Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sought to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the New York Times reported. The Wichita native argued that the facility had become so tainted abroad that its legal proceedings wouldn’t be viewed as legitimate.
Gates’ effort was supported by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but was opposed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who objected to moving detainees to the United States. Guess which side prevailed with President Bush?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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56 Comments
Gitmo is the best defender of Civil Liberties on the Island of Cuba.World Opinion?What has world opinion done to help the oppressed people of Cuba under the cruel dictator Castro?Gates is a good man, but he is wrong on this one.By the way folks:Conservatives tend to want the war on terror fought primarily by the military.Liberals tend to want to fight the war on terror in the courts.Either way, once the bad guys are captured, who should decide where to keep them and try them?You liberals want the Pentagon in charge, if you want to do what Gates wants.AG Gonzales is the Country’s Lawyer, and he wants them to stay at Gitmo.Good people can disagree.In fact, it would bother me if Bush’s cabinet was in perfect agreement on everything.
Military focused approach? Then we need a draft. Would you care to sign up, Rosell, or do you feel you serve the nation better as a money handler in the rear?
Nah, we’d be better fought terror by taking out their reason for existence. Instead of sending combat troops, send mercy missions. Recall how aids to Indonesia and Pakistan following the massive earthquakes do more to turn their opinion of Americans in general for the better? Tell travellers to put an end to the “Ugly Yankee Tourists” image that was so dominant abroad.
To my knowledge, Gitmo is a legal limbo, thus the prisoners there are simply non-persons. That is so tantamount of treating your enemies as sub-humans, fit for extermination. Does that ring a bell? GASP?!?
Besides, the report claims that it was Mr. Gates’ to put “Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action…” Thus, he is only following the request of the CiC.
“Instead of sending combat troops, send mercy missions.”
More evidence why you people won’t get into the White House.Kumbaya, dude, kumbaya.
If Gitmo closed and the prisoners sent to the U.S., it would be the biggest ACLU convention of lawyers since they wanted child molesters to have access to porn in Public Libraries.
Our judicial system is one of the weapons these radical Muslims use against us.
Keep them in GITMO!
A perfect example of their insidious use of our court system is the Immans that were thrown off the plane. They are now threatening to sue, not only, the airline, but also, the passengers that they terrorized with their actions.
This is a carefully designed plot to make everyday innocent people afraid to express their concerns about Muslims that may be acting in an inappropriate manner on our airlines.
Keep them in GITMO!
Hank
I figure since everyone in Gitmo is innocent by liberal standard we should have an adoption program.
Let them all be housed on home arrest in the homes of those who don’t want them in Gitmo.
Nevermind,
I forgot that the liberals would probably just aid them in their next endeavour of terrorism.
Keep them in Gitmo
Nathan,
Is that why conservatives want to ship us all off to internment camps?
tw,
No interment camps. That is so politically incorrect.
Reeducation centers!
Nathan, didn’t you hear? Michelle Malkin, darling of the conservative movement, is bringing internment camps back into fashion.
Of course it will be a lot of work if you want to put 48% of American voters away for good, lest they assist terrorists in their nefarious plans.
But hard work never bothered George Bush, he talks about it all the time :)
tw,
I figure somewhere in the ANWR where we can’t drill for oil would make a nice spot for the reeducation centers.
The liberals are always talking about how it would be such a travesty to drill for oil in such a wonderful place.
So, it should be well liked by them up there!
How about the lawyers that pull every trick in the book to get a terrorist off? Gotta love them folks !!!
A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth.”
I can’t believe the comments on here! Where are all you people from? I have not read an American comment on this blog topic yet. Those that wrote the Constitution must be rolling in their graves.
Please review the Constitution of the United States of America (available at http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html and elsewhere).
Fifth Amendment: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….”
Sixth Amendment: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
You defined one-half of the equation brian. The other half includes the military’s right to hold combatants under their own jurisdiction.
Before you respond about our rights as delineated in the Constitution not applying to those in Gitmo and similar places, here is part of a past post I made at here on WeBlog.
