Op-ed: Obama's Broken Guantanamo Promise

The latest leaks of classified documents, which show that the U.S. government imprisoned hundreds of men at Guantánamo Bay on the most dubious “evidence,” brings to mind the question, Why hasn’t President Obama kept his promise to close the infamous prison that will forever stain America’s honor?

Read the rest of my op-ed here.

"As Warped and as Evil as It Gets."

72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process (which is what a habeas hearing is) -- after years of being in a cage without charges -- have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained. These are people who are part of what the U.S. Government continues to insist are "the worst of the worst" who remain, and whose release is being vehemently contested by the Obama DOJ.

That's from Glenn Greenwald's May 28 post. He reminds us that the Bush administration and Congress specifically forbade habeas corpus hearings for Guantanamo detainees, many of whom were swept up in raids in Pakistan without any evidence of wrongdoing. It took the Supreme Court to knock that prohibition out of the Military Commissions Act.

Think about what that means, what the people who voted for that (including 12 Democratic Senators) tried to do: had the Supreme Court not struck down that provision by a 5-4 vote in Boumediene, all of these innocent people would continue to be denied any rights of judicial review, and would unjustly languish in prison indefinitely. The people who voted for the Military Commissions Act, and the 4 Supreme Court Justices who sought to uphold it, knowingly acted to deny scores of innocent prisoners any opportunity for judicial review. That's as warped and as evil as it gets.

...It's commonplace to label something a travesty of justice, but who can deny that knowingly imprisoning innocent people for years and years while scheming to deny them all judicial review is a disgrace of historic proportions?

Read the full post. Individual lives have been ruined by this heartless U.S. policy. The stain on America will never be removed.

Preventive Detention?

Update: My full op-ed on this subject is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

The New York Times reports:

[A]s Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted. [Emphasis added.]

President-elect Obama, put a stop to this at once by categorically opposing preventive detention.

Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger, FFF