Crossed Fingers

Preserving (also instituting) the constitutional rights of non-American-citizens caught in action against America were a key part of the Obama campaign.
Now that they’re in charge and actually have to deal with terrorists?

Not quite:

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

“Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. “The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

“controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe”?  Yes – the circles that got President Obama elected, at least in part over the collective vapors because Europe didn’t heart us anymore!

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

Despite concern about rendition, Obama’s prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the “transitory” technique.

Well, I’m sure Chris Matthews will be all over this one.

56 thoughts on “Crossed Fingers

  1. “It’s so cute how you far-right kooks agree on your own little wingnut jargon for dismissing the 75% of Americans who think Bush was a lousy president. ”

    A good portion of that 75% are far right kooks. Pat Buchanan, John Derbyshire, and, of course, Michael Savage.

  2. a-clown, did you just lump yourself with “you libs”?
    I mearly provided a typical example of how the liberal sheeple have such blind adoration for the Obamassiah and such bitter hatered for Bush.

    Assclown supported the Bush administration’s interrogation methods and their fight against terrorism? What else did you support?

  3. K-Rod said: “a-clown, did you just lump yourself with “you libs”?”

    No, you half-wit, you did. Read your own post. It’s this kind of rampant stupidity that got Mr. Shi(r)t a shunning. Don’t let it happen to you.

  4. I’m certainly no expert (disclaimer) but I have done a good bit of reading on the topic of the Geneva Conventions, and similar conventions.

    So far as I have read there has been a fairly consistent pattern over a considerable time going back into at least the 19th century that unlawful combatants are defined as civilians taking up arms in a conflict, as distinctly separate from formal military personnel. And the tradition followed that civilians ought to be tried by civilian courts, and military personnel by military courts. Makes sense as a general premise. Military forces have much more formal conventions under which they operate than do civilians. I believe the saboteurs etc. who are hanged, shot, etc. are military personnel who are caught operating out of uniform, not civilians performing those actions.

    Obviously, the concern as conventions were formalized for these things, some protections were sought for civilian resistance participants like the Maquis in WWII, as distinct from out of uniform military forces. Children have always received special protection.

    Interestingly, mercenaries receive absolutely NO protection, military or civilian, that I have come across under the Geneva convention. That surprised me as I would have thought that most mercenaries were nearly always ex-military, and therefore would have been regarded as an extension of regular military. Presumably this is an indication that despite being military in nature, they operate outside of the restrictions that usually apply to formal state sponsored armed forces.

    So if I might respectfully disagree with Mitch on this one, applying civilian legal processes to prisoners like those at Guantanamo does appear to be consistent with international conventions, including the ones we have subscribed to and abided by for a very long time, and NOT some new awarding of rights to anyone. It seems to be the pattern of our own Supreme Court going back to those suspensions of habeus corpus by Lincoln that were overturned, among others.

  5. Assclown supported the Bush administration’s interrogation methods and their fight against terrorism?
    What else did you support?

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