Executive Order Being Drafted for Indefinite Detention

[The Straight Story]

A White House official confirms that officials are writing a draft executive order dealing with those Guantamano detainees to be held in indefinite detention, setting up a periodic review of the detention status "of those detainees who cannot be tried in Article III or military commissions" and are too dangerous, in the government’s judgment, to release.

In a speech at the National Archives in May 2009, President Obama acknowledged that his way forward in dealing with the terrorist threat would include indefinite detention.

“There remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people,” he said in that speech. “And I have to be honest here -- this is the toughest single issue that we will face. We're going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who've received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, or commanded Taliban troops in battle, or expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.”


http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/12/executive-order-being-drafted-for-indefinite-detention.html

[PSPS]

1. Bush's third term.

[originalpckelly]

5. You really cannot make this shit up.

And this guy knows it's wrong, he was a fucking constitutional law professor. Bush could get away with the ignorance defense, what's Obama's excuse?

[sofa king]

6. He inherited complicity.

And all the coverups, screw-ups, blowbacks, shell games and dirty tricks that the Bush Administration ran through those two terrible little wars and a dozen other places we're not supposed to know about.

At pretty much the moment he got in, President Obama had one major choice to make right away: to establish a continuity of government and therefore inherit culpability for all of the Bush Administration crimes, or to blow the lid off of the whole thing and risk who knows what? Maybe a coup attempt, or a civil war. Maybe nothing but a bunch of people who lustily deserve it being frog-hopped to federal prisons.

But from the get-go, this President chose to hold it together rather than risk shaking it apart. So now he has to continue to control the message by silencing those who might tell part of the real story. Sucks to be him, but that's the way he decided to go and he's sticking with it.

I'd like to imagine he's trying to unravel the Gordian knot behind the scenes, but I doubt even someone as adept as he can comprehend the whole tangle.

[truebrit71]

2. "in some cases because evidence may be tainted"...because we tortured them they can never go free?

...wow

Hey, don't get me wrong, I am sure that there are some very bad guys in there, but there has to be a better way than giving them all life sentences because the giggling war criminal and his boss waterboarded the shit out of them..

[TheKentuckian]

3. If he does then he parts way with the Constitution...again.

[originalpckelly]

4. I know of someone who's too dangerous to be walking free...

but I don't think he'll ever see a day at GITMO.