indefinite detention

Barack Obama, detainees, Gitmo, Guantanamo, indefinite detention, Military Commissions

Gitmo task force report: work half done; federal courts preferred; Congress reworking Military Commissions

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The Obama administration’s Guantanamo task force is far behind in determining the disposition of the 229 remaining detainees being held at Gitmo. As officials work with a very few in Congress to reach agreement on revisions to the Military Commissions Act, the task force received two and six-month deadline extensions today while presenting President Barack Obama an interim report on the due date of the final report. The language within it reflects the President’s desire to move as many cases to federal court as possible yet indicates rules of evidence may preclude that choice and the task force cannot easily reconcile administration views on “rule of law” with the Laws of War.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Six months before President Barack Obama’s self-imposed deadline to close the controversial detention center at Guantanamo Bay, senior administration officials said more European allies are offering to accept detainees from there, despite Congress’s refusal to allow any such transfers to the U.S.

But serious obstacles remain if the president’s closure deadline is to be met, including resolving which prisoners might be detained indefinitely without trial, where they would be detained once Guantanamo is shut and where future military commissions might be held. One presidential task force on future interrogation policies on Monday asked for a two-month extension for submitting a report that was originally due on Tuesday. Another task force on future detention policy asked for a six-month extension for its report.

“These are hard, complicated and consequential decisions,” one senior administration official said. “Let’s not kid ourselves.”

The Los Angeles Times reports al Qaeda’s lawyers are not happy:

al Qaeda, Barack Obama, enemy combatants, Eric Holder, George W. Bush, Gitmo, Guantanamo, indefinite detention, Military Commissions, Richard Cheney, Supreme Court, Taliban

The ‘Gitmo Waltz’ by Andrew McCarthy (Obama dancing with Bush’s devils)

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The Founding Fathers must be doing back flips in their graves.

In the National Review Online this morning, Andrew McCarthy writes, “The Obama Justice Department is dancing around the words ‘enemy combatants.'”

Say this much about Messrs. Cheney, Addington, and Yoo: Whether you agree with their muscular take on executive power (I happen to agree with it), it was at least a cogent view, no matter how frightening it may have seemed to international-law professors. They were saying that the Constitution gives the president power to protect the nation from external threats to national security, and that the courts have no power to second-guess the president in this realm.

By contrast, Obama says he doesn’t need Article II; he can live within the AUMF and international law, which, he says, limit him to detaining only those who have provided substantial support to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. Fine, but what does “substantial” mean, and who are these “associated forces”? Obama won’t tell you. Those definitions may vary from “case to case,” says the guidance, such that “the contours of ‘substantial support’ and ‘associated forces’ bases of detention will need to be further developed in their application to concrete facts in individual cases.”