Terrorist trial may go to military tribunal, not court.

Jesus H Christ in the stockade, would someone please tell me a couple things? First, what is the basic difference between Bush and Obama? Second, what happened to the fucking rule of law in the US?

WASHINGTON — Looking to breathe life into President Barack Obama's stalled pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, White House advisers are inching toward recommending military trials for alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused henchmen.

Attorney General Eric Holder's original plan to try them in a civilian court in New York City met with criticism so fierce that it threatened to derail Obama's promise to shut the U.S. military's Cuban prison.

As difficult as the politics are concerning how and where to try the most notorious terror suspect in U.S. custody, that's only one step toward the even more fraught and complicated goal of closing Guantanamo where Mohammed and nearly 200 other terror detainees remain

As difficult as the politics are concerning how and where to try the most notorious terror suspect in U.S. custody, that's only one step toward the even more fraught and complicated goal of closing Guantanamo where Mohammed and nearly 200 other terror detainees remain.

Closing Guantanamo was a signature promise of Obama's presidency, and it is still unkept well past his original deadline of January. Failing to keep it would have huge implications for the president, both with his base of supporters in the Democratic Party and in his efforts to remake America's image around the globe.

Has Obama accomplished much of anything he promised, you know the things we elected him to do?

Has he undone anything Bush did wrong? Well, except for banning torture during interrogations? Has he eliminated spying on phone calls, emails, mail, bank accounts, medical records of any Americans without obtaining a court order? Has he really upheld American's rights to privacy under The Constitution? And now he intends to stay in Iraq longer than he promised? Has he closed Gitmo?
As difficult as the politics are concerning how and where to try the most notorious terror suspect in U.S. custody, that's only one step toward the even more fraught and complicated goal of closing Guantanamo where Mohammed and nearly 200 other terror detainees remain.

Closing Guantanamo was a signature promise of Obama's presidency, and it is still unkept well past his original deadline of January. Failing to keep it would have huge implications for the president, both with his base of supporters in the Democratic Party and in his efforts to remake America's image around the globe.

In the next election will we give him eight more years to not do things?

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A criminal is a criminal

Nuff said.

Forget the shit being tossed out by the repugs. They're jerking your chain for political purposes. America can prosecute drug dealers, the mafia, prostitutes, gang bangers, serial killers, child molesters, kleptomaniacs and wife beaters and it can prosecute terrorists.

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The second coming of Shrub

Glenn Greenwald

I often avoid reading Glenn Greenwald because: 1) I read slowly and 2) he writes as if each word will give him an extra hour of life.

However, this is a must read. For example:

As has been voluminously documented here, one of the most notable aspects of the first year of the Obama presidency has been how many previously controversial Bush/Cheney policies in the terrorism and civil liberties realms have been embraced. Even Obama's most loyal defenders often acknowledge that, as Michael Tomasky recently put it, "the civil liberties area has been [Obama's] worst. This is the one area in which the president's actions don't remotely match the candidate's promises." From indefinite detention and renditions to denial of habeas rights, from military commissions and secrecy obsessions to state secrets abuses, many of the defining Bush/Cheney policies continue unabated under its successor administration.

Despite all that, there is substantial political pressure from all directions for Obama to reverse the very few decisions where he actually deviated from Bush/Cheney radicalism in these areas. In the wake of extreme political pressure, mostly from Democrats, the White House just forced Eric Holder to retreat on his decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, and numerous Democrats now appear prepared to join with the GOP to cut-off funding for civilian trials altogether, forcing the administration to try all Terrorists in military commissions or just hold them indefinitely. The administration has created a warped multi-tiered justice system where only a select few even get civilian trials -- those whom they know in advance they can convict -- yet there are growing signs that the President will abandon even that symbolic, piecemeal nod to due process.

I never expected great things from Obama. Great things rarely happen in Washington D.C., but I did hold out hope he would undo the things Shrub did to fuck up the principals upon which the US was based.

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