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MAY 22, 2009 Bush's Gitmo Vindication Obama still hasn't said where the worst terrorists will go. President Obama delivered a major speech yesterday on how he intends to prosecute the war on terror (or whatever it's now called), and in particular his desire to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. As rhetoric, his remarks were at pains to declare a bold new moral direction. On substance, however, the speech and other events this week look more like a vindication of the past seven years. The President's speech came after both houses of Congress had denied his funding requests to...

Ah yes... another day, another "off the record" meeting with the Obama admin and some leaked tidbits of a stand off between an Obama in "remarkable command" of the issues and his liberal base of multiple legal eagle and human rights organizations. Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports on Obama's "friendly fire" in a 75 minute long meeting that highlighted tensions, and left many of Obama's leftist base disappointed. According to three sources who attended the meeting, Obama reiterated his intention to retain a version of the military-tribunal system established to try terror detainees and said his administration will likely end up...

www.samjohnson.house.govJohnsonContact: McCall Avery 202-225-4201 Keep suspected terrorists out of America by Congressman Sam Johnson Washington, May 22 - Two days after taking the oath of office, President Obama signed an executive order closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in one year.  His recent speech sparked more questions than answers.  I have grave concerns about shutting down the prison without a future plan for where these jihadists will go.  I believe this could directly threaten the security of the American people.  The shroud of secrecy and lack of information four months after this announcement are big red warning flags in my...

WASHINGTON – Forty-eight terror suspects currently held at Guantanamo Bay are waiting to be released to other nations, the Obama administration said Thursday. The detainees are among 50 detainees whose cases President Barack Obama said Thursday have already been reviewed. The detainees would be the first to be released to other nations under the Obama administration's effort to empty the Cuba-based prison without bringing all its inmates to the United States. Two other detainees have been released since January, to Britain and France, officials said.

WASHINGTON – Forty-eight terror suspects currently held at Guantanamo Bay are waiting to be released to other nations, the Obama administration said Thursday. The detainees are among 50 detainees whose cases President Barack Obama said Thursday have already been reviewed. The detainees would be the first to be released to other nations under the Obama administration's effort to empty the Cuba-based prison without bringing all its inmates to the United States.

WASHINGTON – Forty-eight terror suspects currently held at Guantanamo Bay are waiting to be released to other nations, the Obama administration said Thursday. The detainees are among 50 detainees whose cases President Barack Obama said Thursday have already been reviewed. The detainees would be the first to be released to other nations under the Obama administration's effort to empty the Cuba-based prison without bringing all its inmates to the United States.

President Obama last night faced a major rebellion in his own party over plans to shut Guantanamo Bay. He insisted that moving terror suspects to top-security U.S. prisons would not pose a public risk. Mr Obama, facing the biggest crisis of his four-month old term, hit out hours after the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to block funding for the resettlement of 240 detainees. Barack Obama is determined to close Guantanamo Bay. Detainees were tortured there under the Bush administration, whose policies on interrogations have been defended by former vice president Dick Cheney However the President offered few practical details of his...

I have no doubt that President Obama hastily rushed to develop and deliver his national security speech today because he knew that Dick Cheney was giving a similar speech as well. Conventional Wisdom (CW) would have it that as long as Dick Cheney is visible that's bad for Republicans. That, to me at least, is far too simplistic. Obama only began to seriously lose the debate over GITMO when Cheney pushed back. Does anyone really think that the Senate would have voted 90-6 against Obama yesterdady without Cheney leading the way in condemning the closure of GITMO?

