This came up in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing .What do you do with the GITMO jihadists after they are filtered through the judiciary and then found not guilty ? Do you release them ? When Sen Mel Martinez asked this to Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson ;he answered that the president reserves the right to ignore the outcome .
Here is the relevant exchange :

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Martinez: If we are doing Article III [civilian] trials...we then also are talking about closing Guantanamo by the end of the year. There's no way for 220-some-odd people to be prosecuted through some proceeding, whether Article III or military commissions, in that time frame. So where will they then be? I guess they'll be here. And what about those who are acquitted? Where do they go? What happens to them?

Johnson: You're correct. You can't prosecute some significant subset of 229 people before January. So those that we think are prosecutable and should be detained, we will continue to detain, whether it's at Guantanamo or someplace else. The question of what happens if there's an acquittal...I think that as a matter of legal authority, if you have the authority under the laws of war to detain someone...it is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.

Martinez: So therefore the prosecution becomes a moot point?

Johnson: Oh no, I'm not saying that at all. You raised the issue of what happens if there's an acquittal, and in my judgment, as a matter of legal authority...if a review panel has determined this person is a security threat...and should not be released, if for some reason he is not convicted for a lengthy prison sentence, then as a matter of legal authority I think it's our view that we would have the ability to detain him.

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http://armed-services.senate.gov/Web...-09Webcast.htm
So why shut down GITMO at all ? He already all but admitted that they can't make that end of year deadline anyway(since “you can't prosecute some significant subset of 220 people before January.” ).And ;if it is your intention to keep them locked up under the rules of war ;where are you planning on detaining them... in the domestic prison system ?

So how do you think about due process if it is a show trial of no real meaning ? Yeah they get due process all right;they may even be exonerated... then back to detention . Nothing changes.

Hello tom:

If the dufus hadn't screwed it up so much, we MIGHT actually have convicted some of 'em. But, because he tortured 'em, they can't be brought to trial.

In time, they WILL be released because we can't try them, and we're NOT going to hold them forever - no matter how much the right wing would like us to.

So, if some real mean jihadist gets released from the slammer, you've got George W. Bush, dufus for life, to blame. I know you'd like the damage he caused to go away, and you'd like to blame somebody else for it, but he broke it soooooo bad, that it's going to take generations to fix it, if we EVER do, and we might not.

excon

I read it that Obama is more than willing to detain them even after aquittal .

His conundrum is that he knows deep down that the detainees are not entitled to due process as defined for civilians . But he is stuck on stupid campaign promises.

Ex, sure looks like you're waltzed right past the point again. Seems to me like the Obama administration is again presenting us with an illusion. On one hand he's talking big about closing Gitmo, on the other he's pondering the expansion of unlimited detentions and saying we can still hold 'em even if they're exonerated. What's the point of a show trial?

I would have expected you to ask if this is how "due process" works with Gitmo detainees, how's it going to work for the rest of us?

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Originally Posted by tomder55

I read it that Obama is more than willing to detain them even after aquittal . But he is stuck on stupid campaign promises.

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Hello again, tom:

I read the same thing... But, he isn't going to be president forever. Some pres down the line WILL let 'em go.

Yeah, I agree. Sometimes those stupid promises come back to bite you. Doncha just hate that?

excon

In other words it's all window dressing continuance of Bush policy with a certain subtle panache and throw in some dishonesty for public consumption . President Bush made it clear that in his view the President had the war time authority . Obama makes no such claims ;goes around the world condemning the policy to the whole world... and continues it anyway .

Question ;when the troops start picking up prisoners during this new surge in Afghanistan ;where will they be held ? And under what causes will they be indefinitely detained ? Clearly the war in Afghanistan is not over .

Never mind... did some digging in the non-reported/underreported news sections and came up with this info.

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Faced with a gloomy outlook for new congressional authority to detain terror suspects, the Obama administration appears to be considering issuing an executive order to govern the indefinite imprisonment of alleged Al Qaeda operatives, analysts said.

The focus on a unilateral action by President Barack Obama reflects a political dynamic on Capitol Hill that may render legislation on long-term detention unattainable.

