March 13th 2009
Word Games, Not War Games
O
bama’s Justice Department, unhinged in general and unfettered by the need to do real work like the inept Obama Treasury Department, decided today to play word games with terrorists. Henceforth, Justice Department briefs will not use the word “enemy combatant,” says a statement:
In a filing today with the federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice submitted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not employ the phrase “enemy combatant.”
In other words, an “enemy combatant” is on its face a person who has provided “substantial” support to al Qaeda or the Taliban. By removing the word from the federal lexicon, Holder & Co. are saying that the assumption of substantial support no longer exists.
The memo does not provide alternative nomenclature, so maybe we can help:
Guys found wandering around battlefields with AK 47s.
People named in al Qaeda and Taliban documents as guys who gave them substantial report.
Guys who repeatedly told Guantanamo personnel that if they’re released, the first thing they’re going to do is try to kill some Americans.
Camel-jockeys who know how to fly airliners.
People known to frequent crowded marketplaces with C4 vests.
FOBs (Friends of bin Laden)
Guys voted “most likely to succeed” upon matriculating from madrassa.
So Holder won’t hold al Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers who just had “insignificant or insubstantial support of al Qaeda or the Taliban.” That, of course, will be determined by evidence; more specifically, lawyers for jihadists who will tell Obama-appointed judges their guys just don’t reach the significant/substantial threshhold. “Your honor, he just attended the same mosque and it was an unfortunate coincidence that he was picked up just after that major Taliban pow-wow. Just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
And then, after the guy’s four or five years of hanging out in Guantanamo with jihadiacs, the guy will get sprung … and will turn up next Tuesday with Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, doing his best to be significant and substantial.
Holder promised senators he would review why career prosecutors in Washington decided not to prosecute the former head of the department’s Civil Rights Division. An inspector general’s report last month found that Bradley Schlozman, the former head of the division, misled lawmakers about whether he politicized hiring decisions.
Lichblau’s piece exists because the assignments were in civil rights cases and, you know, all conservative Republicans are flaming racists so how much more awful can it get? But wait! There’s nothing here about racism. Lichblau’s report quotes what the report says of the target of the investigation, Bradley Schlozman, who you see there, appropriately, on the right:
