home to roost on Obama. A significant terrorist attack on the US at home or US interests abroad will open him and the Dems up to wide and justified rebuke.
Instead, he pussyfooted around, and look what it gave us... :-(
But the Bush Administration never had the ____ to declare the fight to be outside the Geneva Conventions/Protocols. If they had done that, then our responsibilities as a High Contracting Party could have been dismissed legally. But W just played games that created a heck of a rotten situation that helped the Left immensely.
No, it not. We are a nation of laws. The answer is to pass laws to deal with these terrorists. If we need to change the Constitution to protect ourselves, then change it.
The correct answer is not to ignore our laws.
POW’s have the right to 3 hots and a cot .
Yes we are but there are no laws pertaining to these irregular combatants and they should be dealt with accordingly. They deserve no laws under our Constitution. What would Patton, MacArthur, Pershing or Grant have done with someone like that? Look at history and see they executed them readily.
Wrong, we make the laws, starting tomorrow.
Are willing to allow the Executive Branch (now its Obama) to operate without any restrictions?
They aren’t prisoners of war.They are illegal combatants. All they are entitled to is humane treatment before “trial in a regularly constituted court”. They don’t have protection under the Geneva convention as POW’s. They should be tried by military tribunals, and if guilty should be executed. Period.
“The correct answer is not to ignore our laws.”
Exactly what laws are being ignored?
They are held at Guantanamo to avoid our laws.
What laws would apply to them on US soil?
They are not citizens of the US.
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