Posted on 06/27/2009 5:35:23 PM PDT by neverdem
Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely
Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.
Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
After months of internal debate over how to close the military facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the prison by the president's January deadline.
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House is already trying to build support for an order...
--snip--
Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You all know why they suddenly have reversed and want the ability to detain forever. It’s not about foreigners either.
So, Obama is now saying Bush was RIGHT, after all!
Enemies Foreign and Domestic...what would Billy Ayers and his pals think?
I guess we’ll get top notch psychiatric care like in the Soviet Union, IMHO.
Don’t you want the government to have access to your electronic medical records? If you still object, then think it’s for the children.
You have to hold the prisoners from the other side captive until the war is over. That’s the way its always been, and the war isn’t over.
Another topic about this, but anyway...
Include "registered sex offender" under "terrorist" and you'll have a lot of FReepers cheering.
Until they become the ones in the sights.
The rights we take away from others without due process of law are rights we have given up for ourselves. And we've been giving up a whole lot of rights, thinking that our chickens will never come home to roost.
America -- a great idea, didn't last.
Illegal combantants have never had any rights under American law or the Geneva Conventions. They were subject to only those rights as the military might afford them under the UCMJ.
Why this sudden concern with "the rights we take away from others" -- when they were never there in the first place? Why this insistence on granting rights to enemies who have none?
Never mind the straw dog "registered sex offender".
So Bush wasn’t so wrong after all.
Now there is an excellent opportunity to stick it to the ignorant Lefty a-holes who were always screaming that GWB was a ‘war criminal’ for detaining people at Guantanamo.
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