ACLU Urge Obama to Close Gitmo
The ACLU are wasting their members’ donations on a full-page, six-figure ad in the New York Times.
Civil liberties lawyers launch a feet-to-the-fire campaign in Monday’s editions of The New York Times, a powerful ad urging President-elect Barack Obama to order the closure of the Guantánamo prison camps and war court on inauguration day.
”On day one, with the stroke of a pen, you can restore America’s moral leadership in the World,” says the full-page, six-figure ad purchased by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Miami Herald got an exclusive sneak peek on Sunday.
Half of the ad is a photo of Obama and recounts the president-elect’s campaign pledge to close the prison camps and abandon the military commissions established in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The other half is an indictment of Bush administration detention policies.
It is a provocative message from a potential ally of the coming Obama administration.
ACLU Executive Anthony Romero called it ”a shot across the bow,” and said Sunday that his organization would invest up to $500,000 in the campaign that seeks to avert any appeasement to centrists.
The campaign calls for President Obama to issue an Executive Order on Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration, to put Guantánamo out of business.
Oh wait! I get it! They are urging him to shut down Gitmo in a reckless fashion. Release the terrorists! Let them be free! ???? Both John McCain and Obama promised to shut down Gitmo. The reason this is a waste of money is because Obama has already stated it would be a priority. And of course the ACLU had to get their parting shots at Bush in the ad.
The Obama administration will launch a review of the classified files of the approximately 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately after taking office, as part of an intensive effort to close the U.S. prison in Cuba, according to people who advised the campaign on detainee issues.
However, the ACLU don’t want any capitulation to the “centrist”? How revealing is that on just how partisan they really are? To Obama’s credit, he is at least recognizing that this issue is more thorny and complicated than the ACLU are claiming.
But the advisers, as well as outside national security and legal experts, said the new administration will face a thicket of legal, diplomatic, political and logistical challenges to closing the prison and prosecuting the most serious offenders in the United States — an effort that could take many months or longer. Among the thorniest issues will be how to build effective cases without using evidence obtained by torture, an issue that attorneys for the detainees will almost certainly seek to exploit.
Moreover, the new administration will face hard decisions regarding not just the current Guantanamo Bay detainees but also how it will handle future captures of terrorism suspects. It is unclear whether President-elect Barack Obama would consider holding some suspects without charge on national security grounds. His transition team denied reports this week that it was contemplating some form of preventive detention backed by a new civilian national security court. The idea has been a staple of legal debates over the future of Guantanamo Bay for the past year, but Obama advisers believe it would meet fierce congressional resistance.
There is no question that Obama will close Gitmo. The question is, then what?
Besides, the point of military tribunals was to establish a system that protected American intelligence in the war on terror. The Supreme Court rejected those restrictions in the military tribunal system. They’re not likely to sign off on a civil system that adopts the same restrictions.
Even without the obvious security issues of bringing terrorists onto American soil, these questions will continue to haunt the processing of these terrorists. The Supreme Court left the US in the position of either blowing the cover of intel resources by forcing the government to provide constitutional protections to enemies of the US at war with our nation, or releasing them to plan more attacks. Either Obama or McCain would have to deal with that ridiculous position, and so far, Obama seems to be pursuing the same basic strategy that the Court rejected twice.
Whatever Obama does it will be more complicated to accomplish than the ACLU want to pretend, and waste money on. But hey! You’ve got a mandate Barack! Do it! I’m sure we will be greeted as liberators!
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Posted by Special Contributor on November 12, 2008 5:11 pm
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Bill Of Rights, Constitution, Moral Relativism, News, Uncategorized
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3 Responses to “ACLU Urge Obama to Close Gitmo”
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BO got elected by endlessly repeating “Bush policy, bad.” Now BO has to make policy instead of merely criticizing it. What very BO ends up doing, his results are going be far closer to Bush’s policy than BO’s campaign rhetoric.
Now that it belongs to the Commies lock, stock and barrel, I can’t wait for them to 1. Compromise our intelligence operations. 2. release dangerous terrorists and never catch another one because they don’t have a warrant. 3. allow the jihadists their dream of a mushroom cloud over New York City.
Americans will head to Washington from far and wide to get their hands on those responsible (pelosi, reid, hussein, et al)
Hopefully after that, we will restrict the vote to taxpayers, property owners, and those who have served in the military.
So close it, Hussein, Close GITMO now! Let the freedom fighters be free at last, free at last, thank god almighty they free at last!!!
Guantanamo Bay should never have been opened. Closing it should be a priority for every red-blooded, freedom loving, “communist” hating American. Holding people in indefinite detention without charge or trial and torture, both of which occur at Gitmo, are chief among the reasons Americans were opposed to communist regimes. Growing up in the 1950’s, I was taught that these were primary reasons why we had to oppose communism in Russia, among other nations. The right of habeas corpus, the right to face your accuser and know the evidence against you, the right to be free from torture are all central to American values. We cannot win any “war on terror” when we do not honor our own values. To date the U.S. federal courts have prosecuted successfully more “terrorists” than have the kangaroo courts in Gitmo. We do not need this place, nor the techniques practised there to defend ourselves from our enemies. There is nothing “communist” about the determination to close Gitmo.