WOW! Are we a long way from Franklin's admonition:

Those who would sacrifice any of our precious liberties for a temporary measure of security, deserve neither liberty nor security.

The notion that simply because a POTUS or for that matter ANY government office "does not want to relase" some individual that we necessarily have to have structures to accomodate this desire is about as contrary to the foundational notions of this nation as is possible.

There fundamentally is no complexity in closing Gitmo. Try them in Federal court. If you cannot convict them, release them. When the Framers signed the Declaration of Independence, putting their names to:

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America...solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free ... states... And for the support of this declaration, ...we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

they faced a much more real PERSONAL and INDIVIDUAL threat than even the most horrific WMD threat poses to any American of today.

That we are unwilling to take even a fraction of the risk the Founders took makes me wonder if we still deserve our liberties.

Good post.

I would question the author's assumption that Obama wants to detain some of those who can't be tried. I think the bigger problem is finding countries that will accept them upon release and barring that deciding what to do with them.

Simple: Just release them onto the streets of Washington D.C. If Gitmo isn't necessary, then it won't matter where we release them. This way, no other country has to make the hard decision as to whether or not to let them in.

Do that and besides having a large portion of the citizenry screaming, you'll have all the undocumented immigrants with a pretty good equal protection argument. 'Course maybe that's OK.

JackD:

Do that and besides having a large portion of the citizenry screaming, you'll have all the undocumented immigrants with a pretty good equal protection argument. 'Course maybe that's OK.

And this is a problem exactly why?

A few years ago the authorities at Gitmo released a man named Abdullah Mehsud. He was a Taleban fighter arrested early on in the invasion of Afghanistan.

Upon his release he went straight back to Pakistan and resumed command of Taleban fighters, who were involved in the murder not only of Nato troops in Afghanistan but also a Chinese engineer and dozens of innocent Pakistanis in various bombing attacks.

I doubt the families of those killed after Mehsud's release really gave a shit about the ideals of the Founding Fathers.

And in which way should that be relevant in a judicial process? Laws are made to be followed, unless you prefer to live under a dictatorship.

ComproseReview you forgot one important part of the FRANKLIN quote: This was when America was declaring independence from Great Britian and we had a war of Uniformed soldiers going against Uniformed soldiers.

Since when did the Taliban and Al Qaeda become a known government recognized by any country? These are plain and simple terrorist headed up by a person who has lost his citizenship from the country in which he was born. He has fed poor highly uneducated people of the myth of 72 Virgins in Paradise for every one who gets killed to go out and kill Americans.

Just turn them all loose on the streets of Washington DC and let them go on their killing ways and then we will see how fast the public blames Bush for setting them free as ordered by one Federal judge. Or maybe send them all to Chicago to live with William Ayers and his wife who still want to destroy America even though they have lived a very good life to date. Other countries have turn them down and it is against the law for us to send the China citizens back to China as they may kill them. Poethic justice.

You are free also to adopt them and have them live with you. This will give you the honor of being the Daniel Pearl of America with the first beheading.

Crazy nutjobs in here I swear! "their killing ways" indeed! What would YOU do if your nation was invaded by foreign forces? Bring them lemonade?

Oh, you'd shoot at them? Hm...you awful insurgent! You terrorist! Your kind can never be cured of your murderous killing ways.

The Taliban was the recognized government of Afghanistan at the time we invaded.

Oh, and most American soldiers during the revolutionary war did not wear uniforms. By your standard, the British would have been perfectly within their rights to torture any captive revolutionaries indefinitely. Of course, the Geneva Conventions didn't exist in 1776, so it's difficult to make any real comparison.

GreenwichJ:

I doubt the families of those killed after Mehsud's release really gave a shit about the ideals of the Founding Fathers.

I see. So ideals are to be held only when it is convenient? We should give them up whenever holding to them becomes hard and costly? You want to throw out the rule of law because of what a defendent might do if he's released? What other ideals are considered expendable in this brave new world of yours? Should we just give up on any pretense of a trial or process and just gas all the detainees? I know, there are a lot of bloggers out there who are posting things that might encourage people to oppose the government. Let's get rid of freedom of speech, too.

Your attitude is the very definition of fascism.

bsharporflat, you say:

"What would YOU do if your nation was invaded by foreign forces? Bring them lemonade?"

The Taleban didn't accept the concept of the "nation state", which they saw as a Western imposition on the Islamic ummah. They also viewed their domestic opponents as "foreign forces", for instance the Shia Hazara of Mazar-e-Sharif, whom they massacred in their thousands.

greatbear, you say:

"The Taliban was the recognized government of Afghanistan at the time we invaded."

Incorrect. The Taleban's government was only recognised by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. As you can imagine, this general lack of recognition created the kind of legal quagmire which you pretend could be merrily wished away if only Bush had tried a bit harder.

I'm well aware that the Taliban was not universally recognized. My point is, that they were recognized by at least some other nations.

And while the Bush administration did not officially recognize the Taliban, they were in negotiations with them to a natural gas pipeline. So, there was at least some tacit recognition.

And I'm not wishing away legal quagmire. Bush is the one who tried to wish it away by ignoring the law.

There are a lot of issues here, not the least of which is that Benjamin Franklin never said or wrote the quotation that Degsme attributes to him (it appeared on the flyleaf of a book Franklin published-- he was the printer for it, it was another author's book-- in 1759, and a similar quote appears in a handwritten note on a speech Franklin gave about 20 years later -- in which, if the quote was used at all, Franklin appeared to be quoting the original author).

Setting aside that historical quibble I haven't heard any realistic options here. The one thing you never hear from Bush's critics is an actual discussion of just how you try these people when they aren't charged with a crime (it isn't against the law to be at war with the United States). If you want them charged with crimes, how you bring evidence to bear against them without revealing intelligence, intelligence sources and the details of intelligence gathering is also a legitimate question. The United States has been criticized in the extreme for not having sufficient intelligence assets among the terrorists -- but it seems that now we have to reveal the ones we have. Is this prudent? I'd say no.