It's A Good Time To be George W. Bush

Let's face it, this is shaping up as George W. Bush's best month in years. The last time the 43^rd president enjoyed this kind of vindication was when a bedraggled Saddam Hussein was pulled from a hole in the ground by American soldiers in 2003. All of Barack Obama's efforts to cast the Bush administration as an immoral stain on American history have not merely collapsed, but collapsed on the heads of Bush's most public and vocal critics.

Here's a non-stammering Nancy Pelosi talking about Bush last July: "God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject."

Don't mind if I do. How about national security? It turns out that support for a criminal investigation of Bush policies yielded an important finding after all: Pelosi's own long-standing agreement with the Bush administration's toughest measures. On that point she's in sync with the rest of the country. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll found that Americans approve of the interrogation methods Bush okayed by a margin of 50% to 46%. In other words, she didn't have to go through the condemnation charade to begin with.

Then there's Iraq. That July interview with Pelosi is quite a goldmine. When faced with a 14% approval rating for Congress, she counters: "Everything I see says this is about ending the war. . . " Well, that's not happening anytime soon. Everything I see says "ending the war" was as phony as Nancy Pelosi's outrage. Hillary Clinton went to Baghdad three weeks ago to reassure the Maliki government that the Obama administration will not abandon Iraq. On top of that, Gen. Ray Odierno said the U.S. might "maintain a presence" in some Iraqi cities beyond the scheduled draw-down date if the Iraqis request it. Did Pelosi mean the other war, in Afghanistan? Obama has done an outstanding job of taking that challenge seriously, and for those keeping score, his pick of Gen. Stanley McChrystal (the man who hunted down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq) has met with the gushing approval of Dick Cheney.

And speaking of Dick Cheney: Not only has he proved to be an important and articulate defender of the Bush administration's national-security policy; his repeated interviews and statements have done Bush the service of drawing fire away from the former president. Bush not only looks wise these days; he looks modest and thoughtful as well. And Cheney's (denied) request to declassify more CIA interrogation memos explodes the myth of the "most secretive administration in American history."

Let us not forget the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility. For years adduced as a monument to the Bush administration's disdain for due process and human rights, Gitmo was slated to be shut down by Barack Obama as a first order of business. Today, the posture without a plan has come up against a bi-partisan roadblock. Thursday, the House denied the Obama administration a requested $80 million to close the facility. The Senate's version of the bill in question contains $50 million for the Pentagon to shutter the place, but the money can only be tapped 30 days after Robert Gates devises a plan to relocate detainees outside the U.S. -- so far France will take one. To top it all off, on Friday Obama announced the revival of Guantanamo military tribunals.

On Iran, the Obama administration is veering from its stance of bottomless "respect" and "perseverance." This week Obama set early October as a "target" to determine whether Iran is really deserving of all that extended goodwill. Additionally, the administration has drawn up benchmarks to gauge Tehran's cooperation in halting their march toward a nuclear weapon. As Robert Kagan put it, "[Obama's] policy toward Iran makes sense, so long as he is ready with a serious Plan B if the negotiating track with Tehran fails." The October non-surprise will be the revelation that Bush wasn't merely neglecting to smile at the mullahs and to ask nicely.

Finally, there's the strange and frankly unsettling image makeover of the Saudi royals. The Bush family's alleged intimacy with an extremist monarchy formed the very backbone of the anti-Bush industry. Yet, upon taking office Barack Obama commented on the bravery of King Abdullah and went on to virtually adopt the Saudi Peace Initiative as American policy. The administration is also seriously considering sending released Guantanamo detainees through the Saudi "jihad rehab" program. A week ago, "60 Minutes" aired a prime-time broadcast praising the same absurdity. The free pass Barack Obama gets on his all-encompassing embrace of Riyadh leaves the score of anti-Bush best sellers and documentaries looking a little less than credible.

President Obama, and the country at large, is finding out that George W. Bush's most controversial policies were not born of ideological delusion, American arrogance, or missionary zeal. They were imperfect but sound (with the exception of our ties to Riyadh) responses to complicated threats. But the validation of the last president runs a very distant second to the most compelling aspect of all this: the drama over CIA interrogations and Guantanamo will hopefully serve to set the administration on a more serious national security course. And it would be helpful if the American public finally dropped moral outrage as the preferred mode of political argumentation.

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Obama: Gitmo May Stay Open Indefinitely

FOX News is reporting that, once again, the Obama "admits" that Bush was right (without actually saying so.)

The political battle over the fate of the detainees at Gunatanamo Bay just got more contentious.

The Obama administration is considering an executive order to indefinitely imprison a small number of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a move that would be in line with Bush administration policy but already has drawn scorn from civil liberties groups.

