The Detainee Saga
I have blogged before about the silly argument that US prisons cannot handle terrorists (hint: they already do). But there is another issue here. Even if Congress can refuse to pay for closing GITMO and transferring these prisoners, I'm not sure they can block the actual transfer.
The way I see it, GITMO is a military base. The detainees are held by the US military. Therefore, as CIC, Obama could order them transferred to any military installation that he sees fit, sans any Congresssional approval.
This is already happening:
Meanwhile, an Obama administration official said that the administration plans to announce Thursday that a top al-Qaida suspect held at Guantanamo Bay will be sent to New York for trial.
Ahmed Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S., and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court.
My guess is that Obama is playing a long game here. He lets Congress play NIMBY leading up to the mid-term elections. This keeps their constituents happy and prevents any seat losses over what is, in reality, a silly issue.
In the meantime the administration will quietly scale back the camp. A few detainees will be released, a few will be tried in US courts, a few in military tribunals. By 2010, Obama's set date to close the GITMO camp, it will have already outlived its usefulness with the Dem Congressional majority intact.
Obama can close the prison without the supplemental money, imho.
The debate is part theatre and part real debate. The public part tends to be mostly the former except, I believe, for actual elections which aren't fraudulent. The theatrics do affect votes, but they mostly have a role (in a larger theatre) of exemplifying an adversarial process aimed at airing issues from more than one viewpoint.
The real detainee issue (meaning, skip the theatrical issues) is manifold, it has several aspects which must be covered and those aspects are not all in the same plane of discourse. Detainees can be considered to fall into various categories:
Detainees who were basically innocent and should be repatriated
D. who were basically innocent but cannot be sent "home" now
D. who were Taliban or other "soldiers" and should, imo, be treated as POWs and held or released in Afg.
D. who were AQ operatives or associates but largely incidental (a chauffeur, for instance)
D. who were AQ operatives who were significant and might return to the "war"
D. who were AQ leaders/materminds
D. not at Gitmo incl. people in Iraqi prisons or holding camps, or other places in the world.
D. who were not AQ and not merely innocents.
The lines are not always clearly drawn between categories, thus further complicating things.
May 23, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink