Moe Lane

(H/T: @andylevy) Amazing what one Senatorial election can do. Like, say, make a Presidential administration pay attention to local political concerns for a change.

The Obama administration has abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials.

The reversal marks the latest setback for an administration that has been buffeted at every turn as it seeks to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And without the backdrop of Ground Zero for a trial, the administration will also lose some of the rich symbolism associated with its attempt to forge a new approach to handling high-value al-Qaeda detainees.

“New York is out,” said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been officially announced. “We’re considering other options.”

Try Gitmo. The unilateralist, simplisme cowboy put them there in the first place for a reason, you know. In fact, he actually had a reason for pretty much everything he did…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Slapdash, or scaredy-cat?  Does it matter?

The lack of self-respect in the Obama administration astounds me, sometimes.  From the (probably-now abortive) pushback on the call to shut down repatriating AQ terrorists to Yemen:

“I am aware of a lot of people pointing back at the way the transfers were handled under the Bush administration that apparently they have some concerns about that,” said the official, who had not seen the senators’ letter. “I didn’t hear many of those concerns at the time, but there were obviously hundreds and hundreds of detainees that were transferred under the old regime.”

The official hadn’t also seen Sen. Feinstein’s (D) own shared concern about said repatriation, which as Ed Morrissey notes is a serious problem for the drive to close Gitmo.  But never mind that, right now: what gives with all the unforced errors?  I mean, if this was an unintentional attempt to give offense, it’s pretty sloppy thinking; and if it was intentional, well, way to go with putting words in the administration’s mouth there, Sparky.  A true progressive would have had the elementary courage to put his or her Bush Derangement Syndrome on the record.

Well, either way I can’t say that I’m surprised.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Ben Lerner asks a couple of questions that this administration doesn’t want to answer:

So what happens if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 masterminds, whose trials Attorney General Eric Holder has decided will take place in the criminal justice system in New York, get off on a technicality or are somehow O.J.-Simpsoned by a jury? Can we still hold them? If not, where do they go?

At its simplest, one of two things will happen:

1. They get let go.  That means that the guy who planned the 1993 WTC attack and the murder of Daniel Pearl (to give just two examples) walks out onto an American street, free and happy.
2. They stay locked up, and to the Devil with the court system.  No, I don’t [expletive deleted] know why captured terrorists were given legal rights and a trial if an unfavorable result was going to be ignored anyway, either.

Those are the options: media circus, or show trials.  The administration had better well hope they do a better job at handling this than they have at… well, everything… so far.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Hot Air) Took him long enough:

President Obama acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that his administration would miss a self-imposed deadline to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by mid-January, admitting the difficulties of following through on one of his first pledges as president.

[snip]

On Guantánamo, Mr. Obama said that he now hoped to shut down the detention facility sometime next year, but he did not set a new deadline.

Translation: Gitmo isn’t closing in 2010, either – which means that it probably isn’t closing, period.  Which is something that I’ve known was going to be happening for months.  But then, I’m not the Fortunate Son.

Moe Lane

PS: Next time?  Run for and serve as Governor of something, Mr. President.  It helps cut down on rookie mistakes like this.

Crossposted to RedState.

They’ve got a deadline coming up, but the Democrats are confident that they can let the clock run out without actually closing the facility that they’ve carefully turned into the symbol of all American governmental evil over the last eight years. It’ll require a tremendous amount of baldfaced lying and epic-level hypocrisy, but the Democrats are up to the challenge. They were born for this.

Still, don’t worry: it’ll still all be Bush’s fault.

White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. “I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives,” he said.

I wait with baited breath for the day that this administration announces that the stubborn patch of crabgrass on the White House lawn is due to Republican operatives sneaking onto the grounds at night to spread seeds. My best guess? Probably May of 2011. They’ll announce it on a Friday, so as to distract from explaining why they still hadn’t closed Gitmo, repealed DoMA, or ended Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

It wasn’t until I read this AoSHQ post about the delay in the detention report (preliminary details here) that I started counting off the months on my fingers.  Six months from July 21st makes… January 21st, more or less.

