Whatever you want to say about the Obama Administration’s handling of Guantanamo detainees, it’s pretty clear that they’re leading on the issue, compared to the craven Congress:
The Senate is expected to consider a provision this week that would block the Obama administration from bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States for trial, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The House on Wednesday approved the nine-month ban on transfers of Guantanamo inmates, drawing fierce opposition from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The provision then went to the Senate as part of a broad spending bill that the chamber is likely to take up in some form this week.
After ending the filibuster, another procedural reform I’d like to see is an end to the practice of tacking minimally relevant amendments onto big spending bills.
wvnk
Cue the clowns yelling “if he just used the Bully Pulpit he could get this done.”
Benjamin Cisco
I’d love to see a compilation of some of the most egregious of these procedures over the last fifteen years or so. I’d bet it would make for some interesting, if nauseating, reading.
Ija
This is Nancy Pelosi, right? She’s the one who put the provision in the bill? Weird, I never thought Pelosi is among that NIMBY crowd.
Joey Maloney
All it would take is a Majority Leader with a set of minimally functional gonads. Good luck with that.
debit
@wvnk: More likely they’ll say if he really wanted to get it done, he’d just make it happen. Somehow. DO NOT BOTHER ME WITH YOUR LOGIC!
agrippa
I have, from the start, considered it tantamount to impossible for those prisoners for those prisoners to be tried in the USA.
What do you do with those who are convicted? What do you do with those who are acquitted?
What ‘should’ be done, will not be done.
Athenae
I hear there’s this nice ranch in Crawford, Texas …
A.
debit
@agrippa: Here’s the thing: they can’t be left in legal limbo forever. If they’re convicted, we have high security prisons. If they are to be let go, well, that’s for the state department to figure out. But you can’t keep people locked up for years and not bring them to trial. Yet another another shit sandwich Bush left for someone else to eat.
mr. whipple
But….but….OBAMA!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@agrippa: We do with those what we do with people who later get acquitted of murder: We pay them some money. In addition, we find them a place to live and pay for counseling: It probably won’t be the US because they wouldn’t be safe here. In the case of that boy, we fund his education.
We also own up to wrongly holding some people.
amk
Why is he not ‘shaming’ these congress critters by using his f..king bully pulpit ? Why ? Why ?
4tehlulz
Vladimir Putin never would have let this happen.
Putin/Palin 2012!!!
David
The easier, more politically expedient thing would be for Obama to ignore Gitmo which is exactly what McCain would have done.
agrippa
@debit:
Clearly.
Those prisoners have to be given a fair trial somewhere, somehow.
Many of those people have done next to nothing; they were, basically, gathered up.
You are correct on the proper disposition of acquitted and convicted.
agrippa
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I agree.
Give them a fair trial.
mk3872
@Joey Maloney: What is worse is that if provisions were NOT attached to spending bills, then NOTHING would ever pass thru the Senate since they are attached because the Senate is soooooo sloooooow moving, that they won’t have to be considered stand-alone.
Odie Hugh Manatee
This whole mess shows how broken and paralyzed (politically) we are. We have people who we are holding, accused of crimes against the US, and yet they won’t try them for their crimes.
So we end up holding people, without trial, indefinitely.
Throughout our history, we have always been moving towards a police state. The slow merging of big business and government under capitalism makes something like that inevitable. Our politicians and ‘patriotic’ counterparts like to proclaim to anyone, anywhere in the world what a great nation we are. They literally love to rub this in the faces of other nations, as if to prove something. I can imagine that the world is sick of it, especially since we have turned into a monster that stomps around the world looking for terrorists while acting like one.
We have always been told to fear those who would control us, those who would take away our freedom and liberty. All the while we ignored the fact that fear of ‘others’ is what some people use to control those they wish to. Get the people to focus on the ‘enemy’ taking away their freedom and then the ruling class can slowly take away ours, all in the name of keeping us safe and free. Now that we have dropped all pretenses about freedom and rights, it should be apparent to anyone with a functioning brain that our country has become what we were always told to fear.
Unfortunately, we have an abundance of people without functioning brains.
It isn’t Obama who failed, it’s our political system.
mk3872
No worries, I’m sure to read this week from Greenwald, Hamsher and Kos about how Obama didn’t use the “bully puplit” enough and “didn’t lead” on this issue.
If only he’d “twist some arms” on the Republican side, not liberals, of course, then he’d have closed Gitmo in his 1st day in office.
He’s soooo weak!
Ash Can
This is one time Nancy didn’t smash, unfortunately.
Linda Featheringill
According to Wikileaks, the Administration has tried very hard to relocate those prisoners. Apparently, no one wants them. And we know the US doesn’t want them.
