Today, the White House released an Executive Order as regards the detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
The short version? Military trials will resume, but they're "looking at all aspects of our justice system".
What exactly does this mean?
Read the entire Order here.
The basic thrust of the order is reflected in the title:
Periodic Review of individuals detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station pursuant to the authorization for the use of military force.
Basically, each detainee will have an annual review of their status as detainees. The Order explicitly states that ALL detainees have the right of habeus corpus and "nothing in this order is intended to affect the jurisdiction of Federal courts to determine the legality of their detention"
Detainees will have access to the unclassified evidence (squabble in the comments please) as well as a representative to be their lawyer and advocate to be provided by the government, as well as any private counsel they may retain.
The Order also says that the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense "shall continue to assess whether prosecution of the detainee is feasible and in the national security interests of the United States, and shall refer detainees for prosecution, as appropriate."
In many ways, the President is caught in a bad situation. When he signed the Order closing Guantanamo, he had a huge House majority, and 58 votes in the Senate. However, the cowardice of Congress in the face of the Right Wing Noise Machine has prevented anything from happening. In fact, one of the last things the House did before the new year was to pass a provision that explicitly banned funds from being used to re-house detainees or to close Guantanamo. That was inserted into the Defense Authorization Act.
And now there's talk from Senator Kirk about making this ban PERMANENT.
So now you have these detainees, many of whom probably should be getting civilian trials, just sitting there. At least there is the hope that the periodic reviews (some of them triennial) will result in at least some detainees being released.
So now we have to get Congress to act and authorize funds. We can argue the President's "committment" to an issue, and how much he will "fight" for something, but we all know that if Congress authorizes the money, he'll sign it.
So let's get it done. Constant pressure, like the way we've awoken in Wisconsin, is the only way WE get the changes WE voted for.
It's always been up to US.