[movlabs]

Well, at least it ends the limbo....

Obama restarts Guantanamo trials - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama approved Monday the resumption of military trials for detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ending a two-year ban.

It was the latest acknowledgement that the detention facility Obama had vowed to shut down within a year of taking office will remain open for some time to come.

"I strongly believe that the American system of justice is a key part of our arsenal in the war against al-Qaida and its affiliates, and we will continue to draw on all aspects of our justice system — including Article III courts — to ensure that our security and our values are strengthened," the president said in a statement. Article III courts are civilian federal courts.

Under Obama's order, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will rescind his January 2009 ban against bringing new cases against the terror suspects at the detention facility.

Closure of the facility has become untenable because of questions about where terror suspects would be held.

[kjanyeaz1]

Good.

[Nikkytas]

Would it be sufficiently bipartisan of me to not say I told ya so...?

[NarhozNic]

Wouldn't be the first time a Presidental canidate found out once he was privy to the fine details, his campaign position was whimsical.

This probably infuriates the Far Left, and some on the Right will accuse him of dragging his feet, or worse. Even when the man does something good, he gets chaff from both sides. Damn if you do, damn if you don't.

[w4WBthjv]

Well, at least it ends the limbo....

Obama restarts Guantanamo trials - Yahoo! News

It's well overdue given all the longtime BS over due process fights for the military tribunals, the bickering over where to try them (civil or military courts) or bringing them to US mainland prisons, etc. Just give them a trial and their appeals rights for any claims they wish to make concerning them. At least the ball is finally rolling and they are not being held in legal limbo there.

[GrottereewNus]

O'Sullivan Bere
It's well overdue given all the longtime BS over due process fights for the military tribunals, the bickering over where to try them (civil or military courts) or bringing them to US mainland prisons, etc. Just give them a trial and their appeals rights for any claims they wish to make concerning them. At least the ball is finally rolling and they are not being held in legal limbo there. In otherwords, go back to EXACTLY what we were doing the day Obama took office and he through everything into utter confusion and pointless delay to try to make good on his naive and ill-informed campaign rhetoric, which he has now had to abandon when faced with the reality of actually DOING something other than running his mouth.

[BurdenRobert]

Tell us how you really feel, Marcus.

[stunnyravytal]

In otherwords, go back to EXACTLY what we were doing the day Obama took office and he through everything into utter confusion and pointless delay to try to make good on his naive and ill-informed campaign rhetoric, which he has now had to abandon when faced with the reality of actually DOING something other than running his mouth.

BINGO!

It's all Bush's fault though.. you left that out!!

[swoluelvede]

Mh.

Like everytime a decision is made, I wondered where it came from. And so I began reading...

(NYT - Administration Prepares to Lift Ban...)
But last month, Congress made it much harder to move Guantánamo detainees into the United States, even for trials in federal civilian courthouses. That essentially shut the door for now on the administration’s proposal to transfer inmates to a prison in Illinois and its desire to prosecute some of them in regular court. (NYT - Obama Signs Bill That May Hinder...)
WASHINGTON — President Obama signed a major defense bill on Friday that includes strict new limits on the government’s ability to transfer detainees out of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He sharply criticized those restrictions, but did not claim that he had the constitutional authority to disregard them.

Before the signing of the bill, Mr. Obama’s aides had deliberated over how he should handle the restrictions, which will make it harder to achieve his goal of closing the prison. He was considered unlikely to veto the bill because it also authorizes billions of dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I can't deny that his last decision will keep the prison open for a long time, and I actually observe that the recent decisions made, in January, already took that direction. It is certain that the administration's strategy to close it would have taken a lot more time anyway but I also can't deny this possibility, that the bill signed at the beginning of January 2011 could be linked to this new decision. It made the strategy harder, so even if the strategy wasn't sound to begin with, to the least it precipitated the decision.
Anyway, whatever the cause it's an admittance of failure. A chance that the foreign medias may not care... too busy with civil wars and revolutions.

[Diondra]

Wouldn't be the first time a Presidental canidate found out once he was privy to the fine details, his campaign position was whimsical.

This probably infuriates the Far Left, and some on the Right will accuse him of dragging his feet, or worse. Even when the man does something good, he gets chaff from both sides. Damn if you do, damn if you don't.

Welcome to the Oval Office.

[GoblinGaga]

The Great O has spoken, it is just and it shall be.

Oh well, so much for our judicial system being the best in the world.

[Ecurrexchangess]

One of the biggest reasons why Gitmo is staying open is because the public rejected having suspects released into open society.

Even though we've detained several people without evidence for several years now, the public seems to be convinced that all these people are guilty without a trial.

It's kind of sad, really. So, it might be a failure of Obama's administration by keeping Gitmo open, but it's also a failure of the public to respect the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."

