Posted on 08/06/2008 1:48:31 PM PDT by mojito
The following is a statement by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the Military Commission ’s guilty verdict in the Salim Hamdan case.
“I commend the military officers who presided over this trial and served on the hearing panel under difficult and unprecedented circumstances. They and all our Armed Forces continue to serve this country with valor in the fight against terrorism. That the Hamdan trial — the first military commission trial with a guilty verdict since 9/11 — took several years of legal challenges to secure a conviction for material support for terrorism underscores the dangerous flaws in the Administration’s legal framework. It’s time to better protect the American people and our values by bringing swift and sure justice to terrorists through our courts and our Uniform Code of Military Justice. And while it is important to convict anyone who provides material support for terrorism, it is long past time to capture or kill Usama bin Laden and the terrorists who murdered nearly 3000 Americans.”
(Excerpt) Read more at elections.foxnews.com ...
Of course Ubama spells it Usama.
Make sure by killing them on the battefield, swift and sure.
I think McCain does too.
McCain’s statement is solid. The left wing wackos are noyt going to like Obama’s comment.
Obama said exactly what his handlers wrote for him but he conveniently avoided saying whether he agreed with the verdict...
I'm sure this is a misprint. It was supposed to read...I condemn the military officers who presided over this trial and served on the hearing panel under difficult and unprecedented circumstances
“I think McCain does too.”
Thanks for spoiling my fun. That would have actually required me to take the effort of clicking the link and reading everything. I will just assume Sen. McCain did not want to offend Ubama either. He should have written “Obama Bin Laden”, then claimed it was just a typo.
Why not, it shows that he wants to fight this war in our Courts.
The leftists don’t want the terrorists tried by military tribunals. They want them to have the exact same rightds as American citizens.
Our Courts does not mean Military Courts.
Obama is just like John Francois Kerry: The One thinks battling Islamic terrorism is a law enforcement problem, not a military problem - with a military solution.
So Obama wants to give illegal enemy combatants the rights bestowed on members of our military by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a document that in some ways provides more protections for the accused than is offered criminals in this country.
Of course, we're perfectly safe, such "laws" would never be applied to patriotic, law-abiding citizens...
Under no system of jurisprudence that I know are these detainees entitled to constitutional protections of due process, or access to US courts.
The Democrats would like them to be, and apparently, so do you.
You need to read PADILLA v. T. HANFT.
Padilla, a US citizen, was arrested in the continental US, and was subsequently declared an "enemy combatant" and remanded to the custody of the US military. The SCOTUS eventually punted, declining to hear the case as Padilla had since been transferred to a the civilian court system, where he was eventually convicted on conspiracy changes.
So that this point you have a Federal Appeals Court upholding a the right of the President to order the arrest US Citizens on US soil and hold them in military prisons and beyond the reach of Judicial review, and at least three and perhaps four SC Justices who would likely hold that the President does have such power.
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It's often the people who believe that "It can't happen here", or at least "It won't happen to me" who are blindsided when the very people and system in which they believe and which they have supported puts then into the dock at a show trail"- you might want to dip in "Darkness at Noon", for example. And there's not much to choose between the apparatchiks of the left and right in such cases, and understanding this is not a left/right thing - you had "liberal democrats" like Joseph Lieberman jumping on the "enemy combatants" bandwagon, and "conservative republicans" like John Ashcroft who had read enough history to understand just what kind of fire we are playing with.
The Fourth Circuit agreed that the President could hold such persons in military detention, although they also noted the Hamdi case, where the SCOTUS ruled that US citizens held under such conditions were entitled to a habeas corpus hearing.
The Bush Administration transferred Padilla to civilian jurisdiction when the “dirty bomb” case against him collapsed, and the Supremes declined to accept the case on technical grounds because Padilla was already in civilian custody.
Hence, Padilla confirms what I already stated: a US citizen is entitled to habeas corpus (unless Congress suspends it) even when they are charged with being an agent of a foreign terrorist organization. Justice Kennedy thinks foreign terrorists are also entitled to it - and I strongly disagree. Additionally, Padilla was always held in the US - he was never transfered to Gitmo.
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