Tweet
The South Carolina senator said that in a series of meetings and phone calls over the last “several weeks,” he has pressed to establish a new national security court that would keep most Guantanamo detainees out of the federal courthouse. He expressed confidence that he could strike a deal to extend some measure of habeas corpus rights to prisoners detained on terrorism charges and to draft a “law of war” statute that ensures no one can be detained on the whim of the executive branch without oversight or judicial recourse.
A breakthrough on those issues could lead to agreement on trials for Guantanamo prisoners outside the federal court system, he said.
I dealt with this at length (too much length, maybe) on the merits in this Windy post just now, so why repeat myself. And as a political proposition, I still don’t get what Emanuel thinks he’s buying. Lindsey Graham will bring not a single GOP vote. For anything. How’s that climate bill coming? And the GOP is going to oppose absolutely everything the administration does, especially on national security, and just ignore the things the administration does that it likes, as with Afghanistan. Has the Afghanistan surge bought the White House any GOP goodwill? Within weeks of the announcement, the GOP freaked out over Abdulmutallab.
The amazing thing about this is that the administration is holding a very good national-security hand right now, and it’s barely playing it. You’ve got Eric Holder out there yesterday securing the life sentence of an aspirant terrorist, having busted up his plot before it occurred and getting information on al-Qaeda in the process, all within the civilian court system:
In this case, as it has in so many other cases, the criminal justice system has proved to be an invaluable weapon for disrupting plots and incapacitating terrorists, one that works in concert with the intelligence community and our military. We will continue to use it to protect the American people from terrorism.
As I have stated on other occasions, the criminal justice system also contains powerful incentives to induce pleas that yield long sentences and gain intelligence that can be used in the fight against Al Qaeda. We will use all available tools whenever possible against suspected terrorists.
And you trade that away for what, exactly?
29 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
The excitment of being important for closing a deal.
It’s all about Rahm’s self gratification. Similar to masturbation, totally unproductive.
This is the same old game Obama and Rahm play time and again: they say they want to close Guantanamo but they really don’t, so they make a deal with the Pukes, and when the Pukes renege they say “we tried”.
Time to wake up, people.
What about being blown up by a Predator Drone on the whim of the executive branch without oversight or judicial recourse?
Feb 19, 2010 – “Greece Hires Former Goldman Banker as Debt Chief”
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-19/greece-replaces-debt-chief-as-crisis-batters-markets-update1-.html
Feb 22, 2010 – “INSIDER SELLING SOARS TO 2010 HIGH”
http://pragcap.com/insider-selling-soars-to-2010-high
Feb 23, 21010 – Just another day in the life of an investment banker.
Spencer, you are my hero. This is just spot on.
And why is ANYBODY listening to Rahm–a non lawyer– on legal matters like trials and prisons?
That’s what the White House Counsel’s Office is for.
Obama might want to rely more heavily on Bob Bauer
Law, including it’s the non-application, are all about precedent. Some of these guys may be interested in changing the goal of blind justice into a more malleable, context sensitive scheme.
The win is not about current cases but in getting the public expect that “terrorism”, or any other unusual cases, be tried outside of normal jurisprudence. Heating our melting pot full of frogs.
Winning or losing these cases is probably not very important if this is part of the motivation.
Oh, and one more thing.
How much is this TRahm and Graham doing what Rahm does best. Floating a story about something HE wants, to make it sound like that result is inevitable–when he really only talkin got himslf.
In this case it Graham talking to Rahm–which we already knew about.
Graham is trying to make it seem like there has been movement. But Rahm was already on Grahaam’s side. Graham may be “urgeing” all kinds of stuff in phane acalls and meetings, but graham has failed to allege that he has won over even one more convert.
Graham has Rahm on his side and that appears to be all.
This is all puffing
Better control of our bogus holy war? How disturbing it must be, to go through years of covert ops only to have some pissant judge blow the cover on the whole thing by demanding to know what’s being done in the name of the People. Can’t have our own crimes being questioned, they’re holy crimes.