"This is not change -- this is more of the same," Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in response to reports that surfaced Friday of the possible executive order. "If President Obama issues an executive order authorizing indefinite detention, he'll be repeating the same mistakes of George Bush, and his policies will be destined to fail as were his predecessor's."

He added, "Throwing people into prison without charge, conviction or providing them with a trial is about as un-American as you can get."

But former top Bush adviser Karl Rove said the news should be welcomed.

"We are, after all, in a war -- not an overseas contingency operations as some in the administration have suggested is the new title for it," he told FOX News. "And in a war, you take the people you sweep up on the battlefield and you hold them until the war is over or until they no longer represent a threat."

The White House is weighing the move out of concern that Congress might otherwise stymie its plans to quickly close the naval prison in Cuba.

Under the proposal, detainees considered too dangerous to prosecute or release would be kept in confinement in the U.S. or possibly overseas, two administration officials told the Associated Press on Friday. Otherwise, the White House could get bogged down for months seeking an agreement with Congress on a new legal detention system.

But that hasn't allayed the concerns of critics of the proposal.

"Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantanamo system that the president promised to shut down," Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a written statement Friday.

He added: "If the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that executive overreach, left to continue unchecked for many years, has a tendency to harden into precedent."

No final decisions have been made about the order, which would be the fourth major mandate by President Obama to deal with how the United States treats and prosecutes terror suspects and foreign fighters.

One of the officials said the order, if issued, would not take effect until after the Oct. 1 start of the 2010 budget year. Already, Congress has blocked the administration from spending any money this year to imprison the detainees in the United States -- which in turn could slow or even halt Obama's pledge to close the prison by Jan. 21.

The administration also is considering asking Congress to pass new laws that would allow the indefinite detentions, the official said.

Both the officials spoke Friday to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the still-tentative issue publicly. The possibility of an executive order was first reported by the investigative group ProPublica and The Washington Post.

Without legislative backing, an executive order is the only route Obama has to get the needed authority.

In a statement Friday night, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky cast doubt that Congress would approve funding for transferring or imprisoning detainees in the U.S. without detailed plans on how it would work.

Lawmakers this month blocked $80 million the administration had requested for transferring the detainees. Without the money, Obama's order can't be carried out.

"Bipartisan majorities of Congress and the American people oppose closing Guantanamo without a plan, and several important questions remain unanswered," McConnell said. He said Obama demanded the transfers "before the administration even has a place to put the detainees who are housed there, any plan for military commissions, or any articulated plan for indefinite detention."

Obama's order would apply only to current detainees at Guantanamo.

There are 229 detainees currently being held at Guantanamo. Obama said last month he was looking at continued imprisonment for a small number of Guantanamo detainees whom he described as too dangerous to release. He called it "the toughest issue we will face."

It's not clear how many detainees could fall into that category. Defense and Justice Department officials have privately said at least some could be freed at trial because prosecutors would be reluctant to expose classified evidence against the detainees. Some of that evidence also might be thrown out because of how it was obtained -- potentially by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

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Americans Do Not Want Gitmo Closed

Americans are strongly opposed to shutting the doors of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and moving terrorism suspects to detention centers in the U.S., according to a recent poll.

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Tuesday found that those surveyed oppose the closing of Guantanamo by more than 2-1.

By more than 3-1, respondents oppose moving the detainees to prisons within the U.S., according to the poll.

President Obama signed an executive order in January to close within a year the prison at Guantanamo. But critics charge that Obama has jeopardized U.S. national security by deciding to close Guantanamo by January 2010. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly defended harsh interrogation techniques practiced at Guantanamo, claiming they helped obtain useful information.

The poll surveyed 1,015 adults by phone from Friday through Sunday, and has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

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Obama Considers ... The Unthinkable (for the left)

The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The proposal being floated with members of Congress is another indication of President Barack Obama's struggles to establish his counter-terrorism policies, balancing security concerns against attempts to alter Bush-administration practices he has harshly criticized.

I expect there to be a large outcry over this issue, if this stands. Accusations of Obama being a "flip-flopper" from his opponents on the right, and cries of "caving-in" and returning to the "failed policies of the past" from the left.

I'm going to give Obama props on this one. It looks to me like he may be taking seriously the reality that the "terrorists" (if we can still call them that) that are being held are REALLY BAD GUYS and present a threat to our country. At the same time, we may not have enough legal evidence to hold up in a "regular jury trial" where all the rules of evidence come into play, unless they would simply confess to who they really are and what they've done.

There have been a number of times that, by his actions, Obama has said (in effect) that Bush was right on several issues related to Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and terrorism. Of course, the media has not played it that way, and never will.

