Late Tuesday, just hours into his presidency, President Barack Obama instructed military prosecutors to seek a 120-day suspension of the military tribunals being conducted at Guantanamo Bay.

Tuesday's order indicates a strong break with the approach former President Bush took towards handling the prosecution of suspected terrorists. Obama has said that he intends to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

While the military judges involved in the cases do not necessarily have to agree to Obama's request, if followed, the instruction would halt 21 pending cases.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, who is the defense lawyer for Omar Khadr, a detainee held at Guantanamo Bay, told the AP that Obama's order, "has the practical effect of stopping the process, probably forever."

On Tuesday, Obama also ordered that federal agencies put an immediate halt to all pending regulations from the Bush administration until Obama's administration has time to review them.

To Obama and the left, the captured Jihadist are just another victim of the evil Bush Administration.

There were lots of war crime tribunals in the past. Could you pleae tell me where multinational forces were involved and only one country decided what to do with the captured enemies??? The war in Afghan was fought by multinational force aproved by UN.They are all good to fight along US but not have anything to say about the detainees. Now Bush decided that he is going to punish them. US will be judge and jury. Besided that they have been there for 6 years without even a trial.

Howdy

"The Problem" I refer to is the total absence of a legal structure defining proper treatment of terrorist detainees.

Geneva doesn't apply, all it says about irregulars out of uniform with no relation to civilian government authorities, who make war on civilians, is to authorize officers to apply summary justice on the battlefield. Even legal authority to dispatch detainees captured in action against US soldiers with a bullet is tenuous, Geneva assumes such detainees are deserters from actual armies gone pirate.

The US Constitution doesn't apply, these are foreigners, captured on foreign soil, making war on foreign civilians as well as US soldiers.

In the absence of pertinent international law, The Bush administration has created policies and procedures as needed, ad hoc, relying on legal opinions and military necessity, in a back and forth between the legislature, the courts, and the Administration, a process which has often turned treatment of a legitimate national emergency into a political circus.

The UN is too corrupt to engage in a new international convention to fill the void, it is largely inhabited by nations which sponsor, tolerate, or take political advantage of terrorists, they can't even tolerate a legal definition of terrorism, much less create an international convention after the fashion of Geneva to deal with international terrorism.

It has been shocking to observe, even with europeans dying in serial terrorist mass murders for decades, european political leaders have agreed more with terrorist opinion that those darn Americans enjoy too much individual liberty than with the Bush Adminstration's efforts to defend freedom.

That morbid little slice of life is gone now with the inauguration of President Obama. Europeans despised President Bush as a black balled outsider in their socialist community who cost european elite high and mighty types billions by turning off their brisk arms and oil trade with their favorite middle eastern nazi dictator in Iraq.

President Obama does not carry that baggage, backwards europeans who still prefer the enslavement of socialism to the freedom of American liberty idolize President Obama as one of their own, the new President has tremendous support in the US and in the EU, he has a historic opportunity to reach international consensus regarding how justly to treat international terrorism, terrorists, and captured combatants.

We all understand the President campaigned on changing the status quo on fighting the war on terror and handling detainees, he has assumed responsibility over a spackled over patchwork over a huge gap in US and international law that has provoked endless chaos and storms of controversy.

I for one hope he succeeds where President Bush failed, and leads an international coalition in an effort to add a new body of international law, a New Geneva Convention, to deal with the continuing threat of international terrorism.

There lies the problem with your post. POWs are not elligible for "trial" and can be held until the end of hostilities cease.

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"...those darn Americans enjoy too much individual liberty than with the Bush Adminstration's efforts to defend freedom."

Bush denfeder of freedom? What a crock o'shit.

When the man wasn't busy forcing democracy on nations at gun point he was cancelling the 4th, 6th & 7th articles of the Constiution of the the United States of America ("...the Constituion is nothing but a Goddamn piece of paper..." Bush 2005).

Rather than complying with international laws and treaties, with other democratic states, he created his own off shore detention center that could directly oppose free nations demands for justice.

Domestically Bush gave us "free speech" zones miles away from any function he would attend, arresting all who decided to use their Constiutionally guaranteed rights to peaceful assembly.

Wire tapping, extreme rendition, torture, AG used as political arm of the GOP...give us a break. Wake up and smell the coffee already.

Howdy esox

Your litany against President Bush is now as obsolete as it was mindless political partisanship.

He fought the war on terror. You claim that was illegitimate, but now President Obama will either continue to successfully defend us against terrorists, or people will die on his watch.

Actions you condemned yesterday you will defend today or else you will condemn President Obama just as you did President Bush, your arguments are sterile of merit, partisan political noise where thoughtful debate on public policy is urgently needed.

The result of simpleminded, dogmatic bleating of partisan litanies is that you are blind to the nature of the problem that has been, and continues to, confront us.

There is no law on how to deal with international terrorist piracy. President Obama has a historic opportunity to fill that void with just and effective international and domestic law.

I hope you can set aside your contrived political posturing and support your president, I assure you President Obama has my full faith and support, I'll back him up, the alternative is to do what you did, quote the al qaida handbook and damage my country will my personal political brain cancer.

No.

We need a new Geneva Convention on how to deal with nazi barbarians on a global mass murder spree, and the fact that the President has a "D" next to his name is not enough to transform me from patriot to traitor. You failed that test of citizenship Esox, but there is no reason for your malignancy to continue.

President Obama can bring the world together in unity to stop the barbaric mass murder of innocent civilians for political profit, we need a new Geneva Convention, and President Obama is the man to do the job.

Set your politics aside, back up your President this time, and we can have prodent and enlightened laws to fill the voids in the Geneva Conventions and US domestic law.

Keep bleating enemy propaganda, and serious defects in international and domestic law will persist.

