Free Republic

March 2002: President Bush authorizes the indefinite detention of enemy combatants. April 2010: President Obama keeps that program intact. Watch as the left heads explode: The White House is considering endorsing a law that would allow the indefinite detention of some alleged terrorists without trial as part of efforts to break a logjam with Congress over President Barack Obama’s plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday… Civil liberties advocates and many who back Obama’s effort to close Guantanamo have opposed a preventive detention law as a departure from the tradition of prosecuting and punishing...

Obama counter-terror chief John Brennan is drawing criticism for comments he made Saturday about the recidivism rate of detainees released from Guantanamo Bay. During a Q&A following remarks Brennan delivered at the Islamic Center of New York University, Brennan defended the administration's estimate that one in five foreign nationals released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay since its opening return to terrorist activities. "People sometimes use that figure, 20 percent, say 'Oh my goodness, one out of five detainees returned to some type of extremist activity,'" Brennan said. "You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up to...

This is how we ought to think about rumors swirling around that the Obama administration is looking for a deal on enemy combatants and that some GOP types are listening. The compromise would be: KSM gets a military commission, but Republicans agree to close Gitmo and bring the combatants to stateside federal prisons. This would be a terrible sell-out of our national security. It would also be unnecessary. The American people strongly support military commissions for enemy combatants — not for all terrorism cases, but for all unlawful alien enemy operatives who have no right to be tried in our...

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- It is the oddest of unintended airport stopovers -- a short stay at Guantanamo Bay. Helicopter flights for the ship I was trying to reach off the coast of Haiti had been canceled. So I slept in an Air Force tent at Camp Freedom, an arrow's shot from where 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is imprisoned -- his stay now extended longer than the Obama administration would wish. "Guantanamo" has become a synonym for "prison." Actually, it is a 45-square-mile U.S. Navy base, complete with a McDonald's and a Subway. The Guantanamo Bay Children and Youth...

First, [he] would have gathered [his] entire national-security team, not just the Justice Department ... Second, assuming Abdulmutallab had been designated as an enemy combatant, the interrogators would have thoroughly interrogated him to learn if he had information that could prevent a future attack. ... Third, once they were satisfied that he had no additional intelligence to provide, he would have been transferred for prosecution to either the civilian or the military system. ... But don’t take our word for it. Let’s briefly review what the Bush administration actually did after 9/11. (Warning to all leftist drones: Do not click...

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson joined a bipartisan effort on Wednesday to block the administration from trying the Sept. 11th suspects in civilian courts. Nelson (Neb.) signed onto legislation offered by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) to require military commission trials for those suspects. Nelson made the announcement in a conference call with reporters, primarily citing the costs of security for the trials.

A senior Amnesty International official has been suspended after attacking the human rights charity for allying itself with 'Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban'. Gita Sahgal, head of the organisation's gender unit, branded Amnesty's links to former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg a 'gross error of judgment'. She was removed from her post within a few hours of her criticism...and now a bitter war of words is raging between the activist and her employer. Both have angrily defended their position over Mr Begg, 42, a Briton held at Guantanamo for three years until 2005 because of suspected links to...

A senior official at Amnesty International is uncomfortable over the group's close association with a former Gitmo inmate. Richard Kerbaj of the TimesOnline: A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims. Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty's international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, "fundamentally damages" the organisation's reputation. In an email sent to Amnesty's top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his "jihadi" group, Cageprisoners, out...

It's not unusual to see Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman, (I-Conn.) complaining about President Barack Obama's conduct of the war on terror. But when they're openly joined by two Democratic senators—with more potentially hovering in the wings—that spells trouble for the administration's agenda.

Attorney General Eric Holder has not entirely given the left the change from Bush that it desired—a former Bush administration lawyer says Holder has preserved about 85 percent of Bush’s counterterrorism policies—but in one area, the break is clear: trying terrorist suspects in criminal courts. “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done,” Holder tells The New Yorker. “History will show that the decisions we’ve made are the right ones.” Holder hits back at his critics over the handling of the attempted Christmas Day bombing, noting that every single terrorist suspect arrested inside the U.S. was treated as a civilian criminal....