Let's hope Obama gets it right on issues of national security. If he does not, then all of the decisions made on the economy, health care, infrastructure and other issues will be moot.

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$50,000,000 To Relocate Gitmo Prisoners

Amid complaints that terror suspects could be brought to the U.S., house DEMOCRATS today rebuffed the Obama administration's request for $50 million to relocate prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The most obvious observation is that for the past 4+ years, Democrats have wanted Gitmo shut down. Now they're nervous because they are afraid that some terrorists might end up in their back yards.  Actually, they are more likely afraid that the terrorists might end up in the back yards of their constituents.

But the less obvious question is this:  How can the administration have an estimate of $50 million to move the prisoners when they have no idea what they are going to do with them?

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U.N. Official Blasts Obama's Decision not to Prosecute CIA Operatives

According to Manfred Nowak, an Austrian who serves as a U.N. torture investigator, Obama's decision not to prosecute CiA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates international law.

"They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very clear," Nowak said.  "The fact that you carried out an order doesn't relieve you of your responsibility."  

What Nowak omitted, however, makes things less clear.  The Geneva convention, to which he was referring, specifically prohibits torture of soldiers in an army.  It does not refer to terrorists.  The distinction is an important one, from a legal standpoint, regardless of which side of the "to torture or not to torture" issue you fall on.

This is another instance in which I must give Obama credit.  He made the correct decision here.  If you prosecute people in an administration for matters of policy, particularly when that policy is deemed legal by lawyers within the administration, it would be a huge mistake. Any future administration official or anyone in government working under that official would be at risk for retroactive punishment in any future administration that did not like that policy.

While I disagree with most of what Obama stands for, he has shown the ability to make the right call on occasion.  This is one of those times.

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The Moral And Ethical Administration

The Obama admnistration has released information on the "torture" utilized by the CIA under the Bush administration.  The report details such things as the waterboarding techniques under the supervision of a doctor who supervised the technique and certified that it would no cause any harm to the prisoners. Sleep deprivation for a total of 96 hours was used, also causing no harm to the prisoners.  Food deprivation for relatively short periods of time we also used.  In no case was any prisoner under any threat of permanant (or even temporary) harm to a prisoner.

These techniques were used on less than 30 prisoners and apparently provided valuable information that prevented attacks by al-quaeda in the U.S.

The administration is hammering the Bush administration (as has the left for the past 6 or 7 years) for it's unethical and horrific treatment of prisoners.

Meanwhile, the same Obama administration supports the legal protection of approximately 1.3 million abortions in the United States each year.  That's 1.3 million gruesome, horrific and painful deaths that they turn a blind eye to.

I just wanted to put that into perspective.

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Report Indicates CIA "Tortured" prisoners

The International Red Cross released a report today indicating that the CIA  allowed practices that amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of al queda prisoners.

The secret report strongly implies that the United States violated international law prohibiting torture and mistreatment of prisoners.  ICRC officials were granted exclusive access to "high-value" detainees in Guantanamo Bay.  The prisoners gave detailed accounts of their "torture" which included sleep deprivation and being held naked while listening to constant music.

The CIA did not comment, but an official familiar with the report noted that the claims were not witnessed by Red Cross officials and were "unsubstantiated."  The claims came from terrorist, themselves.

The news article this comes from did not mention that no US prisoners were beheaded or permanently maimed while in US custody, as would happen had they been in the "custody" of our enemies in the war on terror.  Nor was their any mention of the fact that the US allows the ICRC access to our prisons and prisoners to investigate abuses, while many other nations do not.

I, for one, applaud the CIA and the previous administration for using whatever means necessary to keep us safe.  I doubt the current administration will be as successful in the war on terror, since they are allowing political considerations to hamper their ability to deal appropriately with terrorist groups and terrorist nations.  

Instead, the current administration wants to sit down for tea with those who want to kill us.

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September 10 is Back

ARTICLE FROM NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE:

Military Drops Cole Bombing Charges ... For Now and Possibly Forever   [Andy McCarthy]

Distressingly, there is more going on here than meets the eye.  Suffice it to say that the Defense Department's "appointing authority," which oversees all military commissions, has dismissed the charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the U.S.S. Cole bombing mastermind whose commission case I wrote about on Tuesday. 

I hate to say "I told you so," but I predicted this in Tuesday's article as one of the likely outcomes after the military judge in Nashiri's case, U.S. Army Col. James Pohl, foolishly rebuffed President Obama's reasonable request for a four-month adjournment while the new administration ponders whether military commission trials or some other option (like trials in the civilian justice) are the best way of dealing with terrorist war crimes.