I was impressed with the efforts exposed by Wikileaks. Transparency is not always bad for you.
rachel
I wonder if one of the trolls that has been infesting this blog lately is going to tell us that President never meant to close Gitmo, and that his asking Congress to let him close it is evidence of his 11-dimensional chess game aimed at keeping it open.
I’m not wondering all that much, really.
Dave
Will any of those trolls mention that Bernie Sanders voted to deny funding for closing Gitmo? Doubtful…
Zifnab
Just for fun, do you think the House could attach a health care public option to the Gitmo amendment, just so we could watch the GOP shit a brick?
Zifnab
@Linda Featheringill:
See, the funny thing is that’s not even true.
Montana has a prison waiting for them:
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-26/us/montana.gitmo.west_1_gitmo-detainees-montana-prison?_s=PM:US
As does Illinois:
http://www.newser.com/story/76164/illinois-prison-will-take-gitmo-inmates.html
Mike Kay
NANCY PELOSI HAS SOLD YOU OUT!
Mike Kay
@Zifnab: the problem is and always has been is too many senate democrats don’t want a public option. When “true progressive” russ feingold refuses to sign the public option petition, then how can you expect to capture moderates.
Omnes Omnibus
@Zifnab: No one wants those who are found not guilty or those who cannot be brought to trial because no evidence is admissible. Those found guilty are less of problem.
Joe Beese
Where do you get this “leading on the issue” fantasy of yours?
Certainly not from the link:
Mike Kay
Here’s the roll call vote: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll622.xml
LOOk who voted for it: lefty SUPERHEROS Alan Grayson, Anthony Weiner, Nancy Pelosi, and Raul Grijalva
To his credit, Kuchinich voted against it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
… and the turd hits the Ming vase.
Omnes Omnibus
@Joe Beese: If we tell you that you are correct and everything the Obama administration does is WRONG!(tm), will you promise to go away?
sparky
hmm, 10 comments so far complaining about what other people (read trolls) might say and yet not a single comment critical of Obama in this thread.
project much?
@Mike Kay: i hope you do this for a living, because the amount of disingenuous and misleading claptrap you post here is worthy of Redstate pros.
edit: i meant the “public option” comment, not the later one. i think it was correct of you to point out who voted which way, though sometimes the motives for doing so are unclear.
Mike Kay
In the irony of ironies. blue-dog Heath Shuler voted AGAINST it!
Think about that.
The left hates Shuler and he voted against it.
The left loves Pelosi and she voted for it.
my, my, my
Joe Beese
@Omnes Omnibus:
Actually, when Mr. Cole finally apostasizes, which I expect will happen sometime late next year, this place will be more fun to visit than ever.
Mike Kay
aaa
Mike Kay
@sparky: regarding the public option and feingold.
The inconvenient truth is Russ refused, let me say it again, refused to sign the public option petition. It is a 100% incontrovertible truth.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/19/838862/-Klein:-Dem-Senators-Are-Privately-Scared-Of-The-Public-Option-Revival
By now, I’m sure you have heard, Russ personally went to the White House and begged them not to hold the vote overturning the bush tax cuts before the election.
see the bottom of this Digby post: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/tax-cuts-riding-happily-into-sunsets.html
agrippa
@mk3872:
The fable of the “Scorpion and the Frog” applies.
Cat
How is this legal? I guess my Civics isn’t as good as I thought.
But how can Congress interfere with if the DoJ tries someone accused of a crime let alone where.
ricky
The Obamapology force is strong in this thread. Had the Hope and Change One wanted it to happen, by stroke of his pen these illegally detained Bush victims could have been escorted home to the homeland of their choice by the LGBT honor guard the President should have sworn in as his first post Inauguration Act. If need be he could have used Air Force One. They could have been given a little spending cash from those pallets of shrink wrapped bills Rumsfeld left lying around in Iraq as compensation for their lost earnings during captivity.
joe from Lowell
I’ve found that blaming Obama for Guantanamo being open – given the history of the administration’s actions, and those of Congress – to be a very useful, shorthand method of determining when someone bitching about the administration can be safely ignored on this or any other topic.
joe from Lowell
@Cat:
It’s legal under the powers that allow the military to detain POWs until the end of a war.
As a policy, there’s a bit of a problem with that – the fuzziness of the concept “end of the war.” Even though Obama’s return to the concept of a war against al Qaeda, as authorized under the September 2001 AUMF (as opposed to Bush’s “War on Terror”) ameliorates this problem somewhat (al Qaeda is an actual organization that can be put out of action, “Terror” is not), it’s still not as clear as, say, the end of World War One.
But that doesn’t really have very much to do with legality.
joe from Lowell
@Cat:
In this case, they aren’t interfering with the DoJ’s authority to prosecute them, nor with the courts’ authority to try them. They’re interfering with the executive’s authority to expend funds to imprison them, pre- and post-trial. Congress controls the purse strings, and they are forbidding the executive from spending money on certain things.