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  Courtesy of the indispensable Jon Ralston, some nuance on the ultimate fate of the Guantanamo detainees today from Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), on the eve of his major fund raiser with the president. Reid taped a segment of Ralston's program, Face to Face: Reid, who has been criticized for his contradictory positions on Guantanamo Bay, said some prisoners will be put in maximum security prisons on U.S. soil, emphasizing the safety of those facilities: "A maximum security prison in the United States, there has never been a single escape." JR: "You think eventually the plan is going to be...

(Davis in his editorial)I began having second thoughts about last week's column urging the indictment of former Vice President Dick Cheney for approving the use of water boarding and other forms of illegal torture, shortly after it was published and posted last Monday morning - days before the Obama-Cheney back-to-back speeches Thursday.

Andrew Malcolm notices an interesting result from the latest CNN poll, one which CNN itself hesitates to note. Since going on the offensive against a popular new president, former VP Dick Cheney has improved his favorability rating, and perhaps that of his former boss as well: The more former Vice President Dick Cheney criticizes the Obama administration for drastically changing the national security policies of the Bush administration, the more popular Cheney seems to become among some Americans. … [A] little-noticed new CNN/Opinion Research poll released the other day shows Cheney’s favorable ratings have jumped by more than a quarter...

Dick Cheney, the most publicity averse US vice president in decades, is now the most outspoken former White House power broker of modern times after a stunning political transformation. Freed of the shackles of office, Cheney is now in the eye of fierce public debate, while in power he often lurked in the shadows. Leading the Republican charge against President Barack Obama on Guantanamo Bay and harsh CIA interrogation methods, Cheney is rocking Washington with a rare clash between past and present administrations. “Today, I’m an even freer man,” Cheney said before his blistering assault on Obama’s policies at the...

Most opponents of water-boarding terrorists rely on the belief that such a method is as unnecessary as it is illegal. Therefore, if it is shown that water-boarding did in fact provide information that saved many innocent lives, opponents have to argue one of two positions: that there was a better, non-brutal, method available; or that it is morally preferable to have innocent Americans and others killed, brain damaged, blinded, and paralyzed rather than water-board a single terrorist.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters nationwide now disagree with President Barack Obama’s decision to close the prison camp for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted after the President’s speech on Guantanamo last week, shows that 38% agree with his decision. Just 25% share the President’s view that the Guantanamo camp weakened national security. Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree with that perspective. And, by a 57% to 28% margin, voters oppose moving any of the suspected terrorists to prisons in the United States. Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major...

With all the recent attention focused on where and how to release Guantanamo Bay detainees, the case of 17 imprisoned Uyghurs has grabbed headlines again. Massachusetts Democratic Congressmen Jim McGovern and Bill Delahunt think that at least some of these Uyghurs should be resettled right here in the United States (U.S.), maybe even in the Virginia suburbs. Speaking in late May 2009 at a world assembly of Uyghurs at the U.S. Capitol, Delahunt offered some reassuring words: “The Uyghur people are not enemies of America. In fact, I know you admire our fundamental ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit...

WE made one great mistake regarding Guantanamo: No terrorist should have made it that far. All but a handful of those grotesquely romanticized prisoners should have been killed on the battlefield. The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed. Terrorists don't have legal rights or human rights. By committing or abetting acts of terror against the innocent, they place themselves outside of humanity's borders. They must be hunted as man-killing animals. And, as a side benefit, dead terrorists don't pose legal quandaries. Captured terrorists, on the other hand, are always a liability. Last...

We made one great mistake regarding Guantanamo: No terrorist should have made it that far. All but a handful of those grotesquely romanticized prisoners should have been killed on the battlefield. The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed. Terrorists don't have legal rights or human rights. By committing or abetting acts of terror against the innocent, they place themselves outside of humanity's borders. They must be hunted as man-killing animals. And, as a side benefit, dead terrorists don't pose legal quandaries. Captured terrorists, on the other hand, are always a liability. Last...

When Guantanamo Bay is brought up these days in the media, it is usually in unison with the words “unconstitutional”, “unlawful”, and “unethical”. Some even say it goes against the Geneva Conventions. As you can see by the photo, the detainees have it really bad with their 12 hours of recreation time (Hint my sarcasm). I find this amusing (Yet sad, as always), because a large majority of the people making these claims don’t know the law. Many probably haven’t even read the Constitution nor the Geneva Conventions. So let me say it here and now: waterboarding, the suspension of...

