The president is
setting the record straight for us:
Some Reports Claim "High-Value Detainees Will Be Given Prisoner-Of-War Status."
But Neither The President's Proposed Legislation Nor The Detainees' Transfer To Guantanamo Gives The Detainees POW Status
* The President's Legislation Specifically Authorizes The Creation Of Military Commissions To Try These Suspected Terrorists For War Crimes. The Bill ensures that these commissions are established in a way that protects our national security and ensures a full and fair trial for the accused.
* Detainees Have Been Transferred To The Custody Of The Department Of Defense, At The U.S. Naval Base At Guantanamo Bay.
* Neither The President's Proposed Legislation Nor The Detainees' Transfer To Guantanamo Gives The Detainees POW Status.
Not only is this man willing to break the law but he is like those kids that brag about it on MySpace. We know he is circumventing international law and trying to sidestep the Supreme Court's ruling against him but do we really need a special tribunal? The people being detained fall under the jurisdiction of our civilian courts and those that don't fall under the jurisdiction of international or military courts. No new secret tribunal is needed. Period. There are laws and courts in place already to deal with this sort of thing.
Bush's assertion that these new tribunals is the only way these men will face justice speaks less about their guilt and more about his administrations incompitency. If these are the men that are responsible for organizing the September 11th attacks and they know that, then there must be ample evidence as well as many American judges anxious to have the case brought before them.
Does he not have faith in the prosecution team to perform their duties? We all know how wrong Gonzales was proven after assuring us of the unquestionable legality of illegal combatants and tribunals, and the subsequent exact opposite ruling from the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Maybe he thinks all prosecution lawyers are incompitent. After all, Rove and Cheney were able to avoid indictment by Fitzgerald.
Maybe he doesn't have faith in the courts. We know he doesn't respect them since he still keeps prisoners at Gitmo without trial for years despite the recent ruling. Papa court said no to him so he went crying to mama congress to let him do what he wants. Then, of course, we have his smear campaign against those "activist judges." He might be afraid that those same homo-loving judges are secretly America-hating-radical-Shiite-clerics who can't wait to let the orchestrators of the September 11th attacks go free.
Hopefully, Bush's constant call for secret military tribunals isn't based on his lack of faith in the evidence against them. I would still like to hope that they didn't, yet again, pick up somebody that wasn't involved just to make them their whipping boy. I would like to hope that the evidence they have against them ties them directly to September 11th and if brought before a judge, will be a slam dunk case. I don't have faith that this is the case but I hope that I'm wrong.
For such a religious man, Bush certainly is short on faith. He is in charge of the country but doesn't trust it's elected and appointed government officials to carry out their jobs. But it is hard to stay mad at him because of that after the repeated failures of Heckuva Job Brownie, Deutsch Bag, Slam Dunk Tenet, East West South and North Somewhat Rumsfeld, Iraq will shoulder the reconstruction burder Fleischer, finance it's own reconstruction Wolfowitz, f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth Feith, uranium in Iraq hadley, conflict of interest Perle, There is no such thing as the United Nations Bolton, and of course last throes Cheney.
Why is Bush bringing up such touchy topics around election time? News of these detainees came in the same week Bush apparently remembered that Osama attacked us not Saddam. He is trying to scare people or whip the GOP into line. Either way expect this to be a set up for some big plan Rove has. They are hiding something and will bring it out soon to try to scare Americans into voting for them again.