Boumediene v. Bush

9/11, Barack Obama, Boumediene v. Bush, Debra Burlingame, detainees, Gitmo, Guantanamo, September 11, USS Cole

President Obama wrong on SCOTUS decision, admitted Gitmo is ‘pristine, professional operation’ to 9/11 and USS Cole families

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Friday, Debra Burlingame was among the 40 family members of the 2,975 murdered on September 11 and the 17 sailors murdered aboard the USS Cole who met with President Obama. During the meeting, President Obama was wrong on the law, wrong about what Boumediene v. Bush afforded the detainees held at Guantanamo, and stated the public’s perception about Guantanamo is confused with Abu Ghraib. … There is more.

She spoke with talk-radio host Steve Malzberg this afternoon about the meeting; here is the audio:

Editor — Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, she co-founded 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America, in 2004.

Update: See a report on today’s ‘Keep Gitmo Open‘ press conference in D.C., with Senator James Inhofe, 9/11 family members Lorraine Arias-Beliveau, Geraldine Davie, Hamilton Peterson, and Debra Burlingame, and Gold Star mother Debbie Lee.

Boumediene v. Bush, Hamdan, unlawful combatants, War on Terror

America owes no quarter to unlawful combatants

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I am a former soldier, not a lawyer. I view the recent majority rulings of our Supreme Court concerning unlawful combatants such as in Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan, and Boumediene as adding, not detracting, to the bloody chaos of war. In addition, the entire debate about using intelligence as evidence against the unlawful combatants, even that which was derived by coercive techniques, is flawed. Perhaps we should not pull the wings off flies like Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during this War on Terror but misery should be an unlawful combatants only lot in life.

Beyond extending our Constitution protections to non-citizens outside our borders and territories, we have ceded legal protections to unlawful combatants that wholly operate outside modern civilization’s Laws of Wars. Lawyers, including many who have worn military uniforms for decades, seem to have lost all sight of why those laws evolved and deliberately left unlawful combatants unprotected.