I suspect Obama had less to do with this than the diplomatic corps.

So, Sugarpop -- Classicman can just whistle for that cite? Seems to me the burden of proof is on you and you alone. Step up.

I see it as less a thing of right or left than of practicality: an offshore prison camp for what are in effect if perhaps not under Geneva's conventions prisoners of war remains a better solution to the cage-the-baddies problem than any other idea floated.

The Dems are just too stupid. They publicly abandon the best idea and are now casting about for the second or third best idea. Morons. Nitwits who can't bring themselves to fight a war with people wholly dedicated to fighting a war with us.

Now you know why I don't vote Democrat. They are not merely unsmart, but doubleplus-unsmart.

You think that's insulting? Just wait till we make Bermuda a state. :p

I did cite. I said I saw it on CSPAN, during a hearing. It was actually during a legislative hearing. When they voted on that particular issue (trying to stop Obama from releasing ANY prisoners, and trying to keep Guantanamo open), it was an ammendment that republicans were trying to tack onto the last war supplemental bill.

And since when it is STUPID to follow the law? We are illegally keeping people in prison, not to mention all the torture that went on, there and other places.

I don't know why we just don't ship them to Hardin, Montana. The folks there want them, and knowing the craziness of many Montanans, if any of the "detainees" (:eyebrow:) tried to escape, they'd be dead in a New York minute.

I don't see a downside.

Cuba or Hardin, they'd still be illegally detained.

No need to worry. Obama promised to close Gitmo by Dec. He still has 5 months to do what he promised.

Not if they are charged and awaiting trial, or convicted of a crime.

:D:p;)

Did he say which December?

Illegally? No argument I've ever heard holds up.

POWs, darling. Nobody except North Vietnam tries charging POWs with crimes, and we all know this was evidence of how bad North Vietnam sucked. These people practiced war against us, and were captured. End of story, really. Nothing illegal about caging prisoners of war, and it doesn't need to be Congressionally declared to be a perfectly satisfactory war from the lawbook point of view.

Seriously, the notion of criminalizing "practicing foreign policy while Republican" blends stupidity with insanity, frosted with a large dose of totalitarian-sympathizing, which is the abiding characteristic of the moronic. The smart people want the Taliban and other Islamofascists extinct and sterile. And they don't think we'd ever compromise our national virtue getting 'em that way.

Except there's a good chance some of them weren't practising war against you. There's a good chance some of them were just ordinary blokes (and indeed at least one child) who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when war broke out.

And there's really nothing much to be done about that if you, or anyone, are going to have war at all. There is no hope of making warfare into anything but the blunt instrument it is, which at the end of the day works only by smashing. A very famous 19th-century American general named Sherman had some concise things to say about what war is.

So, in times of war if a civilian gets swept up and held as an enemy combatant for upwards of half a decade that's just tough shit and shouldn't worry us in anyway?