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Attorney General Eric Holder dodged and weaved in response to tough questioning by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee yesterday mainly on the issue of whether dangerous terrorist detainees would be brought to the United States from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.   Several of the members asked Holder -- again and again, in a variety of ways -- precisely how bringing trained terrorists into the United States would make America safer. All Holder would say is that he believes we are safer if Gitmo is closed than if it remains open.   After the all-day session, it’s...

President Barack Obama faced condemnation today as he announced he was restarting military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, reviving the system he once labelled "an enormous failure". The trial process, set up by his predecessor George W. Bush for fighters captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in late 2001, was attacked by human rights organisations because it barred defendants from many of the rights they would have in a civilian courtroom. But Mr Obama said in a statement, the tribunals would resume with modifications to make them fairer. "Military commissions have a long tradition in the United States. They are appropriate...

The Obama administration is expected to revive military-run trials for terror suspects being detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - but with new legal protections not provided under the Bush administration. Senior U.S. officials say the new system will limit the use of hearsay, ban evidence gained through harsh treatment, give defendants more freedom to choose their own counsel, and provide more protections for detainees who refuse to testify. President Barack Obama, who criticized the Bush-era system as a failure, is expected to ask for a 120-day delay in pending cases while the legal system is adjusted. Mr. Obama suspended the...

...America, meet the Uighurs. Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. They have been allied with and trained by al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist groups. The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state. As part of its ongoing effort to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration has had to figure out what to do with the Uighurs. Officials believe that if they’re sent back to China they will be persecuted, and no third country will take them. So the Obama administration has decided to set the Uighurs loose...

President Obama has heeded his generals and decided not to release more photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and good for him. Now he needs to put our national security ahead of politics once again and reverse his dangerous decision to release trained terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay into American suburbs. America, meet the Uighurs. Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups. The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state....

By Amy Gardner Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 15, 2009 The intensifying debate over what to do with 241 detainees in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has pushed the candidates for Virginia governor to address widespread speculation that at least two locations in the state, including Alexandria and Fairfax County, could receive prisoners. Although the three Democrats and one Republican broadly agree that detainees should be kept out of Virginia if possible, the issue has caused some state political leaders to divide along party lines over President Obama's promise to close the prison, which has become...

NEW YORK – Health investigators are trying to figure out why swine flu has spread erratically, moving quickly through a few schools but slowly everywhere else, as another outbreak closed three schools Thursday in New York City.

President Barack Obama has given permission for military trials to restart at Guantanamo Bay in an announcement that effectively repudiated one of his first decisions in office. The White House attempted to forestall criticism from President Obama's liberal supporters by promising improved legal safeguards. President Obama stopped military commissions, which were trying suspects in the September 11, 2001 attacks on America by al-Qaeda as soon as he took over from George W Bush. President Obama ordered a review of the procedures, declaring the system did not work. But he was careful not to rule out the use of a modified...

WASHINGTON (AP) - South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says he doesn't think Congress should pay to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay until there is a more detailed plan for what to do with detainees there. A Senate panel on Thursday considered a war spending bill that would provide $50 million to the Pentagon to begin the promised closure of the facility. Graham said he would like to see a new system in place before that money is spent, including a national security court to review each detainee's status. More certainty about the detainees will make moving the...

Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her. Here's what we know. On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee's ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

John McCain says he "vehemently" objected to the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation tactics -- and suggested Nancy Pelosi should have done the same when she first learned of waterboarding in Feb. 2003. Pelosi said she was only told Bush administration officials asserted their right to conduct enhanced interrogations during her first briefing on the topic in Sept. 2002. She learned that waterboarding had been used on high-level detainees after an aide attended a briefing in Feb. 2003 -- and tacitly supported a protest letter by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). I asked McCain if he bought Pelosi's argument that...

  The Uighurs, in their own words By Thomas JoscelynApril 21, 2009 10:10 AM A Uighur terrorist from a videotape released by the Turkistan Islamic Party last year. On Tuesday, April 20, the US Treasury Department added Abdul Haq, the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (“ETIP”), to its list of designated terrorists. The move follows a similar designation by the UN, which placed Haq on its list of persons associated with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or the Taliban on April 15.Abdul Haq is not widely known in the West, as his terrorist activities have focused largely on...

Rep. Frank R. Wolf on Monday reiterated his opposition to jailing and prosecuting Guantanamo Bay detainees in Alexandria, after a fellow Northern Virginia congressman said over the weekend he was open to the idea. "To bring someone to Alexandria, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - who killed Daniel Pearl and was a mastermind of 9/11 - would be a mistake," Mr. Wolf, a Republican, told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. President Obama plans to close the terrorism-suspect detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay by January. Officials have said the fates of its roughly 240 detainees will...

I read where Richard Clarke found it "disturbing" that "imagery and the memory of 9/11" were used in an advertisement about why the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay should be kept open. Those 26 House Republicans stated what they believe, that keeping terrorists out of the U.S. is good policy; they were not personally profiting from 9/11. When Richard Clarke testified before the 9/11 Commission, John Lehman stated that Clarke had previously told one thing to Commissioners in private and something different during his public testimony. Clarke repeatedly mentioned September 11 in his two books and his publisher reportedly rushed...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a person familiar with the situation said Monday.

It's not every day that a congressman asks for terrorists to be shipped to his hometown. So we were surprised to see Rep. Jim Moran, Democrat of Virginia, pen a column entitled "From Guantanamo to Alexandria" in Saturday's Washington Post. He actually championed the idea of bringing terrorists like 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other al Qaeda detainees to historic Alexandria. What's next? Does he want the nuclear waste that Nevada won't take? We understand why congressmen work to bring federal office buildings to their district or fight off noisome incineration plants. So we read Rep. Moran's column with...

A Yemeni held at Guantanamo slashed his wrist and hurled the blood at his lawyer during a meeting at the prison, the attorney said Monday, describing the incident as a suicide attempt by a psychologically troubled man who should be returned home immediately for treatment... A prison spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, confirmed the incident but said Latif's injuries were minor and the prisoner was in no danger. He said the incident would not be categorized as an attempted suicide. "It's a form of self harm, but it is clearly not classified as a suicide attempt," DeWalt said. "It's...

President Barack Obama, who was one of the Bush administration’s sharpest critics concerning the military tribunals used to prosecute detainees at the Guantanamo detention facility, may be backing away from his election promise to abolish them. Last week, a story in the New York Times reported that the Obama administration is now likely to retain the military commission system, but in a modified form. According to the Times, the announcement regarding this stunning about-face could come as early as next week. “The more they look at it,” one official told The Times, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued his verbal attack against President Obama, saying that the country is more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration took power. Mr. Cheney said that administration's dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques — have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks. "That's my belief," Mr. Cheney said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I think...

So far, this debacle is only political. Hopefully, this debacle will only stay political and it won't become a policy debacle that eventually costs people their lives. Yet, on several terrorism related fronts, the Democrats are proving once again why no matter what they simply cannot be trusted on anything related to national security.