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in the civilian system with no objection from all the other relevant departments of the government. In a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the attorney general wrote that the FBI told its partners in the intelligence community on Christmas Day and again the next day that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally.

The bipartisan blowback against our junior-varsity president's decision to try terrorists in federal court is reaching gale force. New York politicians were able to kick the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial out of Manhattan, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that not a single member of Congress wants the trial held in their home town either.

Though New York City will apparently be spared the unnecessary expense and disruptions of a civilian trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed & Co., President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are threatening to take the show on the road to some other unfortunate locale. But mark our words, it won't happen. KSM and his cohorts will be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay -- because the administration has made it almost impossible for them to get a fair trial in a civilian court. In a typical criminal case, the government says very little outside of court, and what...

Statement from Congressman Peter Roskam after Majority Leader Hoyer’s stunning admission that moving Guantanamo to Illinois is a mistake and the White House is re-thinking this flawed strategy: “I'm pleased to see that both Leader Hoyer and the White House are recognizing that moving Guantanamo is a mistake and are subsequently reconsidering their flawed plan. The opposition to this controversial move has been widespread, broad based and well reasoned. While they have ignored good reason for months now, this presents Democrats in Illinois and around the country a new opportunity to listen to common sense and oppose this controversial move...

The second-ranking House Democrat signaled Tuesday that the White House is reconsidering a plan to move Guantanamo detainees to a prison in northwest Illinois. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he agrees that the Obama administration should reassess the plan to move terrorist suspects from the Cuba military base to Thomson Correctional Facility in the state’s northwest corner. “I think the administration realizes that this is a difficult issue,” Hoyer said, speaking at his weekly meeting with Capitol Hill reporters. “And I think that they are assessing where they are and where they think we ought to be, and...

One of the first things that Barack Obama did after being swept into office on the wings of "hopenchange" was to sign an executive order that would close the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Obama gave a one-year deadline after which he triumphantly informed us the facility would be closed. Well, we are at one year plus ten days after the signing of the order and Gitmo is still open. Yet few stories expressing outrage about this lapsed promise have made the rounds in the Old Media. On January 22, 2009, Obama signed the Executive Order that...

Only 15 months ago, President Obama carried his home state of Illinois with 62% of the vote against Republican John McCain's 37%. Now, the incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn -- who came in after Rod Blagojevich was impeached -- is in trouble, and Cook Political Report calls Obama's old Senate seat one of five "toss-up" races that Democrats are in danger of losing this November. Known for its corrupt politics -- Blago's predecessor, Republican George Ryan, is still in jail on corruption charges -- Illinois is also suffering an economic meltdown, the kind that creates a perfect storm for political upsets....

In my view, his presence on these shows alone should disqualify him, but Sarah Palin thinks he’s just wonderful because Sarah Palin doesn’t think. She’s a dummy, and it’s time her blind worshipers woke up to that, but they refuse to awaken from their slumber. Does it not bother her that, as the Sultan points out, Rand Paul compared the U.S. military to Hitler? Hellooooo . . . ? Either Sarah Palin supports Rand Paul’s nutty views against torturing terrorists and siding with Iran against America or she’s just ignorant and uninformed beyond belief. I vote for both, which is...

Washington: Stating that the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention centre is one of the biggest recruitment propaganda tools for extremist organisations world over, US President Barack Obama today reiterated his commitment to close Gitmo at the earliest. "There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. That's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do," Obama told YouTube in an interview. Soon...

President Obama on Monday will propose a $3.8-trillion fiscal 2011 federal budget that includes $237 million for the purchase and upgrading of a prison in Illinois to house detainees now at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. Obama sends his spending blueprint to Congress, with the money to buy the nearly vacant Thomson Correctional Center in northwest Illinois, 150 miles west of Chicago, in the Department of Justice funding request. The State of Illinois and the federal government are currently negotiating over the purchase price of Thomson. During a briefing with reporters on Sunday afternoon previewing the budget--the contents...