The work of a Justice Department-led task force, which had been scheduled to send a report on detention policy to President Obama on Tuesday, will be extended for six months, according to senior administration officials. A second task force examining interrogation policy will get a two-month extension to complete its work, which had also been due Tuesday.

[snip]

The officials said the administration remains committed to closing the prison in Cuba by January 2010…

I fail to see how.  After the fold is the relevant text of the original Executive Order: note that it is dated January 22, 2009. (more…)

That’d be the one mandated by the President’s 01/22/2009 Executive Order that was supposed to reflect a clean break with the past; it’s supposed to be a review and critique of our detention policy, particular those of illegal combatants.  It and a review of interrogation techniques (mandated by this Executive Order) were scheduled for today, and both are absolutely necessary for the administration to have if they want to close down Gitmo.  Having these out will be a real shot in the arm for progressives who feel that the White House is dragging its feet on this issue…

Obama’s Gitmo Task Force Blows Its Deadline

An Obama administration task force set up to develop a plan for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will miss its first deadline this week—and put off a key report—amid continued divisions over how to resolve one of the president’s thorniest policy dilemmas.

The task force, set up on Obama’s second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21, outlining a long-term detention plan for detainees captured in counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantánamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a “few months,” a senior administration official told NEWSWEEK.

Or not. Via @allahpundit. (more…)

Let’s see: Mark Sanford’s disgraced, Michael Jackson’s dead, that couple that everybody else in the universe obsessed over divorced or something, and the Democrats in Congress managed to pass the Twenty-First century’s answer to Smoot-Hawley – yes, this would be a nigh-perfect time to break the news that indefinite detention’s back on the agenda. The only way that it would have been better timing would have been if Tiger Woods had broken his leg again, in fact.

White House Is Drafting Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war.

Not much else to say, except of course that this isn’t really a surprise. It’s Gitmo or extraordinary rendition; other countries need to be bribed or browbeaten into openly taking our illegal combatants, and they are certainly distinctly unwelcome on American soil. If I had to guess, we’re going to end up with extraordinary rendition – and no, that isn’t the right answer.

Not my responsibility, though: I voted for the other guy.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Heckuva job there, Barry.

You know, it’s not the fact that we’re apparently on the verge of toppling another foreign government that bemuses me, per se; toppling foreign governments is one of those things that the United States of America simply does, as a byproduct of our very existence. Whether or not that’s an inherently good thing is going to be a matter of some debate – particularly if you’re somebody who’s never lived under one or another of the unpleasant regimes that we’ve absentmindedly obliterated, over the years*. So I’m not particularly startled at the thought that it may be about to happen again.

Still. Bermuda?

Crockwell tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Bermudians are very concerned about the potential threat the Uighurs pose to the security and economy of Bermuda, and are outraged by the secretive and unilateral manner in which Bermuda premier Dr. Ewart Brown decided to accept the detainees.

“There’s a great deal of anxiety right now,” says Crockwell. “We have not received any information at all in terms of who these individuals are.”

“We hear reports that they have been associated with al Qaeda … that they were trained in terrorist camps,” as well as reports that the men are innocent. “So we don’t know” how much a security risk the former detainees pose. Crockwell says that the Bermudian people and members of parliament don’t know where the Uighurs are now being housed by the government.

“We think the premier, who made a unilateral decision, has put this country at risk. We believe that when there’s uncertainty we have to err on the side of caution,” Crockwell adds. Crockwell’s United Bermuda Party has already moved a motion of no confidence against Brown to remove him as the leader of parliament. He says that a “member of the backbench has stated not even the cabinet was informed of this decision,” which Crockwell described as a “unilateral autocratic decision made by one man who has created a national crisis for the island of Bermuda.”

(more…)

Means ‘no*.’

