US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

Rahm doesn't wanna do anything to upset his new BFF Lindsey Graham.

lindsey graham is a fucking choad. if your strategy for the country involves him in any way you're fucking up somewhere. (did not put this in my letter)

The administration's strategy mystifies me. If the WaPo story is to be believed, Obama hopes to concede the KSM trial to the military commission in the hope of getting a Guantanamo closure. But wouldn't you get, I dunno, more political "cover" if you show how effective the civilian courts can be?

i think they'd get more political cover if they just treated any member of the GOP like absolute shit at all times. psychotics only respect getting chopped in the throat. imo.

Here's a way to make sense of it (notice I didn't say *justify* it): in parts of the world where Guantanamo is hurting the USA's image, the distinction between civilian courts and military tribunals is pretty hazy. So trading off on this to get a Guantanamo closure is "worth it".

if you show how effective the civilian courts can be?

this trial is going to take years tho...

like if O has to wait for the civilian courts demonstrate their efficacy, he may not longer be in office

not = no

So trading off on this to get a Guantanamo closure is "worth it".

What makes you think the GOP will concede this?

what makes you think the DEMS will concede this?

I was laying it out as a foreign policy move, so to speak, not a move aimed at domestic politics.

what makes you think the DEMS will concede this?

^^^the more crucial point. the fact that Obama couldn't keep his caucus behind him on this is pretty o_0

and I was taking it for granted that this is to get GOP approval to close Guantanamo. If Obama isn't going to get this, then the explanation I offered falls apart.

We don't need GOP approval to do that, especially since they have such a sterling record of clearing everything they want to do with Dems. Also yes Goole, psychochoads and sociopaths only understand the rolled-up newspaper approach to discipline.

Obama does not want to close Guantanamo imo

did he tell u that

Why on Earth not? Please discuss.

Obama personally tortures KSM once a week

I don't know why I read "KSM" and thought "Kathryn Jean Lopez" but now I am very unhappy

did he tell u that

actions > words iirc!

yeah

good point

arguing about what obama "actually" wants to do is pretty ridiculous but its the internet--this was literally the first thing he announced the day after his inauguration, the closing-guantanamo thing, its something he took an enormous amount of heat for from his own party and still hasnt budged, is apparently putting a serious amnt of political capital at risk to push through its closing...

i mean he obviously wants to keep holding ppl indefinitely so if you want to argue "guantanmo isnt a place its a ~state of mind~" than i guess youre correct

i mean he obviously wants to keep holding ppl indefinitely so if you want to argue "guantanmo isnt a place its a ~state of mind~" than i guess youre correct

DING DING. As long as Obama still believes in indefinite definition, closing Guantanamo are pretty words.

how would you guys feel if Obama just ordered summary execution of all "indefinite detainees"

it'd be cheaper for the state, and we wouldn't have to worry about where to house them!

id feel pretty weird about it, probably pretty mad, betrayed too

i mean he obviously wants to keep holding ppl indefinitely so if you want to argue "guantanmo isnt a place its a ~state of mind~" than i guess youre correct

it's "detention w/o charge" - if that's "a state of mind" then yeah it seems from his actions that that is obama's state of mind - doesn't it?

What if Obama made all indefinite detainees wear pretty dresses and have tea and crumpts with his teddy bear Growlykins?

actions > words iirc!

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Friday, March 5, 2010 12:45 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

^this

yeah ok so we all agree

obama "wants" to keep holding people indefinitely

id feel pretty weird about it, probably pretty mad, betrayed too

yeah I wasn't being serious just figured that'd be the most I DRINK YR MILKSHAKE way to solve the problem

Michelle Obama already warned America's youth that crumpets are fattening, Dan.

obama "wants" to keep holding people indefinitely

I don't think he "wants" this so much as a vast majority of the American people actually really do wholeheartedly want it

What if Obama made all indefinite detainees wear pretty dresses and have tea and crumpts with his teddy bear Growlykins?

then I would mute the tv showing the feed of it and listen to bathory

and that would be a totally bitchin afternoon i gotta say

From the WaPo story:

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo.

like you offer the American public and the legal system the alternatives, and none of them are politically viable

x-posts

i take it there are a certain number of detainees who are the hardcore AQ with blood on their hands. however they've been tortured to hell and back and couldn't ever be convicted of anything, even in a military 'tribunal.' can't let them go, can't finish the process, can't keep them in guantanamo.

i'm in favor of putting them all on trial anyway and letting them walk as the case may be, i'm a believer like that.

may be able to secure from Congress

jesus christ, way to telegraph your next act of getting rolled

I really don't give a shit about any pol's state of mind, actions are what counts. And in that regard, exactly what year is Bam's lack of followthrough going to cease to be o_0? He's a disaster.

Re KSH, it's hard to get too upset over How to Have a Show Trial details.

I kinda agree with Morbs. That trial would be a goddamn fiasco and would be hijacked by the gop on a regular basis.

what's abominable is Holder & Obama pretending to have "principles" about it

Hijacked how – by GOP SWAT teams who looked like Alan Rickman?

There is an argument out there that individual terrorists without connection to Al Qaeda should be tried in civilian courts but people like KSM should be tried as enemy combattants. I have never understood, apart from Bush and Cheney freaking out over 9/11 and Republican national security credibility loss, why anybody would want to further legitimize sociopathic nut jobs, especially in the eyes of their potential sympathizers is entirely beyond me. As to the threat that they might be acquitted and walk free, it's frankly ludicrous. First off, they would only be acquitted if the government had made some monumentally boneheaded mistakes (which is why true patriots, fearful of government overstep, support and defend the proper functioning of our courts) and seondly, even if freed, they could be very easily tailed, very easily extradited and would represent a huge target for vigilantes.

First off, they would only be acquitted if the government had made some monumentally boneheaded mistakes

uh, the obvious mistake here is that there's evidence extracted via torture, which would get their cases thrown out of civilian courts.

and secondly, even if freed, they could be very easily tailed, very easily extradited and would represent a huge target for vigilantes.

this is demonstrably untrue, and there are already examples of Gitmo detainees who have been released, disappeared, and then re-appeared participating in terrorist activity (thinking primarily of those Yemeni guys the gov't lost track of recently)

you free some of these guys, there going to go right back to where its hardest to locate/keep track of them - places like Afghanistan/Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, etc.

there = they're

it basically comes down to whether the letter/inherent rule of law is more important than public safety/American lives. By my count pretty much everyone on these threads holds the former position (myself included) - but that is not the case with the majority of Americans.

The alternative is to release these prisoners in Liz Cheney's house.

I fully endorse that tbh

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6975971.ece

They could be tailed even if they weren't previously. Our discomfiture here is depressing proof that the terrorists are winning - they made us change our system, move our goalposts, and the GOP is more interested in protecting itself and scoring political points than correcting what has been disastrous for the long-term strategy of combatting terrorists; being almost as craven and ignoble as they are. That fact that we have defiled our legal traditions is proof of the shallowness of our better convictions and proof, too, of the effectiveness of their terrorism.

Yemen is a disaster in the making, on many fronts.