This is worth recounting because there is another outcome that could very well be occasioned by Judge Pohl's folly.  As I also discussed Tuesday, it is entirely possible that

Obama will discover in Pohl’s grandstanding evidence for his own belief that terrorism cases belong in the civilian justice system, where they were before 9/11. That would be a lamentable outcome. The military commissions have not performed well, but the paradigm of detentions and prosecutions under the laws of war—whether administered by the military or by a new hybrid system with civilian judicial oversight—is essential to our security. 

If we go back to a September 10 way of doing things, under which only those who can be convicted under daunting civilian court standards may be detained, we will get September 11 results.

On that score, it is noteworthy that, before the appointing authority acted this evening, Obama had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow afternoon with victims and families of victims not only of the Cole bombing but of of the 9/11 attacks.  At a minimum, he appeared poised to announce he was dropping the Cole charges against Nashiri.  All evening, however, it has been floated from several knowledgeable sources that the president was prepared to announce the dismissal of all the commission cases — i.e., not only against Nashiri but against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters.  That suggestion is supported by the fact that the 9/11 families were invited to the White House meeting:  there would have been no need to invite them to discuss an announcement that impacted only the Cole case. 

Dismissals, if they happened, would surely be couched as "without prejudice."  That is, Obama would be able to tell the families — whether he meant it or not — that he could always re-file military commission charges if he ultimately decided that commissions, rather than civilian trials, were the best way to go.

The appointing authority's action tonight removes the pressure on Obama to do anything tomorrow.  (In truth, there was really no pressure on Obama to act tomorrow.  It just happens that tomorrow is Friday, the day when administrations traditionally announce news they'd prefer to see buried — even when the country is not already distracted by a catastrophic trillion dollar "stimulus" bill.)  Nevertheless, I would not be surprised to see the new administration go ahead and shut down all the commissions tomorrow.  It could then blame Col. Pohl for an action that involved far more than the case before Col. Pohl — which action it was going to take anyway. 

Such dismissals would get the administration out from under the four-month deadline its adjournment request would have imposed.  That is, the cases would be gone instead of suspended.  Nothing further would ever have to happen, and nothing further would happen, unless and until Obama decided what to do about all the detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay.  Maybe his ultimate decision would be to transfer the war-crimes detainees for trial in civilian court, maybe it would be to ship them to some country willing to take them, or maybe it would be to continue detaining them without trial under some new legal system.  But you could bet the ranch that war crimes defendants would never again be charged in military commissions.  Obama's antiwar base, which rejects the premise that we are at war, cannot abide such military prosecutions. 

September 10 America is back. 

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Torture? You Decide

The BBC is wailing about the horrendous torture apparently inflicted upon the 20th 9/11 hijacker Qahtani. When I watched the news the person talking about the details of the "torture" said that the treatment doled out to him was shocking. She actually seemed genuinely appalled as she began to talk- describing how Qahtani was questioned for 18 hours at a time, kept in cold conditions and *gasp* forced to wear women's clothes. The Washington Post has more-

"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows. 

Please note- this man is not a US citizen, he's a terrorist who has none of the same rights afforded by the Constitution or the Geneva Convention. And note too the details of the very real torture suffered by two US soldiers-

...two U.S. servicemen — in Geneva Convention-approved uniforms — have their hearts cut out, their testicles cut off, their penises cut off and stuffed in their mouths, arms contorted and eyes gouged? THIS is torture.

Precisely- and yet the world's media is aghast as the mistreatment of a terrorist involved in a plot which led to the mass murder of over 3,000 people. When two US soldiers are tortured, mutilated and murdered the media is lacking in the same outrage they afford a terrorist. It's a revolting double standard. Calling a terrorist's mother and sister names is not torture. Neither is threatening a man with a dog or putting women's underwear on him. Sure, it's humiliating and under normal circumstances (i.e. when dealing with a US citizen or an actual POW) it should never be countenanced- but to label mistreatment like this torture is preposterous.

Worth mentioning here too is this news on just what those released from Gitmo get up to-

According to the Pentagons report up to 61 of its former detainees have returned to a life of terrorism. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

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Obama on Shutting Down Gitmo

This week on ABC’s Sunday show, Barack Obama  admitted that his recklessly simplistic promise to the nutroots to shut down the detention facility had run into some barriers.

Namely: Reality.

President-elect Barack Obama said this weekend that he does not expect to close Guantanamo Bay in his first 100 days in office.

“I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do,” Obama said in an exclusive “This Week” interview with George Stephanopoulos, his first since arriving in Washington.

“It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” the president-elect explained. “Part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it’s true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn’t result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.”

When he says “a lot of people,” he means himself.

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