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President Obama said on Thursday that his administration wants to transfer some detainees from the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba to highly secure prisons in the United States, and that doing so will in no way endanger American security. Reiterating his determination to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, in the face of growing Congressional pressure to keep it open, the president said what has gone on there for the past eight years has undermined rather than strengthened America’s safety, and that moving its most dangerous inmates to the United States is both practical and in keeping with the...

In recent weeks, the President and just about every other major politician from both parties have been boggled by soldier-lawyer disputes. Some have been small: whether or not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was adequately briefed on the CIA's use of waterboarding in 2002. Others cut to the core of asymmetrical warfare, especially the question of what sort of rights to grant prisoners captured in a war that is likely to be fought in perpetuity against an amorphous, stateless enemy. It shouldn't be too hard to find a middle ground, theoretically. The soldier and lawyer arguments are being made, in this...

President Obama will deliver a speech Thursday addressing plans to close the Guantanamo detention camp as Democrats back off support for funding the closure. President Obama is trying to keep Democratic unrest from derailing his plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp after the Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to yank money for shuttering the prison. The president is delivering a speech Thursday meant to shed light on how the administration expects to transfer 240 detainees off the island by January 2010. The address appears overdue, considering the resistance and mixed messages coming from top-ranking Democrats over the issue on...

The Iranian based Press Tv has invited me on at 1pm E.S.T. to debate the expiring of Obama's 120 days freeze on Gitmo Trials for suspected terrorists. As we all know during the campaigns Obama and his Democrat allies kept referring to Gitmo as an international Blackeye and his desire to close it, but what sounds good off the teleprompter does not sound in reality as Obama and his allies now face a backlash from voters, who don't want these suspects in their backyard awaiting trials in civilian courts and exposing out dangerous suspects to their mindset. In short it...

WASHINGTON – A top al-Qaida suspect held at Guantanamo Bay will be sent to New York for trial, an Obama administration official said Wednesday, a major step in President Barack Obama's plan to close the detention center by early next year. Ahmed Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to disclose the decision, told The Associated Press the administration has decided to bring Ghailani to trial in New York. He was indicted...

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face. For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush's military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an "enormous failure" and a "legal black hole." His campaign claimed last summer that "court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists." Upon entering office, he found out they aren't. He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate "consequences" for "a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones" on aid to Iraq....

It took a while for people to notice, but in the last few months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made 16 -- yes, 16 -- speeches on the Senate floor questioning the wisdom of Barack Obama's decision to close the U.S. terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. McConnell started January 22, the day the president issued an executive order declaring that Gitmo will be closed within a year. McConnell is still going."Sometimes it takes a little bit of repetition for people to get the story," one Republican Senate aide says. "People weren't asking these questions back in January."Now they...

Okay, I’m guessing here, but I imagine that if some country called the White House tomorrow and said, hey buddy, I’ll take those Gitmo guys off your hands — they’d get more than a handwritten thank you note. One of Obama’s first acts as president was to issue an executive order on closing the US detention facility at Guantanamo within a year. Trouble is, he hasn’t been ably to convince allies to take many of the 240 detainees– and now it appears that nobody in the US wants them either. ShareThis Print Story Comment article tools sponsor Lawmakers from both...

WASHINGTON – New questions surfaced Wednesday about the accuracy of a CIA document meant to settle who in Congress knew about severe interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration. Three new errors appeared to emerge in the CIA's matrix of 40 congressional briefings on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. Those techniques include waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, which President Barack Obama has called torture. The CIA acknowledged one of the errors but continued to stand by its version of events in the other two cases.

WASHINGTON -- A top Al Qaeda suspect held at Guantanamo Bay will be sent to New York for trial, an Obama administration official said Wednesday. Ahmed Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S., and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to disclose the decision, told The Associated Press the administration has decided to bring Ghailani to trial in New York. He was indicted there for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa -- attacks that killed 224 people,...

"We've made some hasty decisions that are now going to take some time to unwind."

Voicing one of the strongest cases to date on why U.S. communities would be safe should the Obama administration decide to move detainees ashore, Sen. Dianne Feinstein argued her case on Capitol Hill like a lawyer in a courtroom.

A compromise from the Times. They went ahead and published this notwithstanding the fact that it’s a crap sandwich for The One, especially at this particular moment in the debate, but they bent over backwards to emphasize that the delay’s all DOD’s fault, not his. So he’s really sort of a victim, you see, even though as C-in-C he could have demanded the report any time he wanted.

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports that on Capitol Hill, during a GOP presser in which Senators were talking about the need to keep the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay open, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., argued that "anyone, any detainee, over 55 has an opportunity to have a colonoscopy" as an example of how un-harsh life at Gitmo can be. "Now none of them take 'em up on it, because once they explain what it is, none of them want to do it," Inhofe said. "But nonetheless it's an opportunity that they have."

The task force on Guantánamo Bay detainees set up by Barack Obama has recommended the administration go ahead and release into the US two Chinese Uighurs held at the prison, the Financial Times has learned. The White House’s hesitation on its original decision to release the two comes as Republicans increase their attacks on Mr Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo, which would involve transferring a total of some 240 detainees to the US. Republicans won a political victory on Tuesday after Democrats withdrew $80m (£53m) in funding for the closure of the camp until the administration had come up with...

White House: Closing Gitmo a 'Hasty Decision' By David Paul Kuhn White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was a “hasty decision,” in his daily press briefing with reporters. President Obama’s decision to close the controversial detention center in the early days of his presidency was met with adulation on the political left and earned headlines in newspapers across the world. It was seen as a clear break from Bush-era national security policy. But recently Obama has irked many liberals with his decision to continue Bush-era military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay...

Let's face it, this is shaping up as George W. Bush's best month in years. The last time the 43rd president enjoyed this kind of vindication was when a bedraggled Saddam Hussein was pulled from a hole in the ground by American soldiers in 2003. All of Barack Obama's efforts to cast the Bush administration as an immoral stain on American history have not merely collapsed, but collapsed on the heads of Bush's most public and vocal critics. Here's a non-stammering Nancy Pelosi talking about Bush last July: "God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States --...

If the stimulus is considered President Obama's biggest legislative victory of his young presidency, then today's Senate vote not to allow funds to build a new facility must be considered his biggest legislative defeat. In fact, it's rather stunning that the Democratic legislature has so thoroughly rejected the platform of their very popular president. The vote today is of monumental consequence. By voting not to allow for funding to build any new prisons, the Congress has stopped any such plans until October 1st at the earliest. This vote is for the budget that runs out September 30th. President Obama made...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) states that California prisons were “eminently capable” of housing detainees. She accuses conservatives for “fear-baiting”: FEINSTEIN: Yes, we have maximum security prisons in California eminently capable of holding these people as well, and from which people — trust me — do not escape. So I believe that this has really been an exercise in fear-baiting. I hope it’s not going to be successful. Video at link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lAjiNkn75I

With the Democratic no-go on Guantánamo (I'll leave it to the better informed to ascertain the degree that the Democratic Congress came to the rescue of an embarrassed Obama administration and cut off funding for the shutdown to allow him an out with the now familiar excuse of "they did it — not me, who keeps promises"), I think we now have come to the end to the five-year left-wing attack theme of Bush "shredding the Constitution." Except for the introduction of euphemisms and a few new ballyhooed but largely meaningless protocols, there is no longer a Bush-did-it argument. The...