President Nixon's Moon Landing

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

It's red polish AND blood. Sarah Palin hunts liberals-- AND Moose.

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[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 4, 2011 1:34:28 GMT -5 hello fromWarsaw said:

"Once elected, to his great credit, Obama continued many of the Bush policies that he had vehemently opposed during his campaign. He even effectively overrode his own executive order to close Gitmo in 12 months."

Baloney- He did EXACTLY what he said he would do, unless blocked by PUBS...

Warsaw, he did EXACTLY what he said he would NOT do. He was not "blocked by pubs" in January 2009 at which time he ORDERED Gitmo closed "within a year".

You know how long a year is, right? And you're clear on the meaning of "within", correct? And Republicans took office in January 2011, right?

articles.cnn.com/2009-01-22/politics/guantanamo.order_1_detention-guantanamo-bay-torture?_s=PM:POLITICS

Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.

During a signing ceremony at the White House, Obama reaffirmed his inauguration pledge that the United States does not have "to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."

The president said he was issuing the order to close the facility in order to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism."

And Gitmo is STILL open. We still have warrantless wiretaps-- he did NOT repeal the patriot act. And Obama will go Bush one better-- he has ordered INDEFINITE detentions even for terrorists who are aquitted at trial...

www.talkleft.com/story/2009/7/8/15175/41817

As someone who has argued that there could be a sound, fair, constitutional and Geneva compliant preventive detention system, it seems that every day the Obama Administration takes positions that would shock even a "centrist" (snark) like me. Glenn Greenwald details the latest:

Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD's General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial.
Unbelievable. Now, if we are going to have preventive detention (and I have explained my view on how it could be done before), you can not place someone in preventive detention AFTER acquittal. This is just ridiculous. More . . .


Again, a preventive detention system would have to be based on a POW-style approach imo (outlined here and here.

It is true of course that prisoners of war can be charged with crimes independent of their status as POWs. But it seems clear that that is not what the Obama Administration is contemplating. The idea appears to be try some detainees on the charges that would establish a combatant status and reserve the right to hold a detainee even if acquitted on such charges.