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The sputtering end of the Obama administration’s plans to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court came one day late last month in a conversation between the president and one of his top Cabinet members. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had called President Obama to inform him that he would be returning the case to the Defense Department, a decision that would mark the effective abandonment of the president’s promise to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During the call, Obama did not press Holder to find a way to resurrect the federal prosecution of Mohammed...

In January, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)called Gitmo a "well run jail". He advocates for trying detainees in military courts, not civilian courts, but he agrees with Obama's "need to start over." Like Obama, Graham says "we don't know" where to put the detainees when convicted.

They were called the Dirty 30 — bodyguards for Osama bin Laden captured early in the Afghanistan war — and many of them are still being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Others still at the much-criticized detention camp there include prisoners who the government says were trained in assassination and the use of poisons and disguises. One detainee is said to have been schooled in making detonators out of Sega game cartridges. A Yemeni who has received little public attention was originally selected by Mr. bin Laden as a potential Sept. 11 hijacker, intelligence officials say. As the Bush administration...

A former Guantanamo Bay inmate who led pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan after his release died Tuesday when he blew himself up with a grenade to avoid arrest, police said. The death of Abdullah Mehsud is a boost for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who faces growing U.S. pressure to crack down on Islamic militants battling security forces on both sides of the Afghan border. Mehsud, who led pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan after his release, died on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 when he blew himself up with a grenade to avoid arrest. Armed intelligence agents cornered Mehsud and three other men at...

The U.S. military handed over a group of suspected Taliban rebels to the custody of the Afghan government on Tuesday, the start of a program to transfer all Afghan prisoners it holds both in Afghanistan and at Guantanomo. The 12 prisoners, captured at various times by the military since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, will be kept in a newly refurbished bloc of Pul-i-Charkhi prison on the eastern outskirts of Kabul, Afghan officials said. Taliban prisoners captured by the Afghan government have staged at least two revolts in the past in Pul-i-Charkhi and several have managed to escape from the...

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the military's "up or out" promotion system. Swift said last week he was notified he would not be promoted to commander. He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a...

Last week congress passed the Military Commissions Act, granting the Bush administration powers to detain interrogate and prosecute alleged terrorists and their supporters. Congress had to walk a fine line in creating this legislation; information gathered from the detainees has been an important tool in preventing terrorist attacks in the United States. But we had to show the administration and the world that AMERICA DOES NOT TORTURE! One of the interrogation methods outlawed by this bill is something called waterboarding. What is not being reported in the papers is the fact that many other severe methods of “aggressive” questioning are...

Five supreme Court justices left President George W Bush's policy on Guantanamo Bay in chaos last week but it was a diligent career navy officer who plotted the legal downfall of his commander-in-chief. Lt Cdr Charles Swift, 44, an experienced military defence attorney, was expected to draft a simple plea bargain after prosecutors requested the appointment of a lawyer to represent Osama bin -Laden's driver in 2003. Instead, he launched a series of ground-breaking legal challenges that ended with the ruling by America's highest court that the military commissions backed by Mr Bush for international terrorism suspects were unlawful. "As...

Democrats push prisoner abuse probe Leading GOP senator dismisses call for 9/11-style commission Monday, November 7, 2005; Posted: 11:24 p.m. EST (04:24 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Democrats stepped up their attacks on the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq with calls Monday for an independent probe into the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. Republicans fired back, accusing Democrats of trying to score political points off American losses in Iraq and of undermining support for U.S. troops. Leading Senate Democrats, arguing that the chamber's GOP leadership has not pursued investigations on those...

July 5, 2005 Dear Mr. Derrick W: Thank you for your recent message. On June 14, I spoke on the Senate floor about my heartfelt concern regarding the treatment of prisoners and detainees at Guantanamo and in other places. I noted that many others, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, have raised legitimate concerns about whether the policies of this Administration are truly making us safer and whether some of those policies might tarnish America's image around the world and jeopardize our soldiers. During that speech, I read an account from an FBI agent describing the mistreatment of prisoners...

Horsefeathers views Iraq as one battlefront in a global war--World War IV. The ‘War on Terror’ is a term designed to obscure the ideological nature of the struggle. This war, in its essence, is no different from our 20th century wars against totalitarianism. Having vanquished Nazism and Communism, we are now challenged by a totalitarian, anti-semitic ideology disguised as a religion, Islamo-Fascism. The principles required for victory are no different than in any war: impose our will on our enemies by force of arms. Those enemies, sensing our superior battlefield strength, realize that our vulnerability lies not in our military...

"Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be destroyed. Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, tions which originate with a prince...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Police say three lions rescued a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by men who wanted to force her into marriage, chasing off her abductors and guarding her until police and relatives tracked her down in a remote corner of Ethiopia. The men had held the girl for seven days, repeatedly beating her, before the lions chased them away and guarded her for half a day before her family and police found her, Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo said Tuesday by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, some 560 kilometers (348 miles) west of the capital, Addis Ababa....

The "Blame America First" crowd is wielding the whip. The target: Camp Delta, the U.S. Military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Spurred by a false story in Newsweek and then Amnesty International's unsupported charge that it is the "gulag of our times," Guantanamo and the people it houses have become the left's latest "cause celeb." Kofi Annan, Old Europe's old leaders, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and most of the so-called mainstream media have now declared that the facility must be closed. President Bush, apparently smarting under the lash, has said such a move is "under consideration." If...

Jerrold Nadler's Two Faces on Terror By Jacob LaksinFrontPageMagazine.com | June 13, 2005Last Friday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Patriot Act had already been adjourned, but Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic blimpish congressman from New York and one of the leftmost members of the House Judiciary Committee, was too wound up to care: “We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it,” bellowed the hefty Nadler. By this, Nadler meant to defend his attacks on the alleged abuses of the (in fact) privileged  prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Thanks to the efforts of the...

DOHA, Sept 18 - Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite channel urged reporters' rights groups on Wednesday to take up the case of one of its cameramen it said was being held at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, on suspicion of links with the Al-Qaeda terror network. "Since Sami al-Hajj was detained on December 15, 2001, Al-Jazeera has tried to obtain his release through official approaches to the US side and without publicizing the case, but it did not receive a positive response," Al-Jazeera said in a statement obtained by AFP. Hajj, a Sudanese national who was arrested in southern Afghanistan, has...