As Track-A-’Crat notes, the administration is at best spinning its difficulties to get anybody else to take the Uighurs. The President is claiming that there have been no hard commitments, which implies that negotiations for giving some over to Germany are still going on:

Strictly speaking, that may be true. But according to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Germany has long since blocked the idea of accepting Guantanamo detainees — and has done so without having to issue an outright rejection.

In talks at the end of May, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble presented US Attorney General Eric Holder with a list of criteria to be fulfilled before Germany would take nine Uighur detainees. Schäuble said Washington needed to present a clear case as to why the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in north-western China, couldn’t be taken in by the US or other countries. He also said America had to offer proof that they weren’t dangerous, and that they had a personal connection to Germany. He told Holder that Germany was unable to accept people who couldn’t travel to the US on a simple tourist visa.

(more…)

Because while Dick Cheney may have won the battle of public opinion, it’s the President who makes the final call.

Now that it’s come out that the President’s stance on Gitmo is deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people (via @BrianFaughnan):

WASHINGTON — Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to closing the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and moving some of the detainees to prisons on U.S. soil, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.

By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantanamo shouldn’t be closed. By more than 3-1, they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states.

…he has an unparalleled change to show his leadership. Now is the time for the President to come out with his detailed, specific, and comprehensive plan for closing down the prison at Gitmo and incarcerating its prisoners on American soil.  No matter how unpopular it might be.

We’ll get a response from the White House any moment now.  I’m certain of it.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Maybe Ed Morrissey is even more of a brazen optimist than I am. Having this President openly acknowledge that Gitmo serves a useful purpose and should be retained would be like having the Pope come out and declare ex cathedra that Hell was actually a pretty cool vacation spot, down to the likely reaction of certain members of the base.

Which is not to say that Gitmo is going to close. People just need to… forget that Gitmo was supposed to close, that’s all.

Moe Lane

PS: I get the impression that the Uighurs are turning into one of those convenient complications for this administration.

Crossposted to RedState.

Hardin, Montana – a very small, very poor town with a very new, very empty jail, is willing to take on the responsibility of holding Gitmo detainees:

Hardin borrowed $27 million through bonds to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility in hopes of creating new employment opportunities. The jail was ready for prisoners two years ago, but has yet to house a single prisoner.

People here say politics in the capital of Helena has kept it empty. But the city council last month voted 5-0 to back a proposal to bring Gitmo detainees — some of the most hardened terrorists in the world — to the facility.

Montanan Senators (both of whom are Democrats) wet themselves in response:

The state’s congressional leaders have lined up against the plan. “Housing potential terrorists in Montana is not good for our state,” Max Baucus, the state’s senior Democratic senator, wrote to [economic development director Greg Smith]. “These people stop at nothing. Their primary goal in life, and death, is to destroy America.”

Adds Sen. Jon Tester, “I just don’t think it’s appropriate, that’s all. I don’t think they know what they’re asking for.”

(more…)

Another good bit from Liz Cheney:

Allahpundit is a little surprised that Liz’s popularity with the base has risen so quickly; I’m not. For whatever reason, a full-throat defense of Bush’s decisions on how to fight the GWOT were few and far between during the Bush administration itself, and that grated with Republicans. It grated on me, in fact, and I take the position that Bush actually didn’t have much choice in the matter. So, when Liz showed up last month and casually obliterated Norah O’Donnell… water to thirsty soil, my droogies. Like water to thirsty soil.

I will note one thing, however: while it would have been nice to have this conversation during the last campaign, it wouldn’t have happened even if Cheney had somehow been running for President. Based on the actual campaign and extrapolating, the Democrats would have instead run on a platform that equally highlighted Cheney’s age, his aim, and his lesbian daughter.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

“The rule is – jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today.”
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Fresh from Senator Webb’s decision to play bellwether – or Judas goat? – on the retreat from Gitmo (see also here) we have this latest word on the Matter of Gitmo:

AP source: Democrats won’t fund Guantanamo closing

By ANDREW TAYLOR – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison until the administration comes up with a satisfactory plan for transferring the detainees there, a top Democrat said Tuesday.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo is not dead — only that the funding will have to wait until the administration devises an acceptable plan to handle the closure and transfer the detainees. Obama has promised to close the military prison by January.

