November 10th 2008
Obama To Bring Terrorists To US
Plans being hatched by Obama’s transition team will bring most Guantanamo detainees to the U.S., where they will be tried in conventional courts, with their largely anti-American attorneys free to exploit our legal system to probe for classified data.
AP reports that some detainees would be released and “many” of the others would be prosecuted in our criminal courts. Detainees whose cases involve highly classified information might go before a new court that sounds a lot like Bush’s military tribunals, but on U.S. soil.
Which detainees would be released? Who would want them? Where would they go if no one wanted them? These are questions the Bush administration grappled with, and it’s hard to imagine PrezO’s team will find a ready solution, Obama’s aura notwithstanding. And remember, there’s evidence that many of those released to date have returned to their terroristic ways.
The ones tried in U.S. courts face procedures like that of Zacarias Moussaou:
Moussaoui expressed contempt for the trial and court by introducing legal motions deriding Judge Brinkema, surprised onlookers by electing to represent himself in court, and rankled federal prosecutors by requesting the presence of captured al-Qaeda members as witnesses in his case. During the course of the proceedings, Moussaoui admitted his guilt in various degrees, and to being a member of al-Qaeda. (Wikipedia)
Moussaoui and his lawyers sought access to all sorts of documents, and in the end he pleaded all kinds of hardships, evading a death penalty and getting life in prison – where he will be a pain in our sides until he dies, working to convert violent men to Islam, filing appeals to carve out more and more law sympathetic to he and his ilk, who are all beneath or contempt. Now he will have an army of former detainees at his side.
As for Obama’s proposed new U.S. court system for the heavy-duty cases, AP reports that lawyers for the defendants hate the idea (natch!) but maybe not as much as the Dems:
The tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration’s military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on U.S. soil.
“There would be concern about establishing a completely new system,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor who is aware of the discussions in the Obama camp. “And in the sense that establishing a regimen of detention that includes American citizens and foreign nationals that takes place on U.S. soil and departs from the criminal justice system — trying to establish that would be very difficult.”
Gee. Maybe Guantanamo isn’t such a bad idea after all.
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November 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
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