File under: "Told ya so"

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a post here in which I speculated on a "take no prisoners" policy forced upon us by the Left's (and the Democrats', but I repeat myself) position on Guantanamo Bay. Well, kiss my ass and call me Nostra-fucking-damus.

Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

It's not that I'm going to shed any tears over these guys, but it'd be nice to squeeze a little intel out of them.

Barack Obama campaigned on this issue, and one of his very first acts after taking office was to issue an executive order to close Gitmo. I can't believe 53% of American voters wanted this walking disaster as President.

9/11 mastermind to be tried in NYC

As insane as this sounds, you can't say Candidate Barack Obama didn't say he wouldn't do this. In fact, it was a central issue in his campaign.

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.

The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Barack Obama's plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

It is also a major legal and political test of Obama's overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom. And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama's agenda.

It's been pointed out elsewhere by legal experts all around the blogosphere that this is a manifestly bad idea.

Once introduced into the US criminal justice system, these jokers will receive full protection under the Constitution, and at trial, anything can happen.

I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect that for the purposes of a criminal trial in a civilian court, little to no evidence already collected by the military will be admissible. Certainly, no information obtained from KSM while being waterboarded will be admissible. Once he's in New York, prosecutors will effectively have to build a case from scratch.

I'm eager to see what legal experts have to say about this today. There must be scores of scenarios in which a judge might be forced to dismiss the charges and kick him loose.

Consequences. Elections have consequences.

Update: A few hours ago on Twitter I said, "If ANY of these trials go sideways for the prosecution, Obama's done in 2012.", and it occurred to me that Obama clearly knows this. So why, exactly, is he taking such a political gamble by shipping five terrorists from Gitmo to New York for trial? One thing it suggests is that the evidence the prosecution will submit makes it a slam dunk in all five of the cases. That seems unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Another way Obama can avoid catastrophic political blowback is if the trials are delayed until after the 2012 elections, but that's three whole years away, and the Obama administration would come under fire from all sides if it appeared the trials were being delayed for political convenience. If all five are brought to trial very swiftly and something goes bad for the prosecution in just one and one of these guys walks, then those three years aren't going to be long enough for Obama to get over the backlash. In fact, under those circumstances, the only thing that would prevent impeachment proceedings before 2012 is the Democrats' majority in Congress.

So aside from appeasing the lunatic fringe of the loony left, is there any upside in doing this?

Musicians concede their music is torture

Twitter user @IKIDYOUNOT tweeted a link to this HuffPo article this morning, which brought me a chuckle.

A group of prominent musicians are joining a campaign to close Guantanamo Bay and demanding the release of records about what music was used during the potential torture of detainees there and at other facilities.

Seriously...if you were a musician would you really want to know that your music was used as an instrument of torture?

Sarah Palin: Prescient

Hot Air linked a couple of items under the heading "Quotes of the day" last night. First quote:

“Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

Second quote:

“Miranda is an issue, it is a potential issue in prosecution.”

The first one is from a Sarah Palin stump speech during the campaign last fall, and the second is from a "senior Obama administration official" quoted here by the LA Times in an article describing the problems facing prosecutors as detainees are moved from Guantanamo Bay and put into the criminal justice system. Palin nailed it.

Never in our history - in wars declared or undeclared - have we prosecuted in the courts enemy combatants captured in the field. Never. What's changed now that makes some people think it's a good idea? Why the desire to extend constitutional protections to a jihadi captured in combat in Afghanistan?

In the seven plus years following 9/11, we've not had a single successful terrorist attack on US soil. I'm guessing all bets are off for the next four.

Guantanamo domino effect?

With an order now in place to close Guantanamo Bay, Barack Obama may come under pressure to follow suit with in-country detention facilities in Afghanistan.

As President Barack Obama declared with a fanfare his intention to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp last week, he made no mention of another growing US-run prison - with more than twice as many inmates and an even murkier legal status.

More than 600 detainees are held at the US Bagram Theatre Internment Facility - known by campaigners as "the other Guantanamo". Not only are there no plans to close it, but it is in the process of being expanded to hold 1,100 illegal enemy combatants; prisoners who cannot see lawyers, have no trials and never see any evidence there may be against them.

[ ... ]

"If they close Guantanamo and they expand the one in Bagram, it's the same - there will be no difference," said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation.

"If Barack Obama wants to close Guantanamo he should also set out to close not just Bagram, but detention centres in Khost, Kandahar and Jalalabad."

The article describes some detainees who were allegedly "snitched" on by members of rival clans or tribes with an axe to grind, and those cases are surely worthy of review to make sure we're actually holding someone for cause. But just as surely, those detainees are very few compared with the number of prisoners caught firing an AK or RPG at coalition forces in combat.

But, yeah, what the hell. Let's just engage in a perpetual game of catch and release in Afghanistan. After all, our eight years of pure, delicious crazy have just begun.

