October 1, 2009, Stupidity and bigotry, proudly bipartisan
A.P. reports that 87 House Democrats joined their brethren cavemen on the Republican side of the aisle for a resounding 258-163 non-binding resolution win against transferring Guantanamo-based detainees to the American mainland, even in maximum security prison conditions. Unsurprisingly, the Republican quoted refers to those still held at GTMO as terrrrrrorists. But David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin believes our prisons are tough enough for "these thugs."
Thing is, even under convoluted rules where any evidence at all and the government wins, GTMO detainees have won 30 out of 38 habeas cases that have gotten that far, with some of the more egregious cases of government abuse (that would be no evidence whatsoever of a lawful basis to hold the man, and even Obama's executive review team concluded that the government "got nothin'"...) such as presumably the 75 more cases where the government has thrown in the towel and "cleared" the detainees "for release," which, counting the 30 so determined by courts (which might or might not overlap) means that the Government apparently either already concedes, or courts already have determined, that between 1/3 and 1/2 of the men held there... shouldn't be there, with as many as 150 habeas corpus cases still pending, which, if present detainee win rates persist, would likely result in determinations that the vast majority of those remaining just shouldn't be there, and yet, will continue to be held until politics (that would largely be our Neanderthal domestic politics) creates an opening.
But, lo these 8 plus years after 9-11 and as we approach the eighth anniversary of Guantanamo's use as a convenient gulag, the rhetoric is the same. Good old American values like "innocent until proven guilty..." or "innocent after being determined innocent"... don't mean so much anymore. As usual, the rest of the world, whose cooperation we will need in our never-ending "war on terror..." (or whatever it's called now) is watching, and the continued injustices (such as even one of the few originally charged by the vaunted commissions being found by a federal judge to have "confessed" because of torture) will continue to bother them more than they seem to bother us (or certainly bother our elected representatives).
And at least 87 Democrats in the House care not a jot that "the winner" when, thanks to their actions, President Obama suffers a big political loss because they won't let him close GTMO in the one-year time frame he promised, will be the GOP... and not AQ.
But then... what else is new?