Doug Thompson, publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, says he's talked to three people present last month when Republican Congressional leaders met with President Bush in the Oval Office to talk about renewing the Patriot Act. That act, passed by legislators who hadn't read it, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 (when most people were shell-shocked and lawmakers in particular disinclined to use their brains), has of course been criticized as containing unconstitutional elements. All three GOP politicians quote their president as saying: "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

At least one of Thompson's sources says the president, when told his insistence on preserving some provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives following the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination disaster, stated, "I don't give a goddamn: I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

You are the enemy, the enemy of a free and democratic society. Why do you people hate liberty and America so much?

You and your Repubican't Talking Points are nothing more than the propaganda you assign to others.

Guantanamo and torture are black marks on this great nation bought down by the likes of Bush and yourself.

President Obama is currently reviewing the situations at hand. If nothing else we will get more information about operations and the strategy that will conclude Guantanamo that we ever got under Bush.

At worst we will hold Bush and his minions accountable for these actions.

And BTW Great Carnac, you yourself are jumping to conclusions in your predictions of outcomes here.

Howdy

No Esox, al qaida and a host of similar organizations, and the governments who give them money and facilities, are he enemy.

I do not want the flesh ripped from your body, I want the people who desire to tear apart the bodies of American citizens to fail in their efforts to do so.

I desire that America should win the war on terror. I desire that American liberty, the US Constitution, and justice should be perfectly respected in the process of winning the war on terror.

Now we have a democrat as president, and I fully support him.

You really have nothing to offer but a morbid little political vendetta, that benefits nobody but the butchers of humanity who want to murder your fellow citizens.

Your malignancy has outlived its political purpose Esox.

Prosecute and jail President Bush and his whole administration and nothing will change. President Obama still has scores of thousands of genocidal mass murderers determined to kill as many American people as they possibly can, and he, just like President Bush was, is reponsible for preventing that from happening.

I understand that your pathetic little anti Bush hatefest was a lot easier and fun than the real world, you haven't spent one minute actually thinking about what is legal, wise, just, effective or sensible in dealing with the al qaudas of the world, so now that you have lost your political piniata, you are ill equipped to join civil debate, and instead just continue to blither about individual politicians and how horrible you imagine their motivations to be.

That's pathetic Esox.

President Obama deserves better than citizens who put partisan hate in place of citizenship.

Do you want a reading list to educate you on where the world has been since you phased out into your bubble of dingbat daily kos propaganda?

You rabid haters are really lost right now, and your fellow citizens who have lived these past eight years in the USA, on planet Earth, are here to help you reintroduce you to the objective reality you abandoned.

One of the first orders from BHO is to close Gotmo within the year.

1) Let's say we close Gitmo. Where do the 245 scumbags we're holding there go?

2) Omar Khadr killed a United States soldier when he was 14, he's now 21 years old. When he killed our soldier, Omar was not wearing a uniform, just like the other 245 scumbags in Gitmo. In the "good old days" we hung those people as spies. No trial, no jury. You're not in uniform...you're spying. Death sentence.

Most of these scumbags, including Omar, killed American soldiers. They should have been killed on the same battlefield. But no, we put them in prison, feed them, clothe them,give them new copies of their mutt religion's bible to read, and now I go back to question #1. Where do we put them? In prisons in the United States? Do you really think Madam Pelosi or "Turbin" Dick Durbin would want these scumbags in a prison in their state? How about Nevada Mr. Reid? There must be some suitable place to stow these murdering bastards up in Pat Leahy's Republic of Vermont or the Kennedy/Kerry Kingdom of Massachusetts. I know....Illinois where all the pols are crooks and the number of people killed last year was higher then the number killed in Iraq. What's another 245 murdering pieces of shit when you have a record like that.

There you go...problem solved. Or maybe all 245 scumbags will be "lost at sea" coming from Cuba. It happens all the time in that 90 miles stretch of ocean to Florida.

Now, BHO did give a campaign promise, which all of you Flavor Ade drinkers gulped down, to bring all our troops home from Iraq by April of 2010. That, and the tax cut for 95% of the working folks, ain't never gotta happen. Sorry to spoil the party so early, but this man, BHO, is, was, and will always be an empty suit, who will shit himself when this country is attacked again, and it will probably happen before the year is out.

I will give him props on one thing...he has a bitchin' ride.

Welcome to the world outside of Chicago.

Howdy

President Obama may have pledged to close Gitmo, but I doubt he will change detention policy.

At least I hope he doesn't.

Imagine al qaida ambassadors in federal prisons forming relationships with domestic criminal organizations.

Good grief, the consequences of importing terrorist detainees into the federal prison system would be a disaster, can you imagine the horror of al qaida affiliated street gangs?

No, President Obama would have to desire a bloodbath to bring Gitmo detainees into the domestic US legal system.

Ain't gonna happen.

Anti:

I hope to God you're right.

It is tempered disgust for whack jobs like you and frustration with the lack on conscience and advanced (next move) lack of thoughtfulness Bush pulled on all of us.

You read Bull post? First question is what do we do next?

Bush did not have a clue, he created a totally illegal entity through falsely and cleverly (in a smart assed way) perceived loop holes in international treaties and conventions to give us Guantanamo.

BTW MR Conservative...where the hell is Osama Bin Forgotten? Bush should have at the very least killed that SON OF A BITCH.

And why is al-Qaeda and the Taliban still killing soldiers in Afghanistan? Bush should have annihilated these two groups as they and Osama Bin Forgotten were clearly the perpetrators of 9/11....not Saddam Hussein.

So the Clinton lynch mob gang is going to attempt to lecture decent folks on hate...you got a lot of damn gall howdy doody.