[snip]

It appears to be a tactical retreat. Once the administration develops a plan to close the facility, congressional Democrats are likely to revisit the topic, provided they are satisfied there are adequate safeguards.

(more…)

You have the right to neither surprise, nor a sense of betrayal.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Hot Air readers.

Oh, Webb is saying that he’s merely against the timetable, but that’s just political-speak for ‘I need to start laying down the groundwork for my retreat on this issue.’ By this time next year he’ll be telling everybody how he’s fully satisfied that Obama’s ‘reform’ of Gitmo addresses the issues brought up during the campaign, etc, etc, etc. Amazing how quickly some of these guys catch Washington Establishment Disease, huh? (more…)

Oh, how I will get yelled at for this.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. You may find this lighter fare on vamprirism studies amusing.

I understand that the PMA thing requires a distraction; but this?

In each case, Alexandria demonstrated the kind of courage and patriotism that can be traced to the city’s roots as the home town of George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

“Courage” I will grant for General Lee, readily enough. I even think that he did what he thought was the right thing. However, speaking as someone whose home states contributed the 69th New York Infantry, the 1st New Jersey Brigade, and the 9th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry to the Army of the Potomac… I feel that we should reserve the designation of “patriotism” for those individuals who, generally speaking, do not enter into armed rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States of America.

Although I must admit: it almost obscures the fact that the man has just volunteered his Congressional District to hold a bunch of vicious terrorists indefinitely. As I said before, that’s one heck of a distraction.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Just One Minute) Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, you know:

U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

[snip]

When President Obama suspended Guantánamo cases after his inauguration on Jan. 20, many participants said the military commission system appeared dead.

Mind you, other people suggested that the President’s actions back then were possibly just an attempt to give him maneuvering room while he came up with a way to keep the status quo going.  Which leads to an interesting scenario: let us say that the President decides to run military tribunals for Gitmo detainees.  Let us also say that he (with a little help from Congress*) steamrollers over current opposition to those tribunals.  Once those tribunals are done, and the existing detainees are processed… what’s stopping the President from continuing to keep Gitmo operating?  After all, did he not just ‘reform’ it?  It’d certainly be cheaper to keep an existing facility going than to shut it down and create a new one.  Fiscal responsibility is good, right?

And what would any critics plan to do about it, anyway?

Vote Republican?

Moe Lane

PS: Jim Geraghty: “All Barack Obama Statements Come With an Expiration Date. All Of Them.”

*Not to mention his Old and New Media lapdogs, many of whom would reveal themselves in the course of said steamrolling.

Crossposted to RedState.

The best part?  When she took pity, and gave him the answer.

And objectively speaking, the refs should have stopped the fight about halfway through. Not that either I or Brutally Honest would have thanked them for that: this was just too choice for words.

If you’re wondering who won this exchange, either you haven’t watched it yet or you’re not willing to admit the answer. When the room shuts up to listen to one person over another; when that person demonstrates on two separate occasions that she’s infinitely more knowledgeable on the subject than the person she’s ‘debating;’ and when that person brushes off her aide in order to rip a few more strips of flesh… well. Don’t go up against the varsity team if you’re not ready to play.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Brother Pejman of RedState) As it stands, there’s a problem with this report, and it’s not what you think:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon says the Guantanamo Bay prison meets the standard for humane treatment laid out in the Geneva Conventions, according to a report for President Barack Obama, who has ordered the terrorist detention center closed within a year.

The report recommended some changes, including an increase in group recreation for some of the camp’s more dangerous or less compliant prisoners, according to a government official familiar with the study. The report also suggested allowing those prisoners to gather in groups of three or more, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not officially been released.

(more…)