‘There is nothing more patriotic, nothing more American than standing up in the face of the fear of terrorism and saying those people may have been captured on a battlefield, they may not be American citizens, but damn it, we are Americans and they are our prisoners. So, they must have the same treatment with which we treat ourselves, lest we erode the very values that are soldiers are fighting to protect.’
The constitution applies to — Americans?
See the problem with the ACLU Constitutional wavers have, is that those rights afforded to Citizens are provided for by the Constitution.
The enemy combatants fall under administrative law, not Constitutional law. They are properly termed detainees, Habeas Corpus does not apply.
Technically yes, American laws apply to Americans (and those in the USA).
However, as a patriotic American who is proud of the system of laws and values of my country, and as someone who has respect for the principals on which our Constitution was founded, I have to demand that my country apply its own principals and standards when dealing with all people.
(see my post at 1:09)
Repub and Sol it is true that the rule of law under the US Constitution does not currently apply to those held it Gitmo.I do not deny or debate that.
What I do think is that US laws and Constitutional rights SHOULD be applied by the US to those held in Gitmo and elsewhere.
Brian”The Constitution is NOT a suicide pact!”Lincoln
Econ,Care to elaborate?
brian,
One could argue the fact that the U.S. Constitution applies to prisoners at GITMO. The proper venue is there.
You just have to convince nine people in Washington. :)
Unfortunately, mine is not the pocket they are in.
Can anyone elaborate the legal situation of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base? What is special there, other than it is being in Cuba, and Castro hasn’t yet cashed the rental checks the Govt paid for it. Why not housing them in Diego Garcia, for example, it’s far enough from everywhere, and it’s not US possessions. Can that be that US Constitution does not apply there?
Prisoners of War do not have Constitutional rights. The terrorist hugging left would tell you differently.
BrianPresident Lincoln did many things that the left would be upset about today.Lincoln once responded, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact” to a critic of his policy.
Simply put, if we die as a country, our Constitution dies with us, doesn’t it?
I just can’t imagine Lincoln using a term that just came in vogue a few decades ago “suicide pact”. Any links?
If I am wrong, I have company on this one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bill_of_Rights_is_not_a_suicide_pact
You have to understand that Washington DC was surrouned by the “enemy”. Maryland, Virginia were both states chock full of Southern sympathizers. Both, technically, Southern states. Something had to be done and Lincoln did it. He took a lot of heat from the Democrats for it. While I don’t believe he said the “suicide” line, the point remains true.
From what I can tell based on the postings on here, there is not much difference between how I think prisoners guilty of crimes and terrorists should be treated, and how fleetwood, nathan, Econ, and others seem to think they should be treated.
The difference, is in the determining who is a terrorist or criminal. I prefer that everyone be allowed to defend themselves in a fair, public venue via a transparent process. Others seem to want to take the word of the Government as to who is a terrorist and who is a criminal.
I have no doubt that many of those held in Gitmo are worthy of being held there. I just want to see them given a chance to defend those charges.
Feel free to call me a liberal or any of the other bullshit terms you throw around. However, if I were ever put in prison and labeled a terrorist, I sure as hell would want to refute those charges, wouldn’t you?
Bleeding heart liberal comes to mind. :)
well paint me red then
It’s not only the Department of Defense that evinces a continued lack of interest in the detainees. President Bush has repeatedly said that he’d like to close Guantanamo but that it’s not easy since, as he put it in a June 2006 press conference, “These people have been picked up off the battlefield, and they’re very dangerous.”
And we should believe Bush because of what? His reputation of truth and wisdom?
Come on, if the US government or the President Wants to do something it gets done.
Do you believe in conspiracies brian?
Do you think every Republican is out to get you?
What makes you think that GITMO isn’t there for a reason?
Do you think the Marine and Army guards are there because they like to be?
What part of being an adult in a real and terrifying world don’t you understand?
Republican,
Why do you believe everything that GWB says?
