NY Times – Detention Camp Remains, but Not Its Legal Rationale
The Guantánamo Bay detention center will not close today or any day soon.
But the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that American law would not reach across the Caribbean to a United States naval station in Cuba.
“To the extent that Guantánamo exists to hold detainees beyond the reach of U.S. courts, this blows a hole in its reason for being,†said Matthew Waxman, a former detainee affairs official at the Defense Department.
And without that, much will change.
The decision granted detainees the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, meaning that federal judges will now have the power to check the government’s claims that the 270 men still held there are dangerous terrorists. That will force officials to answer questions about evidence that they have long deflected despite international criticism and expressions of support, from President Bush on down, for closing the camp.
Free the 270! Free Mumia! Let them go back to the battlefields to pick up right where they were caught fighting. Of course, it probably won’t be Afghanistan, where the vacationers were caught fighting with no uniforms on.
For the life of me, I will never understand why the Left is so upset by Club Gitmo, other then because they Hate Bush! That is pretty much all they have. They wrap habeaus corpus and giving these people Rights up in it, but, face it: were it President Gore, they would have zero problem with Guantanamo Bay detention center. And neither would the people on the Right.
The good news, though
The military trials against U.S.-held detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba will not be affected by a Supreme Court ruling that the detainees have the right to appeal in U.S. civilian courts, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Friday.
Mukasey, speaking at a Group of Eight meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Tokyo, said he was disappointed with the decision because it would lead to “hundreds” of detention cases being referred to federal district court.
“I think it bears emphasis that the court’s decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed,” he said. “Instead it addresses the procedures that the Congress and the president put in place to permit enemy combatants to challenge their detention.”
Of course, all sorts of terrorist loving groups and people, such as the ACLU (who forgot the A stands for American) will start appealing the al Qaeda members detention shortly.
Stop being so sensational. The courts insist that the military show their evidence against the people being held in Guantanimo. If there is valid evidence that indicates a person may be a terrorist, then there is a valid reason for detention. The only way they would all go free is if the government had no evidence of guilt other than a name that was screamed out while someone was being tortured…….but that couldn’t be the only proof they have, is it?
For people who scream about liberals be communists (nationalized health care being one thing that elicits said screams) it’s amazing that you want to return to the gulags of Stalinist Russia so much.
[…] Let’s not forget about surrender monkey. […]
Half the fun in blogging is being sensational! 🙂
As far as gulags go, these are not our own citizens, but al Qaeda members caught on the battlefield in Afghanistan, a military action those on the left supposedly approved of.
Love those ACLU types who can’t imagine why terrorists shouldn’t be treated in the same way that American citizens are, except of course that they are terrorists and not American citizens. But such breath taking idiocy shouldn’t be unexpected from a group of people that airvbrush history.
During WWII the US dealt with German troops who violated the rules of war summarily. NO access to US courts, no gourmet meals, no ACLU.
In fact captured troops have never had access to US courts, so we now get to see that we live not in a representative democracy but an autocracy of five unelected loons.
Perhaps one of the many progressives can point out where in the Constitution and the 200 plus years of case law that supports the Supreme Jesters decision.
Just another example of why our government needs to be torn down and started again, after the lawyers and academics are dealt with in a Shakesperian manner.
The Nazis that hung (and deservedly so) at Nuremburg in 1946 should have been muzzies, for they would have been given gourmet meals, soccer balls, prayer rugs and beads… SIEG HEIL, JA VOL? And most of the Nazi saboteurs that came ashore on Long Island and Florida in 1942 were ELECTROCUTED by Democrat FDR, eh? Release them to the HOUSE OF CONGRESS on house arrest!!! They’ll be great baby sitters?
William: So it’s okay to torture them when they aren’t Americans? We took them in our custody, we have restricted their freedoms and movement, so they deserve the same basic rights guaranteed by the Geneva Convention.
Several of the detainees are children. I’m not so sure about that “caught on the battlefield” for some of them. One of the adult detainees was held as a terrorist because someone said their friend was a suicide bomber (a big surprise to the “terrorist”, the German government, and the “suicide bomber” friend, who is alive and currently living in Germany). Sounds to me like these charges need a bit more oversight than they’ve been receiving to date.
I guess it depends on your definition of torture is. Sleep deprivation, hot/cold, barking dogs, and loud music do not consitute torture to me. And, before you get going on waterboarding, it was done a grand total of 3 times to high value subjects. Hell, our own troops in some positions go thru it.
So far, I am still waiting for a better idea then Gitmo and holding these people from Democrats. Nothing but pontification with no plans, otherwise known as whining.
But, no, they do not deserve Geneva Convention rights. They were not fighting for a government that was a signatury to the GC. They were not fighting in uniforms, making them enemy combatants, and, we are allowed by the GC to detain all of them caught on the battlefield for the duration of the conflict.
If we accord them POW status, we can also hold them for the duration.
Hell, these guys are eating better then they ever did. Their medical treatment is better then they ever go.
So, let’s say we trie them in court. They are found guilty. They go right back to a military holding facility.
What do you suggest we do with them? When we release some, they go back out and fight. And it isn’t because we made them mad. They were already part of the Islamic extremist movement and hated us, not to mention all non-Islamic civilization, and fought against us.
Release these 270 islamofascist butchers to the 19 Blue States of Socialism! A non-pork cookout at Ryans apartment? How about at Ground Zero? The lunes in these blue states are loonier than KLM and islamo incorporated!!