Republicans Are Stupid, and Democrats Are Stupid Too
For weeks, the Republicans have been united in one thing – fear-mongering about closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration had requested $80M in funding in the supplemental war funding to close the prison and relocate the prisoners to federal prisons. The Republicans have never had a shortage of talking points about terrorism, but this takes the cake:
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., circulated a stinging letter this week that he wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder in which he questioned what “legal authority” the administration has to admit dangerous detainees into the U.S.
And Senate GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., stirred up Republican opposition with a new Web video dedicated to discrediting Obama’s proposal to close the prison. The video, set to the foreboding music of “Carmina Burana,” mixes clips of accused terrorists’ photographs with news broadcasts about the release of Guantanamo prisoners and road signs from the various states where lawmakers warn the terrorists will be sent.
It ends with the message: “Terrorists. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you. January 2010.”
OOGA BOOGA! Terrorists are coming to your neighborhood! This is transparent fear-mongering by the Republicans on an issue that isn’t that controversial. Not only is it stupid, it’s insulting. If there’s one thing the U.S. knows how to do, it is imprison people. The U.S. imprisons a greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world. We keep dangerous people in prison here – like Ramzi Yousef (the first WTC bomber mastermind), Tim McVeigh (OKC bomber) and Ted Kazinsky (Unabomber), not to mention the serial killers and mass murderers we have incarcerated.
The Republicans threatened to block the war funding supplemental if the money wasn’t removed. So, Democrats laughed at them, right? If you said no, you’re correct. The Democrats bravely stood up and said “Uncle.” Not only did they cower in fear, they gave in using Republican rhetoric. Get a load of Harry Reid in a press conference:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) declared in a press conference today, “We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.” In several tense back and forths with reporters, Reid said he opposes imprisoning detainees on U.S. soil, saying flatly, “We don’t want them around the United States”:
REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.
QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.
REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.
QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …
REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.
Clearly, even the press thinks he’s nuts.
Can we get a better Senate majority leader than Harry Reid? Pretty please?
Reid and Pelosi have both been pretty horrible. They came of age at a time when being a Democrat meant allowing Republicans to kick you in the head and bi-partisanship meant allowing Republicans a rest interval between head kicking episodes.
I think Pelosi is much better than Reid. Good bills come out of the House to die in the Senate or be gutted by the conservadems.
Me thinks Harry Reid won’t be around much longer — in the Senate.
nemski, I don’t see anyone challenging him over there. What do you know?
No candidate yet, however Reid’s poll numbers aren’t stellar and the Republicans have raised quite a bit of money for a candidate to be named later.
Naturally, the fact that Gitmo was inspected by AG Holder personally and found to be a well run, superior facility should have nothing to do with the discussion.
It is not the tent city of Jan. 2002. It is a 200 million dollar state of the art facility which has gotten high marks from every objective person visiting. It makes no sense to close it now.
Parsing Reid:
“We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.”
The thing is, in America you are innocent until proven guilty. So technically, none of the detainees are “terrorists” because they have not been convicted.
The press, and some of us (even me sometimes) fall into the Republican trap of calling them terrorists before they have been convicted or even legally tried.
If they are released due to lack of speedy trial or other “poisoned fruit” reasons, that would be a short-term ding for the Justice Department, but in the long run it would be a victory for the Constitution.
And yes I would be happy to take that risk in defense of the Constitution, because I am a patriot. Let’s hope the new Justice Department doesn’t let it come to that.
The ones that are unlawful combatants. We don’t have to release. This is not a criminal trial issue. This is a war and the constitution does not require us to release them to fight us again.
That is the problem. You refuse to understand what is going on in the world and go off Daily Kos talking points.
If this is a war then they are POWs… there is a whole different rule book for that. That “unlawful combatant” dodge came out of the devil’s kitchen in the Bush legal department. It is just an excuse to avoid accountability for basic human rights, and it cedes the moral high ground. Once we lock people up with no rights, poof there goes your American exceptionalism.
The Holder justice department has dropped the term “unlawful combatant.” None of the people there have actually been charged with anything, much less convicted of anything. Some have been held for years, despite rulings that they are innocent.
Yes, Guantanamo is a beautiful place where horrific torture went on. It’s a huge blotch on our record.
Geneva Convention Article 4.
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
…
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
…close quote…
Al Qaeda, Taliban, and “insurgents” regularly fail to fulfil three out of four of these conditions, at least excluding them from the Convention’s protections, if not making them illegal. If you look at the rest Part I. (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm) it doesn’t make a great case for the bad guys.
I also haven’t noticed anything about extending one Party’s constitutional rights to the other Party.
You’re right – they are not POWs. So the Constitution applies; off to trial with them.
There is no middle ground except in the fevered sadistic brains of the Bush Administration.
Why do Harry Reid and Thurman Adams remind me so much of each other? Maybe because they are both doddering old men who should retire.
From today’s ruling by a judge not friendly to the Bush administration.
In his opinion, Bates said he agreed with the Obama administration that “the president has the authority to detain persons that the president determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks.
“The president also has the authority to detain persons who are or were part of Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed (i.e., directly participated in) a belligerent act in aid of such enemy armed forces,” Bates wrote.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/20/judge-hold-detainees-indefinitely/
“White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was a ‘hasty decision,’ in his daily press briefing with reporters.”
Robert Mueller (#1 G-Man) also said yesterday or today that even in max-security, he wouldn’t want these guys on American soil.
Nobody else in the world wants them either.
These are some of the worst people on the planet and they should stay where they are. They are well fed, getting better medical care than probably any of us, praying more times a day than I go to the bathroom, and have gratis legal representation. I’m a little jealous because I think they get to play soccer more than I do. Now that makes me want to throw an epithet!
Face it, Obama screwed up and the Dems have polled it and figured it our no one in America wants terrorists in a prison in the U S.
Gitmo is appropriate for detainees. You can argue with the legal process that got the detainess there and keeps them there, but they do not belong in the U S.
Mike Protack