Obama won't expand Bush detainment policies

He doesn't need to. The existing ones will suffice. Where, oh where, are all the liberals who told us McCain would be the third Bush term? Why aren't they shredding Obama for fitting this bill? How long before people finally, mercifully, discover that both parties are controlled by the same people? When will we shed this false left-right paradigm that distracts us from real issues?

New York Times -

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.


Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.

But President Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress.

The Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday night that “the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress” under the use of force resolution. “The administration is not currently seeking additional authorization,” the statement said.

The department pointed out that courts would continue to review the cases of those held without charges through habeas corpus hearings. The Washington Post first reported the decision.

The legal interpretation applies to detainees whom the government concludes should be held because they are a continuing danger to national security but who cannot be brought to trial for various reasons, like evidence tainted by harsh interrogations. Although it has not determined definitively how many detainees that applies to, officials said it would probably be about 50 of the more than 200 men still held at Guantánamo. The government plans to bring the others to trial or send them to other countries.

This absurdity just blows away in the wind in this article, that the government can't prosecute these "terrorists" because their confessions are often obtained under "harsh interrogations" (that's torture, in case you didn't know), yet clearly the government has no hard evidence of their supposed acts of terrorism, else a confession, no matter how illegally obtained, would be moot. And yet there they are, indefinitely detained, and tortured. It's so profoundly American, it just brings a tear to the eye, does it not? Read all of it...