Detainments shouldn't be indefinite. There should be a limit imposed on this practice, so that the prosecution has an incentive to actually hold a trial for a suspect. Otherwise, what need is there for a trial, if you can just keep someone imprisoned for an indefinite time?

[socialkiiii]

The Great O has spoken, it is just and it shall be.

Oh well, so much for our judicial system being the best in the world.

Well, I'm not sure if it ever was. Our judicial system seems to be less corrupt than say, the British system, but Canada seems to be less corrupt in its system than ours.

[Nekas48]

Apology = an admission of guilt.

By now you've all heard the news: Obama has reversed his two-year-old order halting new military charges against detainees at GITMO... allowing, once again, military tribunals to precede.

He lied.
It was always only crap fed to the wacky left
It was always only something to try and get elected on.
He hopes you forgive and forget... at least by Nov. 2012

He soiled the reputations of two good men... good men that made hard choices, for his own political benefit and only for his own political benefit.

You cheered him on.

He lied
You voted for him

You going to do it again?

[emuffette]

In otherwords, go back to EXACTLY what we were doing the day Obama took office . . .

It's hardly exactly what was going on beforehand. Most of these detainees at issue have been at Gitmo since 2001 or 2002. Obama has been in office for a little over 2 years...this has been going on for almost 10. Hardly any trials before Obama were conducted due to foot dragging, an attempted kangaroo tribunal that the SCOTUS rejected as absurdly deficient from a due process standpoint and should never have been attempted, endless debates and bickering about how to handle them, etc.

. . . and he through everything into utter confusion and pointless delay to try to make good on his naive and ill-informed campaign rhetoric, which he has now had to abandon when faced with the reality of actually DOING something other than running his mouth.

Nah. What he attempted to do was bring the Gitmo situation to a proper conclusion.

Congress repeatedly blocked him because, as usual, they are packed with opportunistic demagogues who love fearmongering to a large ignorant pants-shitting large segment of the public who they know are ignorant, gullible and cowardly enough to fall for such tripe. Along with them are the usual cadre of spineless tag-a-long politicians who go with the flow of such things rather than properly rebut it out of fear of losing all the hosenscheisser votes and being demagogued upon for doing so.

For example, the nonsense that these people would be escaping from SuperMax prisons in full readiness to attack the US was a shameless lie and that a stupid cowardly enough segment of the public believed that shows once again just how retarded American politics can get. Heck, being in Gitmo is a bigger escape risk than a SuperMax and nobody is sweating the odds of that given they are negligible.

Where Obama was naive was thinking that Congress and the American public were honest, informed and responsible enough to not be that way. Repeatedly and once again, however, they prove not to be so.

. . . Obama made the change with clear reluctance, bowing to the reality that Congress' vehement opposition to trying detainees on U.S. soil leaves them nowhere else to go. The president emphasized his preference for trials in federal civilian courts, and his administration blamed congressional meddling for closing off that avenue. . . . Congress hardened its objections to trying detainees on U.S. soil by including language in legislation signed by Obama in January that would block the Defense Department from spending money to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. for trial. . . . Obama restarts Guantanamo trials - Yahoo! News

Where he lost time was fighting that in the hopes that he could change this fact on this matter, and he should have just recognised that his efforts were futile once Congressional pandering and the public reaction showed what it would be.

That he tried to honour a campaign promise actually stands to his credit except in one fashion: IMO, the due process rights of these detainees must trump that if they are going to be unduly delayed. Once he should have recognised that they were not going to be allowed to be removed, he should have just moved on to trying them at Gitmo.

[drislerfottor]

Good to see indefinite detainment coming to an end...

[ronaldasten]

Well, I'm not sure if it ever was. Our judicial system seems to be less corrupt than say, the British system, but Canada seems to be less corrupt in its system than ours.

Canada has pretty much the same problems as the US or any other judicial system in democratic republics, e.g.,

Top judge snared in corruption probe

Canada scores a bit better on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) but that measures on public perceptions...it's not necessarily factual. As long as people run something where human flaws intersect with power, such problems will exist to some degree. For example, it certainly has loads of corruption and ethics problems in its international business dealings.

[flowersnewacq]

Congress repeatedly blocked him because, as usual, they are packed with opportunistic demagogues who love fearmongering to a large ignorant pants-shitting large segment of the public who they know are ignorant, gullible and cowardly enough to fall for such tripe. ...

This is spin.

Until December 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress simply prohibited funds from being used to "release" prisoners into the territory of the United States without first providing a plan to Congress about the safety/necessity of doing so. See H.R. 2346 [111th] - Summary: Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009 (GovTrack.us)

Mr. Obama didn't lift a finger to transfer them to a facility in the U.S. or release them in his nearly two years in office. At the end of the last Congressional term, additional criteria were introduced into the current spending bill, which put restrictions on funding "transfer" as well. But that came after nearly two years of the administration doing nothing to keep its promise.

I think we can safely chalk this up as a broken promise ... particularly in light of the fact that it was supposed to be closed within one year.

