President Obama on Monday reversed his two-year-old order halting new military charges against detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, permitting military trials to resume with revamped procedures but implicitly admitting the failure of his pledge to close the prison camp.If we are not going to do the hard work to live up to our national claim to be "a nation of laws," then that has to apply for the most despicable and hateful of defendants. Right now, we have a system where some faceless fascist in the Administration can claim that someone is a terrorist and they can be thrown into prison in Guantanamo Bay for a decade or longer without any meaningful judicial review.
Doesn't matter if you're an American citizen. They will hold you in a military brig, without charges, access to counsel or visitors, for years.
If you only have rights when it is convenient for the government to let you exercise them, then you have no rights.
This was, honestly, the one thing I really thought that Obama would fix when he took office.
ReplyDeleteBetween this and his 'we aren't going to look back at any abuses or war cries", I'm pretty disappointed with ol' Barry.
ReplyDeleteNo way I'm voting for Willard Romney, but I'm not going to mark my ballot with any great hope or joy next year.
Any ideas why your blog is sending 4-6 incoming links to mine on every new post? I can't figure it out.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading an amazing article today, which explains quite a lot to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd lets me confidently say that Obama is conservative: http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html