Wouldn’t it be nice, they seem to think aloud, if we could just move all trials to courts where outcomes are fancied easier to control? If we accidentally do one little thing that helps Them, it imperils our own precious little soul with eternal torment. Better to inflict temporal torment on The Others, just to be sure. Don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Biggest Man Upstairs.
Policy and the people be damned, this is about dominance. These guys aren’t playing House, they aren’t playing Senate, they aren’t even playing Justice. They’re playing wannabe war gods. Anyone who opposes them obviously is in league with the devil and deserves whatever hell of life can be made for them.
Next, as Brecht said, since we’ve so utterly failed them, they’ll abolish civilians altogether.
We can’t go on together
With Suspicious Minds
I have no idea why Obama shoots himself in the foot on nearly every single issue, nearly every single day. It’s like he THINKS he’s walking some sort of moderate tightrope. Between the Devil and the deep blue sea.
When do we organize the marches? When do we hit the streets? Isn’t it about time? Maybe later in the spring.
Your kabuki scenario makes sense. What’s interesting is how Holder appears — in Jane Mayer’s profile, in Charlie Savage’s profile, in his comments at the Zazi presser yesterday — to be actively pushing back. Maybe I’m reading too much into this…
Fuck. When will Obama, or ANY Democrat, realize they don’t have to sacrifice the Bill of Rights in order to get elected?
When will they realize they don’t have to cave into neocon demands? When will they realize that they’re in good shape politically if they actually follow the laws?
When?
If our our safety relies on Emanuel’s ability to make a deal then the terrorists have won.
What a set-up. The GOP has Obama and his league of incompetents right where they want them. Obama will cave, which he always does, it makes him look like a weak leader, which he is, and the right wins again. Is there room at Gitmo for Rahm?
Why do we have to wait till spring to hit the streets? I have boots and long underwear. This train wreck isn’t gonna wait til spring.
Well, you get Graham. I’m unclear whether Guantanamo-closing funds will be subject to cloture, but if they are, you need at least one Republican vote, unless you’re just going to bring the detainees into the regular prison system. Further, it may not be Republicans Graham might bring, but indeed Democrats seeking high-profile Republican cover. You’re right they have a good hand on terrorism now, but that doesn’t itself close Guantanamo. What is they play you are saying they are bypassing specifically on Guantanamo? Or are you saying, hey, they’re doing good on terrorism, they can just let Guantanamo slide?
My reading of it is that either Lindsay Graham is bluffing (more likely) and dropping names.
I read this statement by Graham as conditional. He is trying to put the White House in a box.
If Rahm is involved at all, I suspect his instructions are to dangle Graham along to delay the passage of any legislation that could block trials in federal courts.
Graham is a slippery player. And so is Rahm. But I don’t see anything other than Graham’s claim that supports the notion that Rahm is doing anything with regard to supporting Graham’s position.
so, green party, independents? or support the best Democrats we can find?
I think I know what tact FDL is taking based on the FDL heroes contest. There is a lot of angst in the comments about betrayal, and a third party candidate could get some traction. The powers that be pretty much scoff at and marginalize any such suggestion. there are many here that think third party is loony as well.
I have heard that Nader was wrong in saying the candidates in 2000 were the same. I did not believe him.
I did not believe it at all after 8 years of GWB.
However, now I kinda believe it. The speeches are different. The results are eerily similar. More war, less rights, lots of corporate giveaways.
so what do we do? within the party or without…?
I guess I know the answer. Most will continue to work within, but a large number, and small % will work outside.
cc
“…some measure of habeas corpus rights…”
*smacks head*
“some measure”? so, rahm is cutting a deal (is that his job anyway?) that will keep our justice system on par with pre-12th century legal systems?
our system of justice is on par with a tin pot military dictatorship.
this stinks to high heaven. a political deal that continues to sacrifice justice for poltical expediency.
