When Texas Torquemada first opened his concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, to have a place to torture prisoners, I nicknamed the the GOP Gulag at Gitmo. Creative names for people and places is part of my satirical humor. Sadly, it became officially bipartisan yesterday, bringing screams of protest from fellow progressives against Obama for breaking his campaign promise. However, Obama is one if the few people I don’t blame for this.
The Obama administration has given up its bid to try professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court, a bow to political reality that leaves the administration’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay hanging by a thread.
Like a low-grade fever that’s hard to get rid of, the Gitmo problem is back at the White House, early enough in the president’s re-election campaign to be treated successfully but still troublesome because it could make many return appearances between now and election day 2012.
Proof, as if any were needed, that campaign promises can be dangerous to those who make them.
Military commissions fit into the Guantanamo Bay picture frame because that’s where Mohammed and other detainees are being held now, and where a military commission trial or trials for Mohammed and his four alleged coconspirators would probably be conducted.
The chief prosecutor in the office of military commissions, Capt. John Murphy, said he would recommend a joint trial for the five men.
The administration of George W. Bush opened Guantanamo Bay as a prison for terrorist suspects. President Barack Obama, amid a clamor here and abroad to close the place, vowed to do just that and move the detainees.
But that was then and this is now, and the picture has changed because of one simple question: Move them where?
"Congress is not behind closing Guantanamo … because the American people aren’t behind it," said Vijay Padmanabhan, a former attorney-adviser in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser from 2003-08 who was involved in litigation and repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
"The president has not clearly communicated why it’s important to take the final step and close the facility, and unless and until he does, he’s not going to be able to," said Padmanabhan, now a visiting assistant professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
The former State Department lawyer said it’s fair to conclude that Guantanamo Bay will remain open into the immediate future, "if not the remainder of the president’s time in office."
Monday played out as a sort-of warmup for the presidential campaign. The White House had little to say. Republicans had a lot to say. And Attorney General Eric Holder, caught in the middle, refused to be pushed around.
"Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments," the attorney general told a news conference.
Republicans went on the attack when Holder announced that his plan for a civilian court trial in New York of Mohammed and his four alleged coconspirators was out and that military commissions were in.
"An inexperienced and naïve president has finally reversed himself on zyGuantanamo and terrorist trials; let’s hope he sees the light on his other flawed policies," said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is expected in the coming weeks to enter the GOP race to challenge Obama in 2012.
In December, congressional conservatives spearheaded legislation that barred the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. In several other congressional votes last year, many Democrats joined Republicans in opposing bringing Gitmo prisoners to the U.S. for trial or detention… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Seattle PI>
When Obama announced his intent to try detainees in New York, the media went into a feeding frenzy, parading Republicans before the public eye to strike fear into the American public, because calmly reasoned truth does not keep viewers NIMBY! Congress voted to cut off funds to transport detainees to the US. There was nothing Obama could no, as Ed Schultz explains.
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I have bones to pick with Obama myself, but lets criticize him for things that are his fault. This isn’t. The media and both parties in Congress are to blame.
4 Responses to “GOP Gulag Now Bipartisan”
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This is just a horrible antidemocratic tragedy no matter how you look at it. I don’t even recognize today’s America any more, and I’M not the one who has drastically changed!
I hear that, Jack. Our normal behavior now is the same as what we were told was hateful about Russian behavior in the 1950s.
Jack – you are right as always. Those men are on American soil anyway – we own that base in Cuba – it is part of the US. They have rights too – try them some where or let them go.
And there’s no reason that Obama could not support a special court to try them there with all the rights they would have here.