Obama to release 17 Guantanamo detainees before leaving office
So, it doesn’t look like the president will make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo detainee facility during his eight years in office. The New York Times says that he’ll release 17 or 18 more detainees before his term in office ends, but there will still be a few dozen behind bars there.
By law, the Pentagon must notify Congress 30 days before a transfer, so the deadline to set in motion deals before the end of the Obama administration was Monday.
By late in the day, officials said, the administration had agreed to tell Congress that it intended to transfer 17 or 18 of the 59 remaining detainees at the prison; they would go to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If all goes as planned, that will leave 41 or 42 prisoners in Guantánamo for Donald J. Trump’s administration. Mr. Trump has vowed to keep the prison operating and “load it up with some bad dudes.”
Closing Guantanamo made a nice campaign promise in 2008, but it was much more difficult to actually accomplish – even for a Nobel Prize winner. Of course, President Bush got the idea of keeping prisoners offshore from his predecessor when President Clinton filled Guantanamo with Haitian refugees to keep them from getting “dry feet” on US soil.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
So we can expect the advertised 30% recidivism rate? About 6 terrorists returning to the fold, then.
Thanks, Barry.
The Emperor has now commuted the sentences of 1,176 people, including 395 serving life sentences. He has also doled out 138 pardons. I’m guessing none will be moving to Georgetown. BTW, The Emperor is in Hawaii, playing gold. Don’t worry, Joey Shotgun is attending the security briefings in DC.
Well the stupid S.O.B. just shyt on the last of his legacy…..ROFLMAO….love it!
Here you fo. I fuess I hit the wrong key.
He was playing “golg”….?
Or dold. I’m not sure which. I even screwed up my gorrection.
What would be nice if we could hold him legally accountable when (not if) those pardoned or released return to their nefarious ways.
Wishful thinking, I know – but the discovery phase ought to be delightful.
IF we’re lucky – and I say ‘if’ advisably – they’ll run off to Syria to fight their good fight at Mosul. Aleppo is mostly crumbling toast, which leaves Mosul as the remaining target zone. Those rats should really be dropped off with parachutes near Mosul. Do you think any ISers would shoot at them, maybe?
“With” parachutes? why are you so loose with taxpayers money? 😉
Everyone, POTUS or otherwise, who’s released jihadiscum from Gitmo should be charged with accessory before the fact for every incidence of recidivism by the jihadiscum they released.
Death penalty set as federal minimum on the charge too.
Well at some point we have to let them go or try them, we are after all a nation of laws as I am constantly told…they are not POWs because we are not at war with any nation, they are some sort of sub human category of prisoner.
Additionally it’s the most expensive prison system to operate at a cost of 7 million a year per detainee…I’m a big fan of executing them on the basis of crimes against humanity and terror, but I doubt we’ll ever figure out how to get that done.
Holding them indefinitely without charges, without the rights of a POW, seems unbecoming our nation. The lack of action on behalf of the previous and current administrations is disappointing. I’m hoping Trump does something with this camp, if he fills it with “bad dudes” as he states in his conversations about Guantanamo I’m hoping there is some actual sort of protocol more befitting our nation.
We keep forgiving our government holding people without formal charges and without any trial and pretty soon whatever remains of our own personal freedoms (which isn’t much these days) will also disappear over time. We risk becoming a totalitarian state ourselves when we agree to limit the rights of others, the government has never been known to seek to relax its ability to exercise control over its own people. Slippery slopes indeed.
VOV. The keeping of the prisoners off our land is pursuant to law. It wasn’t capriciously decided. It is law. Whether it ought to be law is another matter. As for the prisoners’ rights, they are not US citizens. They’re not here. They, consequently, have few legal rights.
‘First they came for the Muslim terrorists who killed or trained others to kill non-Muslims. I was not a Muslim terrorist so I said nothing. Next, they came for no one else and that made real good sense.’
Don’t misunderstand my words, I want them dead don’t doubt that. I just find the unending detention without charges, trials, or anything somewhat uncomfortable from the perspective of individual rights.
A government that can determine its enemies are without any rights can also determine its own people are without any rights.
I prefer not to trust the government, having done business with the government enough times to know I’m not interested in bidding on their work as I’m in a non MIC industry. I’ve yet to find any instances of the government deciding it would be in the government’s best interest to reduce its power and control….that’s my point. The terrorists at Guantanamo have the right to be executed after a trial, I’m good with that but right now we’re pretending that the limbo they live in is an acceptable method of dealing with them. Maybe it is for some folks, for me it raises concerns about what happens when the government decides some Americans maybe shouldn’t have rights because the government perceives them to be involved in something….as much as the government fucks veterans regularly I’m always amazed at how many vets don’t seem to be concerned about government over reach if they like the outcome of that over reach….it’s the same as the democrats using the nuclear option in the senate as if they can’t understand those very same techniques might also be used against them one day….but no worries I’m sure the government is completely above board and as honest as the day is long.
I get what you’re saying. I just wanted to give the counterpoint, that they ain’t here and they ain’t Americans, so phuk ’em.
We’re not required to release those taken while at war with us until the war ends.
The war that the jihadiscum have been waging against us is no where even close to over.
Hand-wringing doesn’t change that.
I see and kind of agree with your point but the crux is your comment that we are not at war with a given country so hence cannot hold islamic terrorists.
(I knew a Marine who fought in Not A War in Not Central America for some time, too.)
This is a nice example corrolary to how the USA is actually getting taken to the cleaners in its justice system, and in its religion handling. These systems were all designed based on innocent until proven guilty and based on the idea that we were all in this together. They were not well designed to refute or refuse or defend from an entire “distributed network of insidious intent.”
