Comments on: Obama Team Crafts Plan To Close Gitmo

Team Of Legal Advisers Hopes To Release Many Detainees, Try Others In U.S., But How?

I think it would be very important that before anyone makes comment they should view two programs by PBS Frontline.
Number one is Frontlines: Bush%u2019s War and two; Bill Moyer%u2019s: Torturing Democracy. {Sorry I could only find the transcript.}

Links: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/talk/index2.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10102008/transcript2.html

After viewing these Tell me if bush is not a war criminal.
Yes President Obama has a massive task ahead and it is made harder with arm-chair presidents that can%u2019t wait to say they know better. So if you think you know tell us and maybe you could take the job and just see how easy it is.

President Obama has my full support and I think it will be best if we all sit back and watch and just remember that if not for the Constitution, which bush did everything to subvert, bush would have been our next hitler.

[sly_64]

Rights aren''t rights if someone can take em away. They''re priveledges. That''s all we''ve ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get''s shorter, and shorter, and shorter.

[sly_64]

If anyone thinks you have rights in this country , you''re really fooling yourself. Rights are made up , and can be taken away in one shot.

In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That''s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind.

[formrusmcsgt]

At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday that President George W. Bush has faced many challenges in trying to close the prison.
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And in his customary fashion, simply shied away from those challenges....

[closethippy1]

Skeptics need to be reminded that Mr. Obama was a professor of Constutional law so he knows what he''s doing.
Please give the man the benefit of the doubt.

[evian_ycnan]

I do think, however, that Mr. Obama is still trying to appease the right wing neocon-derthals, and therefore won`t have the stones to bring Bush to justice, unless we the people let him know in no uncertain terms that we demand it.

Posted by brianbwb at 05:19 AM : Nov 11, 2008

All things in time; Justice grinds slowly but it does, nonetheless, grind. When someone in the soon-to-be-cleansed DoJ gathers enough evidence, and when someone in The Hague exerts enough international pressure, then Bush will become grist. Until then, Mde. LaFarge knits.

[evian_ycnan]

some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.
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How do you extend "constitutional rights" to non-citizens?

Posted by slim1h2o at 05:28 AM : Nov 11, 2008

You don''t. You call them to "persons" and "people" and the "accused" and don''t concern youself with the Constitutional rights that specifically mention "citizen" (starts with the 14th). Nowhere in the bill of rights does it say "citizen".

[slim1h2o]

some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.
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How do you extend "constitutional rights" to non-citizens?

[brianbwb-2009]

"I gotta believe that 99% of that "classified" nonsense is nothing more than the idiot-sons covering his arse from war crimes charges..." Posted by hadenough43

Now that both Rumsfeld and Bush have admitted conspiracy to violate international, and US laws, also in light of the fact that there were no WMDs, it is clear that not enough arse was covered.

I do think, however, that Mr. Obama is still trying to appease the right wing neocon-derthals, and therefore won''t have the stones to bring Bush to justice, unless we the people let him know in no uncertain terms that we demand it.

[skeezix06]

Good. It''s about time.

[brianbwb-2009]

"The closing of Guantanamo and the release of the detainees is more a thing to do with relinquishing that territory back to Cuba, and closing down that base for good. There''''s not enough money for it." Posted by william2512

And about time, it has been a pointless base since the end of the missile crisis.

[brianbwb-2009]

"Does the territory he was captured in even have a constitution?" Posted by william2512

Iraq was a fully functioning society, with a working constitution, at the time of the US invasion.

"Is that a normal thing for a war? If yer captured by the enemy yer tried in their courts?" Posted by william2512

Unless Bush can charge these people with specific crimes, then they should be repatriated as released prisoners of war. Resisting an illegal invasion is not a crime, nor are they "enemies", except to Bush, and to the handful of suckers that still think Saddam had WMDs.

"I will bring charges against the person who signed the release paper for the killer and bring impeachment charges against the abettor President who released that killer." Posted by ThatGuy56

You would fail. Bush is the one who illegally invaded, they were, at the time of capture defending themselves, or resisting the invasion, or just student demonstrators, which is their right under the laws of sovereign nations. Some just unlucky victims of reward scams.

I gotta believe that 99% of that "classified" nonsense is nothing more than the idiot-sons covering his arse from war crimes charges..

[tmittelstaed]

The US has a history of NOT prosecuting criminals where it would possibly jepordize intelligence gathering. Look at all the Nazi''s spirited out of Germany at the end of the war to work on the rocket program. The only answer to this problem is to release everyone they aren''t willing to publically try, and pretend they were innocent. Since these people were picked up in Iraq, they can be released in Iraq and ignore any complaints from the Iraq provisional government. If that government wants to arrest/shoot/whatever any of the released detainees on their way out of the country, oh well!

[babooph]

"Too difficult" for the Bush bunch-I bet sensible people clear his "difficulties" up fast !How did that idiot get the White House???!!!

[smurfcrusher]

AWESOME! Finally a leader who believes that folks are innocent until proven guilty. No more kangaroo courts. No more subversion of the Constitution. No more indefinite prison terms because evil people turned innocent men in for a $4,000 bounty.

Looks like the terrorists are about to lose one of their most powerful recruiting tools - President Elect Obama is taking the wind out of their sails.

[msubulldogtx]

What? Oprahma didn''t vote on the nonbinding Senate bill last year opposing bringing detainees to the United States? What a surprise. Some of them are probably his relatives and the only way he can get them into the country legally is to bring them in himself.

It''s nice having an African American president. It really is. But couldn''t we have nominated one WITH SOME BRAINS?!