minority report preventive detention becoming reality

[elessa]

how can our president condemn the bush administration for ad hoc legal strategy then turn around to suggest reshaping standards to prolong detention for detainees without trial? preventive detention for crimes not committed? construct an appropriate legal regime to make indefinite detention system outside the courts and military commissions?

WTF?

this is wrong. so very, very, very wrong.

Comments

[buzz-overdrive.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing we'll disagree on this, which is fine because it's a situation with no easy answer and the only way we'll find one is to debate the matter.

Not to say "I told you so," because technically I didn't, but...

I have been of a mind that the President's situation was inevitable. It's one thing to run on a position based on gainsaying the incumbent. It's another to be the guy actually faced with the problem. The reality of the situation is the same: there are really bad guys at Gitmo who would do us terrible harm if they were free. We have them. Should they be let go by our criminal system, we would then be partially responsible for the damage and murder that we know they intend to inflict upon us.

(Imagine the sh*tstorm that awaits if we find out that a former Gitmo detainee is behind the next major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.)

So now President Obama faces the same challenge that President Bush faced: what do you do with them?

We know that at least some of those people have committed crimes but that the evidence either would not hold up to our criminal standards or cannot be presented in an open court because it compromises our intelligence operations (and potentially the lives of covert agents or informants).

This is a dilemma because both answers suck.

There are two key pieces that I think people lose sight of when they think about Gitmo.

1) There used to be more than 800 people detained there. We're down to what, 250 or so now? That means most of the people who were deemed to no longer be a threat or who could be turned over to another government for punishment, detention, or release have been let go. We're probably down to the hardcore that we cannot release and that nobody wants.

2) Nobody seems to comment on the absence of a similar problem for our enemy. There is no Al Qaeda or Taliban Gitmo equivalent for the simple fact that they do not keep prisoners; much less provide them with meals made in accordance with their religious requirements, prayer rugs clearly labeled with the proper direction for them to pray, copies of their religious texts, and medical care that surpasses what they would have received back home. Our enemies torture and murder their captives.

I can accept the argument that the situation with Gitmo does not meet our own self-imposed standards of morality, but let's not lose sight that when it comes to that moral high-ground we talked about earlier we're light-years ahead of our enemy.

(as you have no doubt guessed, this is a far more interesting topic than what I'm spending my weekend working on.)

[elessa.livejournal.com]

(as you have no doubt guessed, this is a far more interesting topic than what I'm spending my weekend working on.)

i can tell. ;p

the prez is between a rock and a hard place.

i do not disagree that there are bad people left in gitmo. however, i think by keeping them as long as they have without having had a trial the situation has worsened. the rock and the hard place has gotten harder.

i am also concerned about what the future holds. was the prez only referencing those currently in custody or also anyone who is walking the streets today can be picked up and held indefinitely with no actual crime committed?

there is no easy answer for how to deal with those who are at gitmo. that is a hornet's nest that is stirring emotions in the mideast regardless of what happens to those prisoners.