There’s a shake-up coming in the WH staff, is my sense. This goes with the Dana Milbank piece about how great Rahm is and how much everything that’s gone wrong this past year is the fault of Obama’s old campaign team. Emanuel was always a weird fit for Obama, something he inflicted on himself to make him more acceptable to the insiders; The White House views staff whose job it is to basically lobby and persuade as being community organizers for a specialized community, and Rahm’s not a community organizer; Rahm, in fact quite openly, hates community based politics, and wasn’t exposed to it’s recent successful application in the last campaign.
But anyway, Emanuel has been flailing for some time now, and there’s been some indications that the rest of the President’s inner circle has stopped seeing him as some kind of Aaron Sorkin hero come to life and started to push, and I’m guessing with Holder we’re seeing that knowledge of (or at least hope for) Rahm Emanuel’s impending doom is seeping out into the Cabinet. On top of all this drama you have Emanuel hoarding over a million dollars in his dormant congressional campaign, in spite of the fact that there’s no seat in the country he could win at any price except for the ones he could have practically for free. That’s comfort-seeking behavior, not rational calculation.
Obama doesn’t like drama; when Emanuel does these things that deliberately make himself the story he’s not merely working independent of the President’s wishes, he’s going against them. Emanuel’s a hack, he wouldn’t flip off the boss to his face if he didn’t think he was already fired.
When it’s a tad warmer :-)
I’m headed out. Sorry I didn’t vote for Ralph in 2008.
So, what is Graham getting or does he hope to get from this odious deal? What stake does he have in making sure the truth disappears in kangaroo military courts?
Good thread, Spence. Calling these fuckers out for wanking off while reading Machiavelli, as the country goes down the toilet, is “the right stuff.”
It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself what are they accomplishing and what do they think they are accomplishing. They are accomplishing the destruction of the democratic party for a least a decade, that is pretty obvous. But what I can’t figure out is what they think they are accomplishing.
really what I’m saying is — Is there any point in demanding your elected officials be responsive?
I wrote my reps urging them not to vote for the authorization to use force/start war, whatever. They did not listen. I marched against the start of the war. No listening. It’s the same now.
I think that the only voice I have is to vote. And to vote for somebody else. So, that’s what I’m going to do.
Magic Beans?
Good points if Rahm is expected to leave then there is no deal which makes this story more Rahm PR.
The question then becomes what is Lindsey Graham getting?
A bit off topic but the idea of the US arbitrarily declaring war on a group of people by calling them terrorists and then when you capture any of them you set up arbitrary inadequate legal standards for treating them you are just arguing in circles. In other words how you choose to treat them is from the very outset completely arbitrary.
The people who are being attacked within their own national borders by invading US troops are by any legal definition targets of illegal US aggression. The terrorists in this case according to international laws are US troops. A basic tenet of international law is that people have a right to exist peacefully within their own borders.
To be specific the Taliban are free to exist within their country of Afghanistan and carry out whatever civic role they like within their country.
The exact same reasoning that applies to the US applies to Israelis who are occupying Palestinian land.
In view of having two terrorist countries in the case of the US and Israel that currently violate the peace the question becomes how should countries act to assure their self defense. In the case of Iran the only question is whether as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty it is entitled to create nuclear weapons as a response to directs threats of military attack from the US and Israel. Specifically since the US has threatend to use nuclear weapons against Iran and has used them before in Iraq.
Also in the case of Israel it will not do for it to claim that Iran poses an existential threat since the Iraeli occupation of Palestinian land if anything justifies any country or group of countries with attacking it and forcing it to return to internationally agreed borders.
I keep asking myself that. Graham was/is a JAG lawyer, but military commissions are not anything like a JAG court, so it’s not like Graham is defending a system that he has devoted a chunk of his own life to.
Military commisssions, to the extent that the public onfuses tham with JAG courts, actually taint and smear the JAG courts.
That’s a very good point that is not often stressed.