White House near decision to close Gitmo
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move its terror suspects to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.This is madness!
Senior administration officials said Thursday a consensus is building for a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where they could face trial.
President Bush's national security and legal advisers had been scheduled to discuss the move at a meeting Friday, the officials said, but after news of it broke, the White House said the meeting would not take place that day and no decision on Guantanamo Bay's status is imminent.
Maybe it's just a trial balloon.
Maybe the "consensus" is in the head of the AP reporter.
But we cannot allow our government to capitulate like this!
Ordinary prisoners of war have always been held indefinitely in detainment camps, with no prospet of release until hostilities end (which has no time limit), and without "charges" filed and without access to lawyers. Why? Because it's not a criminal matter!
And these illegal combatants don't even rise to that status level of ordinary prisoners of war -- historically they could be summarily executed, and ought to be.
And how is keeping them in other prisons going to "solve" anything and end the criticisms, unless they're planning to give up the whole warfighting idea and treat them all as common criminals -- which will result in many if not all of them being freed, most likely, as they weren't Mirandized, where they? Might as well just shut it down and let them all go. Give them green cards!
The basic problem is much of the legal establishment refuses to believe we are fighting a real war. One wonders why the lawyers and judges somehow feel they don't have a stake in the outcome of this war. As post-modern "citizens of the world", perhaps they feel above it all.
But, We the People still ultimately control the government, and my vote counts just as much as any lawyer's does, and there's more of us than them.
So let your political servants know Guantanamo must stay open.
its closure will NOT result in any beam of light from Heaven in which the world suddenly loves us for regaining the "moral high ground", but will instead be treated as an admission of guilt and a sign of weakness and capitulation, upon which more and more demands will be made until we completely surrender and shut down our counterattacks against the jihad.
Send the lawyers to Gitmo if they want to visit the inmates -- and keep them there!
I sent the following e-mail to the President, and a similar one to the Vice President:
Dear Mr. President,Don't just sit there reading a blog, do something!
Recent news reports say your administration is "close to a decision to close the Guantanamo prison" for terrorsts.
I strongly oppose such a closing! It will be perceived as a capitulation and will be followed by more demands designed to turn the War on Islamic Terror into an impotent police matter.
The "moral high ground" is an illusion that our enemies will never grant to us no matter how much we surrender to their will in a futile attempt to appease them.
You can contact the White House here, or e-mail directly to the President and Vice President.