‘Who are the Prisoners at Gitmo?’http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umanskyb.asp“Using that larger but less detailed data set, the Denbeaux’s findings echoed Hegland’s: Only 8 percent of detainees at Guantanamo were labeled by the Defense Department as “al Qaeda fighters,” they found, and just 11 percent had been captured “on the battlefield” by coalition forces.”
Have you ever lived in a Moslem country Cosmos?
I have and they have a different mindset when it comes to human life.
Not everything is about American politics.
You Libs need to travel a bit and see the real world and just how dangerous it can be.
Sorry, Gates, Cheney says no, game over!
They long for democracy! As long as ‘they’ constitute the majority.
Republican,Why is the world terrifying to you? I do not find the world terrifying, I am a realist and a pragmatist.
What I understand is the value of freedom. I will not sacrifice my freedom or that of others, regardless of who they are or where they are from, for a false illusion of safety.
BTW, do you drive a Dodge Ram?
And Republican, where do you get off assuming anything about me? Why do you think I am not well traveled, worldly and knowledgeable about many cultures? I may be typing from Addis Ababa now for all you know.
Brian, have you lived for any length of time in a Muslim country?
It’s a simple question and doesn’t reveal anything about your identity.
Where I get off, is that people tend to address matters they have no clue about when they haven’t experienced the World as I.
No, I drive a small sedan, very good on gas consumption.
I have never live in a Muslim country.
Does that in any way disqualify me from talking about whether it is right to hold prisoners indefinitely without trial in Gitmo?
Republican,
“Have you ever lived in a Moslem country Cosmos?”
That’s your response to the false claim that they’d been captured “on the battlefield”?
That’s weak. Very, very weak.
But it’s typical of Republican’s posts. He seems to prefer attacking, and trying to discredit me, instead of discussing the topic.
No one said you were disqualified about talking about anything brian.
The prisoners are enemy combatants sworn by holy oath to kill all infidels, that includes you and me (if you are not Muslim.)
Enemy and combatant should give you a clue why they aren’t tried under the laws of our Constitution.
I would expect some sort of decision will be made in the near future as to their disposition.
Cosmos,
What part of my statement discredited you?
The battlefield has changed from the line of sight and just over the hill to a dynamic setting as fast as terrorist can manage to move.
What is the part of traveling and seeing the World more that you think is discrediting?
I think you were looking for an excuse to make my statements have less value.
It didn’t work Cosmos.
If living in Muslim country’s the standard, I was born and grew up in one. being catholic wasn’t making it any easier, either. Let me ask you this, did you ever have your family ostracize you for being of different religion? Or, Ostracize your parents for letting their children choose different religion? However, the question is why in Guantanamo? What does it hold in regards of laws of the land?
And, Flee: What have you against Christians, anyway? Mocking the song Kumbaya all the time? Are you also one of them Jesus Haters?
Republican,Here are a couple simple questions for you to answer:If somehow you were captured by the Iranian government while you were in whatever Muslim country you lived in, called an enemy, and put in one of Iran’s prisons, would you want a chance to officially refute those charges?
What would you want the US government to do in response to your capture?
Republican,
What WERE you trying to do when you asked me if I’d ever “ever lived in a Moslem country”?
Besides change the subject from most of the detainees had NOT been captured “on the battlefield”?
‘Who are the Prisoners at Gitmo?’http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umanskyb.asp“It found witnesses in Afghanistan supporting the claim that the men were indeed aid workers who, as was the case for many detainees, had been captured and sold for bounty by tribal leaders, and who, after successive rounds of selling, had ended up in U.S. custody.”
I know some intelligent people who were raised, and lived many years in the M-E. They’re much better informed re “mindset” than you are.
“We’re making enemies faster than we can kill them.”
Repub?
Holy oath to kill infidels, and infidels is what they call a foreig occupier. Damn them!
brian,
If I was captured in a Muslim country by Iranians, you most likely see the results of my “fair” treatment in the form of a straw basket with my head in it.
Just like the British soldiers being held in Iran, Repub?
Pretty evasive answer you gave.
Equating all Muslims to extremists seems a little strange for someone that supposedly has lived in a Muslim country.
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