Posted on 05/30/2009 6:02:58 AM PDT by Sergeant Tim
A longer-term problem is that once Guantanamo is closed the option of holding captured enemy combatants any place overseas will be undermined. Over time, more and more such individuals, including the ones convicted by military commissions, would have to be brought to the U.S., especially as Europe backs away from taking such individuals. Aggregating the world's worst jihadists on American soil, from which they can never be repatriated, is not a smart way to fight a war.
Meanwhile, the legality of incarcerating captured terrorists in U.S. domestic prisons is far from clear. Today the Guantanamo detainees are held under well-established laws of war permitting belligerents to confine captured enemies until hostilities are over. This detention, without the due process accorded criminal defendants, has always been legally justified because it emphatically is not penal in nature but a simple expedient necessary to keep captives from returning to the fight. It was on this basis that the Supreme Court approved the detention of war-on-terror captives, without trial, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004).
The Guantanamo detainees are "unlawful" enemy combatants and not "prisoners of war" under the Geneva Conventions. Yet they are still combatants, not convicts. By contrast, the individuals held in the federal prison system, and especially those in the maximum security facilities suggested for the Guantanamo detainees, are convicted criminals.
It is very doubtful that under the customary laws and customs of war, the Hamdi decision, or Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (which the Supreme Court also has applied to the war on terror) the Guantanamo detainees can be treated like convicted criminals and consigned without trial to the genuinely fearsome world of a super-max prison.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This is just one example of Obama’s campaigning rather than leading as president. Closing Gitmo was a great campaign slogan, but no one in Obama’s inexperienced team had a clue how to do this or the complications that would result.
The Obama administration is collectively about as bright as a cave explorer lighting a match in an old mine to see if there is methane gas present. Sorry, BHO and company, I don’t feel like hanging out with you while you play d****ss canary.
"[I]f we start bringing people here because there is no other place to put them, we are going to continue litigation. Federal judges, all are very consciensious, take their oath seriously in the question of the habeas cases. The the statistic is daunting; 25 out of 30 the government failed to carry the day, but not because they're innocent, because there is no evidence sufficient to satisfy the exacting standards of the habeas process.
"The thing that sticks in my craw is the critics who for years argued that habeas "is no big deal," that is was somehow silly foolishness or stubbornness on the part of the Bush administration that caused them not to do it are now suddenly flipping saying, "Well, but that means they're innocent." No. When you capture people overseas, and forgot the canard about interrogations, the vast majority of people cannot be successfully handled [by] the habeas process, not because there is tainted evidence, because there is no evidence. ... When you capture someone on the battlefield even [the] worst defense lawyer can get this person off because you don't have baggies with forensic evidence, you don't have chain-of-custody, you don't have someone scribbling down this is the AK-47 [they] got captured with. We cannot hold these people even under the current rules.
"Once the bad guys understand that you can come to this country and stay here, we'd have people surrendering to the United States. That's how war works; you try to have off-setting strategies, you have strategies that use the vulnerability of the other side, which is our legal architecture. You'd have people surrendering to American patrols, being put in detention for a few months ... who would be brought here because we cannot hold them overseas, who'd be let go, and because they come from bad countries like Syria and Yemen, we cannot send them back because some of my good lawyers friends would be arguing that it would violate obligations we have against torture. So, we would be aggregating dozens and hundreds of people in this country whose job it is to kill us. That is nuts. That is absolutely nuts."
Take them all to Palmyra Island and just leave them there to fend for themselves. Send in a boat of supplies about every 6 months. See what kind of society they develop on their own. Animal Farm II.
I think we’ll see a lot more jihadist casualties on the battle field as these enemy combatants become less useful for intelligence gathering. That may not be such a bad thing after all. I do pity our patriots as they have enemies on both sides of this war. One side seeks to cut off their heads while the other seeks to try them as war criminals. I’m glad I’m out!
The writer is FINALLY bringing some clarity to the issue.
The terrorists at Gitmo have no place being “tried” in our civilian courts on “criminal” charges - they are detainees, to be held until either there is an end to the hostilities they are part of our, on a case by case basis, they could safely be released sooner - period.
The military tribunals and the courts’ review of their proceedings is sufficient for that purpose.
Changing the “war on terror” to a matter of the conduct of “criminal law” will benefit no one but the terrorists.
Sounds like the Bush Team was right all along, huh?
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