... Obama Administration officials were poised in late April to make a bold, stealthy move: they instructed U.S. Marshals ... to fly two Chinese Uighurs, and up to five more on subsequent flights, from Gitmo to northern Virginia for resettlement. In a conference call ... Justice and Pentagon officials had been warned that any public statements about Gitmo transfers would inflame congressional Republicans ... Then GOP Rep. Frank Wolf got tipped off. Furious, he fired off a letter to Obama, charging that [these releases] could " threaten the security of Americans." White House officials were not happy. One accused [Wolf]...

AP news: Frustrated liberals are asking why a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House can't manage to close the Guantanamo prison or keep new gun-rights laws from passing. After all, President Barack Obama pledged to shut down the military detention center on Cuba for suspected terrorists. And Democratic control of the government would suggest that any gun legislation leads to tighter controls on weapons, not expanded use. Even as they grouse, however, liberal lawmakers acknowledge that no one factor explains last week's disappointing back-to-back votes in Congress. The Obama administration is focused on other priorities, they say. Party leaders don't want...

This was at 166th St. and Boston Road in the Bronx Sunday morning, in front of the amazing old building that was still called Morris High School when Gen. Colin Powell graduated from there more than 50 years ago and began a life of service to his country. This was an hour before Powell would appear on "Face the Nation" to discuss comments made about him by former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose most famous moment carrying a gun came when shooting a lawyer once instead of quail. [Snip] A week ago Cheney - whose idea of a foxhole is...

Waterboarding, snarling dogs, sleep deprivation: international outrage. D.C. native Keith Barnes should have had it so good. His federal prison experience involved more than physical exhaustion, fear and humiliation. His ended in death. I wrote about Barnes four years ago after his murder in a Federal Bureau of Prisons penitentiary in Beaumont, Tex. ["A Witness Pays the Price in Prison," May 21, 2005; "Death Sentence, D.C. Style," May 28, 2005.] A return visit seems in order. President Obama wants to place some Guantanamo detainees in federal penitentiaries. Also, FBI Director Robert Mueller has warned that even if they are sent...

In the next few days, you're going to see an increasingly intense debate on the question of whether the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is a major factor in terrorist recruitment. In that debate, you're going to hear a name you might not have heard, Matthew Alexander. And you're going to learn that what you've been told about Guantanamo and terrorist recruitment is not the whole story. In his speech on Thursday, President Obama gave two reasons for his decision to shut down Guantanamo. The first was that it has lowered American standing in the world, and the second...

"Every government ­assumes deeds and ­misdeeds of the past," writes Hannah Arendt in Eichmann and the Holocaust. "It means hardly more, generally speaking, than that every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors." For Barack Obama this cuts both ways. Talented as he is, he looks much more so when compared with the man who preceded him. Just by showing up and stringing a few coherent sentences together, he embodies an improvement. To earn acclaim in these early months,...

(CNN) — Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is taking President Obama to task over his handling of closing the detention center on Guantanamo Bay. In his interview with CNN's John King on State of the Union Sunday, Ridge said Obama "doesn't have a plan" on how to relocate the current detainees, and suggested the president announced he was close the facility prematurely. "Reaching conclusion that you can shut it down without determining the manner in which you were going to adjudicate those who should stay somewhere… How are we going to dispose of them?" he said. "And at the...

Republicans have been able to drive the Washington agenda for the first time in months, and dent the top two Democrats' armor, by hammering away on antiterror policy and keeping the debate squarely in the GOP comfort zone of national security. Some Republicans see in events of the past two weeks -- the culmination of a carefully developed GOP strategy and missteps by Democrats -- the beginning of a political comeback, and they plan to keep pressing the issue. Democrats say they still hold an advantage with the public on a matter more urgent to most Americans: fixing the economy....

President Obama is really losing the debate over national security. One of the signs is that this is the only defense I have found of his policies, and his speech. Now, I don't read far left blogs like Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and liberal favorite Salon so I am sure that there are defenses. That said, I have found very few in the so called MSM and since they are his cheering section and acolytes that is really saying something. Another good way to see just how badly the president is losing the debate is how tortured the defense...

Names of the six senators who voted to fund the closing of GITMO: Durbin - Illinois Harkin - Iowa Leahy - Vermont Levin - Michigan Reed - Rhode Island Whitehorse - Rhode Island Source: michellemalkin.com