Good to see indefinite detainment coming to an end...

Don't kid yourself. It's not going anywhere. http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/whit...ml#post1816560

[Franchise]

Congress repeatedly blocked him because, as usual, they are packed with opportunistic demagogues who love fearmongering to a large ignorant pants-shitting large segment of the public who they know are ignorant, gullible and cowardly enough to fall for such tripe. Along with them are the usual cadre of spineless tag-a-long politicians who go with the flow of such things rather than properly rebut it out of fear of losing all the hosenscheisser votes and being demagogued upon for doing so.

Would you mind telling us when the Obama administration starts?

Thanks in advance.

[kavaTeexy]

This is spin.

Until December 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress simply prohibited funds from being used to "release" prisoners into the territory of the United States without first providing a plan to Congress about the safety/necessity of doing so. See H.R. 2346 [111th] - Summary: Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009 (GovTrack.us)

Mr. Obama didn't lift a finger to transfer them to a facility in the U.S. or release them in his nearly two years in office. At the end of the last Congressional term, additional criteria were introduced into the current spending bill, which put restrictions on funding "transfer" as well. But that came after nearly two years of the administration doing nothing to keep its promise.

I think we can safely chalk this up as a broken promise ... particularly in light of the fact that it was supposed to be closed within one year.

Oh nonsense...that's exactly what Congress did, e.g.,

Senate Democrats reject funding for Guantánamo closure
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 May 2009 17.36 BST

President Barack Obama's campaign pledge to shut the prison at Guantánamo Bay was rejected by his own party yesterday when Senate Democrats joined their Republican counterparts in voting not to pay for the closure.

The vote is the latest setback for the Obama administration, which has been widely criticised by supporters for deciding to restart the controversial military tribunals for detainees, first established by President George Bush, but halted by Obama when he came to office.

The 90-6 vote in the Senate follows a similar decision in the House of Representatives last week - a clear sign to Obama that he may struggle to convince the Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with his plans to shut down the detention centre and move the 240 detainees.

Last month, Obama asked for $80m (£60m) for the Pentagon and the US justice department to close the facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by January. The administration put its congressional Democratic allies in a difficult spot by requesting the Guantánamo closure money before developing a plan for what to do with its detainees.

Obama is scheduled to give a major address tomorrow outlining in more detail his plans for Guantánamo, but it's already clear that Congress has little appetite for bringing detainees to US soil, even if the inmates would be held in maximum-security prisons.

Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said that none of Guantánamo's detainees should be transferred to the US to stand trial or serve time in prison. "We don't want them around," he said. "I can't make it any more clear … We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States."

The vote came as FBI director Robert Mueller told Congress that he is concerned Guantánamo detainees could support terrorism if sent to the US. Separately, a federal judge said the US can continue to hold some prisoners at Guantánamo indefinitely without any charges.

"The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalising others," Mueller said, as well as "the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States".

In recent weeks, Republicans have called for keeping Guantánamo open, saying abuses at the facility are a thing of the past and describing it as a state-of-the-art prison that's nicer than some US prisons. And they warn that terrorists who can't be convicted might be set free in the United States.

"The American people don't want these men walking the streets of America's neighbourhoods," Senator John Thune, a Republican, said today. "The American people don't want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their backyard, either."

But Obama's new Pentagon policy chief, Michele Flournoy, said it is unrealistic to think that no detainees will come to the US, and that the government can't ask allies to take detainees while refusing to take on the same burden.

Obama ally Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, pointed out that not a single prisoner has ever escaped from a federal super maximum security prison and that 347 convicted terrorists are already being held in US prisons.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, among the few Republicans joining former GOP presidential nominee John McCain of Arizona in calling for Guantánamo to be closed, scoffed at the idea that the government can't find a way to hold Guantánamo prisoners in the United States. Graham noted that 400,000 German and Japanese prisoners were held during the second world war.

"The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational. We have done this before," Graham said. "But it is my belief that you need a plan before you close Gitmo."

While allies such as Durbin have cast the development as a delay of only a few months, other Democrats have made it plain they do not want any of Guantánamo's detainees sent to the US to stand trial or serve prison sentences. Senate Democrats reject funding for Guantánamo closure | World news | guardian.co.uk (bolding added)

The bill was just part of all the larger hysterics going on at the time where it was nauseatingly pumped over media airwaves, etc. The idea that these detainees would be in any position to escape or radicalise inmates or conduct operations from a SuperMax prison with its security details and prisoner monitoring details is absolutely absurd, just as much as it is to think they would ever be released onto US streets for any reason (ICE detainers for detention and/or removal being lodged against prisoners are a dime a dozen even for mere illegal aliens and ordinary aliens arrested for deportable offences).

It's a broken promise but not one he is chargeable with given Congressional resistance. Only a very few like Durban, Graham and McCain had any integrity when addressing this issue.