On Friday, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt denied a published report that a possible executive order had been drafted. However, he and other officials did not dispute that such an order was one of the options being considered by a task force Obama created to review detention policy. Its recommendations are due next month.

"There is no draft executive order," said LaBolt. "The task force has not finished its work on these issues."

In a joint report published Friday, The Washington Post and a nonprofit investigative journalism group, ProPublica, said three unnamed senior government officials confirmed to them that such an order is being drafted (a step back from when the report was first published, at which point it said the order had already been drafted). The outlets also said some officials were now concerned that Obama would not meet the deadline he set to close Guantanamo by next January.

The report added that the administration "has turned away" from the possibility of pushing Congress to approve legislation to authorize a new national security court to oversee the detention of alleged terrorists who cannot be tried for specific offenses.

In a speech last month, Obama discussed the possibility of a preventive detention system for alleged Al Qaeda operatives. However, he seemed to indicate that he would pursue legislation to achieve that goal.
"My administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution," Obama said in his May 21 speech at the National Archives.

However, since that time Congress has continued to resist aspects of Obama's plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and transfer at least some of those prisoners to the U.S. for trial or prolonged detention. An appropriations bill Obama signed Wednesday contained language requiring advance reports to Congress before any transfers of prisoners to the U.S.

Creating a new civilian court would require legislation. Analysts said Obama officials may have concluded that the events of recent weeks have shown that such a measure could not pass because it would be opposed both by a sizeable group of conservatives who oppose bringing any prisoners to the U.S. and by liberals, particularly in the House, who are philosophically opposed to open-ended detention.

In a speech last month, Obama discussed the possibility of a preventive detention system for alleged Al Qaeda operatives – comments that drew fire from civil rights groups, who say the notion of indefinite detention is unconstitutional, because it violates a prisoner's right to be tried for a specific offense, and not merely held in perpetuity because of a perceived security risk.

"Since Obama's speech reaction from Congress has been anything but cooperative," said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor and former State Department attorney handling detainee issues. "Congress responded with a series of efforts that could restrict the president even from fulfilling his basic pledge of closing Guantanamo within a year. It may be since that speech the White House has grown more skeptical about its ability to craft a workable solution with Congress. ... There's very little middle ground for consensus in the short term."

Obama could act unilaterally to set up a new military review system abroad at U.S. bases in Afghanistan or other countries. But it's unclear how different that would be from a Bush-era invention, Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which were widely criticized for lacking due process.

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24278.html

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Originally Posted by excon

Hello tom:

If the dufus hadn't screwed it up so much, we MIGHT actually have convicted some of 'em. But, because he tortured 'em, they can't be brought to trial.

In time, they WILL be released because we can't try them, and we're NOT going to hold them forever - no matter how much the right wing would like us to.

So, if some real mean jihadist gets released from the slammer, you've got George W. Bush, dufus for life, to blame. I know you'd like the damage he caused to go away, and you'd like to blame somebody else for it, but he broke it soooooo bad, that it's going to take generations to fix it, if we EVER do, and we might not.

excon

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Let me see if I get this straight:

If the Gitmo POWs are held in perpetuity and not given trials, it's Bush's fault.

If they are given trials and released, it's Bush's fault.

If they are never given a trial and released anyway, it's STILL Bush's fault.

Ok... I get it. There's a simple explanation for this.

You're nuts.

Elliot

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Originally Posted by tomder55

His conundrum is that he knows deep down that the detainees are not entitled to due process as defined for civilians . But he is stuck on stupid

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You should have just stopped right there.

Elliot

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Originally Posted by ETWolverine

Let me see if I get this straight:

If the Gitmo POWs are held in perpetuity and not given trials, it's Bush's fault

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Hello again, El:

I'm sorry that your political persuasion impairs your ability to assess blame. Let me see if I can help.

If the detainees can't be tried EVER because they were tortured by Bush, then it IS Bush's fault. It's not Obama's fault. It's not the next president's fault, and it's not the fault of the president after that. It's BUSH'S fault - nobody but Bush. There's no way around it. That is just so. Live with it.

excon