Playing Shell Games and Painting Themselves into a Corner

Flopping Aces ^ | 03-21-10 | Wordsmith

[Starman417]

This would be partisanly hilarious if it weren't so serious. From the Washington Post:

The White House is considering whether to detain international terrorism suspects at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, senior U.S. officials said, an option that would lead to another prison with the same purpose as Guantanamo Bay, which it has promised to close.

The idea, which would require approval by President Obama, already has drawn resistance from within the government. Army Gen. Stanley A. McCrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and other senior officials strongly oppose it, fearing that expansion of the U.S. detention facility at Bagram air base could make the job of stabilizing the country even tougher.

One of the reasons for having chosen Guantanamo in the first place as the least bad option for holding detainees captured on the battlefield is the fact that it is far removed from those theaters. No prisoners have ever escaped from Club Gitmo (though many have seen release, only to return to the fight, to kill again); but there have been those who have escaped from detention facilities, such as Bagram.

That the option of detaining suspects captured outside Afghanistan at Bagram is being contemplated reflects a recognition by the Obama administration that it has few other places to hold and interrogate foreign prisoners without giving them access to the U.S. court system, the officials said.

Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

Here's a helpful suggestion to solving the dilemma: Break yet another campaign pledge and keep Guantanamo open for business. Do it because it's the right, most practical thing to do in light of no other good alternatives.

In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

Which gives validity to Marc Thiessen's charge that this administration is passing up a chance to interrogate our enemy and extract life-saving information and instead are in favor of simply vaporizing terrorists- even over the desire to Mirandize (not surprising, in light of the debate over civil and military courts to go along with the detainment of enemy combatants).

Read more at floppingaces.net...