The sheer stupidity of closing Gitmo

[DHC6twinotter]

On a similar note, charges against a USS Cole bombing suspect have been dropped.

The senior military judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay has dropped charges against a suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing.

The legal move by the Hon. Susan J. Crawford upholds President Obama's Guantanamo order to halt court proceedings at the Navy detention center in Cuba.

The military charges against suspected Al Qaeda bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Crawford dismissed the charges against al-Nashiri without prejudice. That means new charges can be brought again later. He will remain in prison for the time being.

"It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantanamo," Morrell said Thursday night.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/firs...mbing-suspect/

[Bob98SR5]

After reading the article, can someone explain to me the difference between the reasons for closing Gitmo and why those same reasons were not used to close our other prisons such as this one on Baghram afb? Seems to me, the only difference between Gitmo and our other prisons is that we took a few hundred straight off the battlefield onto our little piece of territory on Cuba. It's political bull#### to assuage the "evils" of Gitmo to his left wing constituency.

Its quite sad to see that as a candidate, Obama railed against Gitmo and probably was NOT privy to the most highest levels of intelligence that Bush did. Now that he's CNC, he is privy to it and I suppose he knows what kind of people are harbored there at Baghram.

Beyond words.

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Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners
By NEDRA PICKLER and MATT APUZZO, AP

The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.
In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.
"The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we'd hoped," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram Airfield. "We all expected better."
The Supreme Court last summer gave al-Qaida and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention. With about 600 detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and thousands more held in Iraq, courts are grappling with whether they, too, can sue to be released.
Three months after the Supreme Court's ruling on Guantanamo Bay, four Afghan citizens being detained at Bagram tried to challenge their detentions in U.S. District Court in Washington. Court filings alleged that the U.S. military had held them without charges, repeatedly interrogating them without any means to contact an attorney. Their petition was filed by relatives on their behalf since they had no way of getting access to the legal system.
The military has determined that all the detainees at Bagram are "enemy combatants." The Bush administration said in a response to the petition last year that the enemy combatant status of the Bagram detainees is reviewed every six months, taking into consideration classified intelligence and testimony from those involved in their capture and interrogation.
After Barack Obama took office, a federal judge in Washington gave the new administration a month to decide whether it wanted to stand by Bush's legal argument. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the filing speaks for itself.

"They've now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees.
The Justice Department argues that Bagram is different from Guantanamo Bay because it is in an overseas war zone and the prisoners there are being held as part of a military action.
The government argues that releasing enemy combatants into the Afghan war zone, or even diverting U.S. personnel there to consider their legal cases, could threaten security.
The government also said if the Bagram detainees got access to the courts, it would allow all foreigners captured by the United States in conflicts worldwide to do the same.
It's not the first time that the Obama administration has used a Bush administration legal argument after promising to review it. Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a review of every court case in which the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege, a separate legal tool it used to have lawsuits thrown out rather than reveal secrets.
The same day, however, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter cited that privilege in asking an appeals court to uphold dismissal of a suit accusing a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally helping the CIA fly suspected terrorists to allied foreign nations that tortured them. Letter said that Obama officials approved his argument.