President Obama wants you to know that nothing is ever his fault. He gave a speech on national-security matters Thursday the gist of which was: George W. Bush left me a mess, and I’m doing the best I can to clean it up. A more forthright theme would have been: Radical Islam has thrust the United States into a defensive war, and it’s now my duty to protect the nation — despite legal complications created by left-wing lawyers, many of whom are now working in my administration. President Obama described Bush’s counterterrorism program as an “ad hoc legal approach for...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Preliminary intelligence assessments show more than 14 percent of detainees released from Guantanamo Bay have returned or are suspected of having returned to terrorism activities, an administration official with knowledge of the Defense Department's information told CNN. That number, which reflects data through the beginning of 2009, has gone up slightly from statistics compiled through the end of 2008, when the recidivism rate was considered to be 11 percent, according to the administration official. It had been at 7 percent in earlier years, but the Pentagon has not disclosed what time frame that encompasses. The official emphasized...

WASHINGTON — President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said. The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny...

Note: The following text is a quote: Accused East Africa Embassy Bomber Held at Guantanamo Bay to Be Prosecuted in U.S. Federal Court Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since September 2006, will be prosecuted in federal court in the United States pursuant to the March 12, 2001 superseding indictment currently pending against him in the Southern District of New York. In accordance with the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, which called for a review of all Guantanamo detainees and the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within...

Yep, just like President Obama took his plan for Iraq, his bailout plans, and more now he’s trying to market his “plan” for closing Gitmo…straight from George W Bush’s Sept 6, 2006 speech. Time heals all wounds, and I guess 3yrs is enough time for the Democrats to forget they once opposed this plan.OBAMA’s PLAN:(quotes below) 1) Try criminals in Federal courts 2) Military Tribunals 3) Release ones ordered released by courts 4) Transfer as many as possible to other countries 5) Hold really bad guys until we can figure out how to hold them w out trial indefinitely by...

Honestly, you’ve gotta love the man’s political huevos! He stood right there, right in front of America’s most sacred documents, and lied to the American people. Now, over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years. I understand that these problems arouse passions and concerns. They should. We are confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I...

It's kind of like Russian Roulette, only there are seven cylinders in this pistol instead of six. Let a Gitmo detainee go - in the US or anywhere else - and there is a 1 chance in 7 that he will try to kill more Americans. Here's how the New York Times article on the story begins: Freed from Gitmo, 1 in 7 reportedly fight againSecret findings revealed as furor continues over plans to close the camp By Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times Updated: 05/20/2009 A Guantanamo guard watches over detainees, not pictured, in the exercise area at Camp 5...

The arrest of four men suspected of planning to bomb synagogues in New York City today shows that U.S. facilities are capable of holding terrorists, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today. Gibbs noted that Ahmed Ghailani, a current Guantanamo detainee who is under indictment for planning the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is in the process of being transferred to the same prison where the four men arrested today will be held. "I haven't heard anybody suggest that the people the FBI arrested last night are less dangerous [than Ghailani], right?" Gibbs asked in...

Hotline has the transcript, but be warned that it’s a long slog through many swamps — Gitmo, interrogation, the torture memos, the unreleased Abu Ghraib photos, and on and on. You’re better off with Maguire’s witty recap. In a nutshell: We must look forward while also remembering that everything is Bush’s fault, and we must not abandon our core ideals unless doing so would make things too difficult for The One. My favorite part:************************** We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this...

transcript of 'dueling' speehces... Obama: I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run, we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of out most fundamental values Cheney: Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things Obama: Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions … based upon fear rather than...

Mike's A has already posted the contrasting transcripts of both the current POTUS and former Veep on another thread. There was certainly a boat load of soaring rhetoric of feel good BS and high minded moralith on Gitmo unloaded on the national viewing audience with which to take issue today. But for the moment, I want to address Obama's assertation that federal courts were adept at trying the "worst of the worst" detainees by holding up Zacarias Moussaoui, Ramzi Yousef and Ali Saleh al-Marri as examples. In fact, there is a vast difference between these two and those Obama wants...

The text is here. You gotta hand it to President Obama. He spent nearly an hour criticizing, in a scathing manner, all parts of President Bush's anti terror policies, but he was able to slip this in. That is what I mean when I say that we need to focus on the future. I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November. And...