Order to close Gitmo a big mistake

As expected, Barack Obama issued an executive order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within a year. This is a huge mistake and is Exhibit "A" that the new president is interested more in appeasing the masses and currying favor with the rest of the world than in sound national security policy.

Remember the spontaneous global outrage when it was first announced that Islamist terrorists and unlawful combatants captured on the battlefield would be taken to Gitmo? Yeah, me neither. That only came later when the media, ever eager to portray George W. Bush in the worst possible way, decided that detaining seriously dangerous individuals without access to due process was immoral. With a steady drumbeat of fabricated outrage, the media machine got huge numbers of people to agree that ruthlessly violent, murderous jihadis should, for reasons never explained, have their status elevated above that of a prisoner of war.

"Close Gitmo!" makes a great rallying cry for the leftist freaks who believe the US can do no right while a head-chopping Islamist terrorist can do no wrong, and pandering to that ignorant, know-nothing pacifist mindset to garner votes makes a certain amount of political sense, but we count on our elected officials - especially the president - to do one thing above all else: make the country safer, not put it in more danger.

The decision to close Gitmo poses the immediate problem of just what to do with the 250 or so prisoners currently held there. Obama has issued an order with absolutely no plan on how to implement it. If the media wasn't so infatuated with the guy, the first question asked during yesterday's first White House press briefing under the new administration would have been "How does closing Gitmo improve the security of the United States?". The question, of course, went unasked as far as I can tell.

The longer term problem of closing Gitmo with no plan on what to do with existing detainees and those yet to come is the implication it has for troops in the field. What do military authorities do with enemy combatants captured on the battlefield after they've wrung out of them whatever intel they can (in accordance with the Army Field Manual, of course)? Kick 'em loose? Ship them to the US for trial? Execute them?

I have to admit to a certain amount of ignorance, myself. I actually believed that Obama did take national security seriously and that he'd find a way to placate the idiotic masses who don't.

'A nation of men, not laws'

Ace links to another great article by Victor Davis Hanson, in which Hanson says:

For years now we have been preached to that Guantanamo is a gulag where Korans are stomped and flushed (not laptops provided to the chief architect of 9/11), that we waged a foolhardy, amoral, and hopelessly 'lost' war against the Iraqi people, that the rich plundered the economy on the backs of the poor, and that the Constitution was burned so that covert agencies could play James Bond. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Given all that, are we now suddenly — in 1984-fashion — around late January either to be told all that was not quite so, or will we simply hear no more about how these Bush legacies have ruined America — or what exactly is the party line to be? There is still such a thing, after all, as Google.

Ace's closing remark - "A nation of men, not laws" - sums things up perfectly, for this is what we've become. This was evidenced in part by the sudden love among the left for the American flag immediately following the election. Their 'patriotism' seems to be conditioned on who's wielding power.

The more Obama walks back from his campaign positions, the more the Left's objections to George Bush become exposed as objections to the man and not his policies.

Change we can believe in when we see it

Gabriel Malor over at Ace of Spades points out a bit of, er, clarification from the Obama camp on the disposition of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the detainees currently held there.

This morning he was for closing Guantanamo Bay, and having the detainees face criminal charges in U.S. criminal courts, courts using the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or new, specially created national security courts. This evening, he has backtracked yet again.

[ ... ]

One hand doesn't know what the other is doing so we end up with many conflicting statements. Mr. President-elect has to keep "clarifying" the positions his subordinates keep releasing on his behalf. It's almost like he has no leadership experience whatsoever.

Heh...indeed. Gabriel cites other examples of squishiness in Obama's agenda, so read the whole thing.

Maybe Obama's ego and constant need for adulation will paralyze him and the best case scenario is he simply does absolutely nothing for the next four years.

Obama and Gitmo: Worst fears realized

Nearly a year and a half ago, I posted this item about the opposition to the Guantanamo Bay prison. In it I suggested a scenario where troops in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan are forced into a "take no prisoners" mode of operating due to the questionable legal status of unlawful enemy combatants captured in combat. That scenario appears to be getting closer to reality.

President-elect Barack Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

This is absolute insanity. Released? Are you fucking serious? Where would we release them? As for the others who would be prosecuted through the criminal court system, that's nothing less than a return to the pre-9/11 mentality that gave us 9/11 in the first place. International terrorism is NOT a criminal problem...it's a national security problem. But don't expect a dilettante like Barack Obama to understand that.

The tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration's military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on U.S. soil.

I just don't get this. Why the rush to grant them the same constitutional rights that you and I enjoy? That seems to be the sole purpose for transferring them to U.S. soil. What entitles these dirtbags to those rights?

I stated earlier that this might instill a "take no prisoners" strategy, but it occurs to me that the Obama administration doesn't see this as a problem since his future policy appears to me now to be one of abandoning the war on terrorists.