Osg2 20110307 GUANTÁNAMO

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Two weeks after he was elected, Barack Obama confirmed to 60 minutes he would close the military detention center at Guantánamo:

OBAMA 2008

Two days after becoming president, it was his first executive order:

OBAMA 2009

Well two years have now passed, and as we learned yesterday, Guantánamo isn’t closing anytime soon.  More after this from Charlie:

((SPOT))

The constitution guarantees accused criminals many rights which can mean that a guilty person will go free.

Barack Obama may accept that, being a constitutional lawyer, but a lot of Americans don’t.  They don’t want rapists going free, they don’t want murderers going free, and they sure don’t want any al Qaeda terrorists going free.

When it was announced that 9-11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would go on trial in a civilian federal court in NY, there was so much bi-partisan outrage the plans were canceled.

And yesterday, the President finally took an about-face and approved resuming military trials at Guantanamo – with certain modifications, according to CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen:

COHEN B…

See … that’s the challenge.  No president who wants to be re-elected can afford to let a terrorist go free.

So he needs constitutional way to hold suspects indefinitely, and to guarantee them a fair trial that ends in a verdict of guilty.  This may require stretching the system adopted by the founders… but it does have a precedent:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND:
Sounding better all the time, isn’t it?

TOF.