The same goes for the laws and regs related to ‘wartime’ prisoners (regardless of whether we are ‘officially’ ‘at war’ via “Congress Declared This” with their homeland). Our current war is against an *ideology* to subdue everyone else and rule the world — except nicely designed to also do so by trojan horse plans, outbreeding hence outvoting within 2-3 generations, pushing for precedent legislation, pushing special rights given religions, and so on.
We are never going to be able to say that someone who is a terrorist is our enemy just because of their country. Hell sometimes they are part of our OWN country. And of course are local lunatics too, but here we’re specifically talking about the Islamic ideology.
So I don’t know what the solution is. But much like the early American settlers blew warfare all to hell with trench fighting and snipers against officers, rather than armies standing in squares, and changed the rules of war in a way, the issue with the damaging part of Islamic ideology has changed the rules of war in a way.
Handcuffing ourselves because the previous rules had a ‘country at war with other-country X’ requirement — much like a version of standing in squares — would just weaken us on the war front the same way we are already weakened on the religious and legal front at home.
This “we’re not at war with a particular country therefore…”
Is sophistry and general issue douchebaggery.
These jihadiscum are at war with us.
Thumb-suckers can play word games all they like but they can’t change the reality of the situation except in their own intellectually-inbred minds.
“I’m sure the government is completely above board and as honest as the day is long.”
How ironic that you posted that on the shortest day of the year….
Am I remembering correctly, VOV: isn’t the Guantanamo boys camp a facility for those enemies captured by the military in action against the US?
While we want to behave as a civilized nation, the protections given even to the scum of America are not necessarily given to traitors, enemy combatants, and certainly not to terrorists.
If I understand correctly, qua terrorists summary execution is allowed.
No, summary execution isn’t allowed for anyone. Once you capture them…once they are honest-to-goodness out of the fight, that is…they have some rights, no matter who they are or what kind of fight it was.
That is doubtless why the current Administration prefers to drone strike them while they are still in the fight.
The Supreme Court stated that the Geneva Conventions, most notably the Third Geneva Convention and Article 3 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (requiring humane treatment), applies to all detainees in the War on Terror.
I am all for releasing them, however, I can assure you…There are American interests $$$$ that are all for holding them indefinitely…
At $7 billion that was stated earlier, this should not be a joking matter for the American people…
The purpose was to have a place to hold and interrogate armed combatants…So you hold them for awhile=$$$; then you interrogate them…$$$, then you validate the info $$$, then you make an informed decision…Remember, this Bush and Rumsfields idea…Not Obama’s…How much did Bush and his cronies make off of this idea?
Should have detained them in country, then the American people would not be in this situation…
Silver or gold foil? Which covers your ceiling?
The Supreme Court stated that the Geneva Conventions, most notably the Third Geneva Convention and Article 3 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (requiring humane treatment), applies to all detainees in the War on Terror.
You’re close (on this specific point)…it’s common article 3 of the four conventions. (For some reason, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Conventions all have the same Article 3.) Common Article 3 creates the minimum standard for “non-international armed conflicts,” and if you’ve got something that rises to the level of an “armed conflict” at all, that’s the minimum standard, and as you say, humane treatment is part of that.
But most of the Third Convention deals with prisoners of war, and you only get those in international armed conflicts, which the GWOT is not. At least not most parts of it…if we get into a hot war with ISIS that might be.
Actually, the first three of the Conventions are virtually identical. This is the only article that applies to this war. It has no provisions for POW status.
There’s a SCOTUS case coming up that I’m wondering if it might have changed this, but it would only apply to a handful of Taliban who want to be called soldiers. It’s for a prisoner who was tried in Virgina last year. (He was never in Gitmo.) The guy’s name is Hamidullin, and he’s a Russian citizen, and once a Soviet soldier.
FWIW: Common Article 3 is part of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The Convention of 1929 didn’t have anything like Common Article 3.
To add further to what’s been said, Bush’s original order said that Common Article 3 applies to the Taliban prisoners. The Al Qaeda members didn’t even get that. It was the SCOTUS that decided they should in 2006.
Actually, the first three of the Conventions are virtually identical. This is the only article that applies to this war.
Correction: I meant that the first three articles of each of the four Geneva Conventions (of 1949) are virtually identical.
That’s why they’re called common article 1, 2 and 3.
Put them on a cargo plane at 30,000 feet, no parachute, push them out the door and say ‘YOU’RE FREE”! If they could flap their arms hard enough, they could fly in some target to earn their 70 ugly women!
I’m all for releasing them without any constraints on their right to free association or their ability to travel to wherever they can manage. However, the release itself must take place on an unannounced date at an unannounced time at the geographical center of the land mass known as Antarctica.
This is a creative solution that I could get behind…then we have the ability to say they were all released but that we are classifying there whereabouts to protect their privacy….
Release them from 10,000 ft AGL with a stiff boot in the ass out the door of a C5.
10,000 angels gives one a long time to think about what is about to happen to your carcass.
I’d say 10,000 AGL over the central Pacific.
If we dumped them in central Antarctica someone would make a shrine over their frozen carcass – although the pilgrimage to the shrine just may help winnow out some idiots.
In the central Pacific they become chum upon impact and return to the ecosystem.
Can you fly?
No?
Well you better hope you can swim…
I say feed them all a nice ham dinner for Christmas?
Release them into Havana.
Cocksuckers.
The problem with that is Raul would smuggle them into the U.S. or give them a flight back to wherever they want to go in the middle east, or wherever he thought they would cause us the most grief.