Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his political career, President Obama could not -- as Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men" might say -- handle the truth. He had the luxury of going to elegant parties, where he gallantly smoked cigarettes and held forth with idle chatter about the incomprehensibly grotesque manner in which America was fighting this war on terror. We should close that mean prison at Guantanamo, welcome ashore our enemies and treat them to our civilized system of civilian justice, a preening Obama told adoring audiences. It was, as that great American politician Bill Clinton once memorably remarked,...

Joe Lieberman is once again endorsing John McCain over Barack Obama – this time on a critical national security issue. Lieberman and McCain have introduced a bill that would deny Miranda rights to terrorist suspects and block them from the U.S. civil court system. The bill could interfere with the Obama administration’s efforts to cut a deal with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham to develop a comprehensive system to deal with detainees—an effort that would include some role for federal courts. Graham, a military lawyer and currently serves a colonel in the U.S. Air Force reserves, has been negotiating with White...

The Obama administration's potential reversal on the decision to try the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks in civilian court could land the suspects back at a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, a scenario that is already infuriating the left. The Obama administration's potential reversal on the decision to try the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks in civilian court could land the suspects back at a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, a scenario that is already infuriating the left.  That's to be expected. A source familiar with the review told Fox News the...

The Washington Post article that Dan posted about last night is a head fake. President Obama is not caving on military commissions. He has already caved on them: He failed (thankfully) to abolish them, Congress enacted legislation endorsing them again in 2009, and the administration has already directed a commission trial for the Cole bombers. The real agenda here is to close Gitmo. That’s the ball to keep your eye on. The Post is trying to soften the opposition to shuttering the detention camp by portraying beleaguered, reasonable Obama as making a great compromise that will exasperate the Left. The...

President Obama has stated all along that the decision to move the 9/11 terror trials of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and friends to a civilian court in New York City, has been Eric Holder's and Eric Holder's alone. It is very hard to comprehend that a politically explosive decision like that was made without the approval of the President. But placing the blame on Holder gives him cover for what apparently is coming next. Surprised by the continuing anger about moving the trials to a NY Civilian court WAPO is reporting that the trials may be moved back into the military...

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City. The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of...

ustice Department on So-called ”Al Qaeda Seven”: We Will Not Participate in An Attempt to Drag People’s Names Through the Mud March 03, 2010 4:19 PM For several weeks, Republican lawmakers and a conservative group have been attacking the Justice Department for refusing to reveal the names of nine officials who have in some way advocated for or represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay. "The administration has made many highly questionable decisions when it comes to national security, " Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a recent statement, arguing that the public has “a right to know who advises the Attorney...

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan -- A man who was freed from Guantanamo after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say. Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press. The story of Abdul Qayyum could add to the complications U.S. President Barack Obama is facing in fulfilling his pledge to close the prison at...

Rahm Emanuel regularly swims at 5:30 a.m., sometimes with his children in tow, so that he can get to the office about 7. Lindsey Graham doesn’t do business in the morning. “Nothing good happens before 9:30,” he declares. Emanuel, a fast-talking Chicago native, made his name as a top aide to President Bill Clinton. Graham, raised in small-town South Carolina, helped manage the Republican effort to remove Clinton from office. Emanuel is an observant Jew who volunteered at a military supply depot in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. Graham is a churchgoing Southern Baptist who became an Air Force...

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is rightly unhappy that the Justice Department won't divulge the names of the nine Justice Department lawyers who directly represented suspected-terrorist detainees, or their cases. Grassley identified two himself, Neal Katyal (an aside: Katyal is a very impressive guy and very charming and level-headed) and Jennifer Daskal. Well, we've identified two more of them: Deputy AG counsel Eric Columbus and Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Jonathan Cedarbaum. (With reference to: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/25/identifying-the-gitmo-nine/)

Under pressure from Senate Republicans, Eric Holder has finally admitted that the "post-partisan" candidate for "change" has appointed nine separate ultra-liberal, America-hating Gitmo terror-apologists to sensitive posts within the Department of Justice...

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham confirmed Monday he is working with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to break the logjam on closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bringing the prisoners to trial. The South Carolina senator said that in a series of meetings and phone calls over the last “several weeks,” he has pressed to establish a new national security court that would keep most Guantanamo detainees out of the federal courthouse. He expressed confidence that he could strike a deal to extend some measure of habeas corpus rights to prisoners detained on terrorism charges and...

TV report, no article yet

If you’ll recall, just last week I spoke of fake Republican Angelo "Skip" Saviano, State Rep from Elmwood Park. Well, Skippy has again proven his complete lack of Republican credentials with his latest apostasy. With this vote Skippy has once again proven to be a RINO (Republican In Name Only) that we’d be better off to be rid of in Illinois. With his no vote on HB 4744, ol’ Skippy has not only voted to allow a governor, any governor, to sell state properties without prior approval of the people’s representatives, but he’s also basically given Democrat Governor Quinn the...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — To American officers at Guantanamo Bay, Ahmed Zaid Salem Zuhair was inmate No. 669 — a hardcore, veteran Muslim terrorist suspected of having killed an American in Bosnia. But here in Saudi Arabia, he is a "beneficiary," a former religious deviant who, having learned the true meaning of Islam, has been rehabilitated. Repatriated from Guantanamo in mid-2009, Zuhair, 45, continued to proclaim his innocence in an interview, asserting that he had only been doing peaceful relief work in Bosnia and Pakistan prior to his arrest in 2002, when Pakistani officials robbed, tortured and "sold" him to...

Barack Obama's Terror Czar John Brennan says that 20% of the released terrorists going back to the battlefield to kill Americans and others "isn't that bad." In another "What the hell did you just say?!"-moment that's becoming, sadly, increasingly common with Obama's rogue terror czar, John Brennan was speaking at—of all places!—the Islamic Center of New York University just this past Saturday. Since it was the Islamic Center and all, what better venue for John Brennan to spout another completely shocking and widely condemnable opinion that just confirms all the prior criticism that's rightfully been swirling around him for months!...

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...