Reality’s a bitch.
From the Washington Post:
The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.
Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president’s January deadline.
Three months into the Justice Department’s reviews, several officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees cannot be charged or released.
Under one White House draft that was being discussed earlier this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review.
But some senior Democrats see longterm detention as tantamount to reestablishing the Guantanamo system on U.S. soil. “I think this could be a very big mistake, because of how such a system could be perceived throughout the world,” Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.)
One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities.
In his rush to appease his pandering followers and the rest of the whining world, Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo by January of 2010 so that we would not incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.
He just forgot to come up with an actual plan for doing so.
Now, he wants to pass an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely
In other words, this is Guantanamo Lite.
No matter if they are detained in a SuperMax prison, military installation, or in another country, it is the same thing.
Just one more instance of Obama’s unintentional validation of a legitimate Bush administration policy.
The left’s hero of hope and change looks more like an impotent, bumbling goof everyday.
