How Can Obama Continue to Support Indefinite Detention?

[tekisui]

The issue of Guantanamo is not whether it will close. The issue is whether we will continue to intern civilians without charge, indefinitely. President Obama has argued that we can. He dropped the 'enemy combatant' label, but has not change the bush stance that we have the right to indefinite detention without charge.

I just came from a lecture given by an ACLU lawyer working pro bono for some Guantanamo detainees. He spoke of how Obama reinforced bush's position on detention without charge. He spoke of Holder's DoJ fighting against the rights of those detained. He said access is getting tougher under Obama.

Some 192 detainees remain interned in Guantanamo Bay, with only 1 being charge with an actual crime. Moving them to other detention centers does nothing to correct the violation of international law that is indefinite detention.

It is long past time for Obama and Holder to correct this violation, but instead they have supported and defended it. You'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for Obama to do the right thing.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[glowing]

2. The problem is that these guys are guilty, but putting them into regular court

would automatically throw the entire case out because they have been tortured or the info was gained by torture for their capture.. Torture methods used in obtaining information in US courts is illegal.. The judges would have no other option than to dismiss these cases... AND this would turn actual terrorists/ bad guys back into the world..

Then there are the problems with finding a place for any of the detainees to live. We bribed countries with money for those weigers..

[tekisui]

4. You are inccorret in assuming guilt.

For those that have received trials, less than 10% have been found guilty. The rest have been released, and not because of how the 'evidence' was acquired.

[Webster Green]

6. How do you know they are guilty?

That's what trials are for. :wtf:

[tekisui]

7. That poster sounds like Bush and Holder.

Only try the guilty ones. Total bullshit.

[Webster Green]

11. I don't get it. There is some sort of mass psychosis occurring.

This shit was straightened out in the thirteenth century.

Habeas Corpus rights go back to the Magna Carta. :wtf: :banghead: :wtf: :banghead: :wtf: :banghead:

[glowing]

13. Perhaps I shouldn't say guilty.. because that assumes they have been tried

in a fair court and treated in a humane manner. I should say they are assumed guilty and perhaps they really are mass terrorists.. I don't know. That's the big argument coming from Pres. Obama on a specific number of the detainees (I think its 48?). No one knows and may never know why these certain people are dangerous, but cannot be tried in a traditional court... Its been said that because of our torture methods, these assumed dangerous persons would walk under the law.. Rachel made a big point of going over these specific persons that were in limbo land because of Bush torture methods... AND wouldn't have been better to use traditional known interrogation methods and try them thru courts.. Creating Gitmo created legal nightmares because Gitmo is illegal itself and torture is a high crime.. and dealing with our own war criminals would be an amazingly effective method of reducing the threat of terror.

[tekisui]

15. First, the other 144 (using your number) are presumed

to be innocent, at likely are. The lawyer tonight showed how when the vast majority of the detainees are given a real hearing, the evidence against them is not just inadmissible due to torture or tainted evidence, but is wholly fabricated with no substantial claims.

Of those they presume to be guilty, give them a fair trial and let the chips fall where they may. Anything less than that for ALL of the detainees is placing politics over human lives.

[glowing]

16. I guess to make an argument, I should do some research.. but there is a specific number (lower no)

that are people Pres. Obama does not want released... Lindsey Graham was talking about these specific individuals and keeping them under the term of enemy combatant... to hold indefinately. Its not all of them or the most of them we've kept forever. The whole thing is a mess. The wars were illegal and Gitmo is illegal.. and without addressing war criminals, weeding thru the debris left in the wake of legalizing torture and indefinate detention is just wading thru the leftover mine fields.

[rug]

9. The problem is that they will be released because they were tortured, not that they were tortured?

:crazy:

[glowing]

14. I suppose... But say Ted Bundy was tortured, do you still let him out because

he was tortured? There is a reason for NO torture.. There is a reason we have laws. Bush subverting the law and Congress helping him has made it really hard to go forward without looking backwards... Bush should have been impeached and tried himself along with a lot of other people on both sides of the aisle... Our govt needs a good ole house cleaning.

[tekisui]

17. Yes, if Bundy was tortured and the only evidence came from

that method, then he should not be found guilty. It is about rule of law.

[Moochy]

3. K&R

I want to know why as well. I voted (D) to change this and many other Bush policies, not to extend and legitimatize them.

There is broad consensus that the Justice Dept. was politicized under the Bush Administration, and they used it for political gain.

Is this more of the same? Staybehinds?

[tekisui]

5. Since the other was deleted, I kick for the unrecs.

Without name-calling.

I do still find it funny that DUers want to keep this from seeing more eyes.

If it were bush still in office, DUers would be beside themselves in rage with this.

[asdjrocky]

8. I worked hard in 05 to help get a majority in the House in 06.

Nothing changed. Then we worked so hard in 07 and 08. Nothing, at least on this level, other than the language has changed.

We would be up in arms if McCain was in office over this very issue.

[tekisui]

10. I am with you completely.

I have never been so jaded with politics. Human rights, civil liberties and war are the issues I care most about. Obama and the Dems have let me down for the last time. Fuck 'em. I just can't trust their bullshit anymore.

[tekisui]

12. Thanks for giving this enough recs to get to the

Greatest.

(kick)

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

18. Self-absorbed much? (nt)

[slipslidingaway]

19. knr - thanks....

Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/22/detention

"...But all year along, Barack Obama -- even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo -- has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush's due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May "civil liberties" speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President's power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already "implicitly" authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda -- thereby, as The New York Times put it, "adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies."

Today, The New York Times' Charlie Savage reports: ..."