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The Upside of Evidence-Free Nuke Accusations Against Iran? We Can Declare Victory!

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One would think that, within a month of the US finally withdrawing its troops (leaving behind a vast mercenary force) from the nearly nine year nightmare in Iraq that was launched on the basis of evidence-free accusations, and only days after President Obama signed into permanency his ability to detain citizens forever without providing a shred of evidence, the Washington Post would refrain from giving Joby Warrick a chance to yammer again from the basis of unsupportable allegations that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. But this is the Post we’re talking about, and the same bill that gave Obama indefinite detention powers also tightened the screws on Iran, so it was necessary to bring Warrick out to put forth the latest transcribed version of US spin.

Warrick’s piece, at the time of this writing, is occupying the most prominent position on the home page of the Post’s website, where it has the teaser headline “Iran fears worst as West steps up pressure”. Clicking through to the article gives the headline “As currency crisis and feud with West deepen, Iranians brace for war”. The overall spin that the US is projecting through this transcription is that both the Iranian government and Iranian citizens are feeling the almighty power of the US sanctions and that they are in a state of depressed resignation to the inevitability of war, while the US government is seeing that its brilliant moves are paying off and we just might not need to proceed to the point of an overt attack. I guess that is the upside of moving forward with public sanctions (and covert actions that already constitute a full-on war) based on manufactured evidence: it is also possible to manufacture evidence that allows us to declare victory and (hopefully) move on.

There is, of course, a flip side to that same argument. As commenter Dan succinctly put it in my post from yesterday where we were discussing the risk of all-out war stemming from the US sanctions:

All this risk to punish a country for something no one has proven it has done.

With that as background, here is how the Post article opens:

TEHRAN — At a time when U.S. officials are increasingly confident that economic and political pressure alone may succeed in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the mood here has turned bleak and belligerent as Iranians prepare grimly for a period of prolonged hardship and, they fear, war.

A bit further along, we get the US gloating on its “successful” approach:

The sense of impending confrontation is not shared in Washington and other Western capitals, where government officials and analysts expressed cautious satisfaction that their policies are working. Read more →

Congress and the Administration Agree: the Government Can Indefinitely Detain US Citizens

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I’ve got a long post mostly written on the debate between two awful positions on the detainee provisions in the Defense Authorization.

But let me make something clear. Both sides have already bought off on one principle: that the Administration can indefinitely detain US citizens.

Dianne Feinstein made this clear in her comments yesterday in the Senate (in which she was reading from a letter SJC and SSCI Democrats wrote).

Section 1031 needs to be reviewed to consider whether it is consistent with the September 18, 2001, authorization for use of military force, especially because it would authorize the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial …..

And yet while in the rest of her speech, DiFi laid out problems she had with sections 1032 (mandating military detention in most cases), 1033 (requiring certification before DOD transfers detainees to a third country), and 1035 (giving DOD precedence in detainee decisions), she made not a peep objecting to (as opposed to raising cautions about) this ability to indefinitely detain American citizens.

In response to DiFi’s speech and the Administration’s veto threat, Carl Levin revealed that the Administration’s complaints about the language authorizing military detention don’t stem from any squeamishness about indefinitely detaining Americans. Indeed, as Levin made clear, the Administration asked that limitations on applying the section to Americans be taken out of the bill.

The committee accepted all of the Administration’s proposed changes to section 1031.  As the Administration has acknowledged, the provision does nothing more than codify existing law.  Indeed, as revised pursuant to Administration recommendations, the provision expressly “affirms” an authority that already exists.  The Supreme Court held in the Hamdi case that existing law authorizes the detention of American citizens under the law of war in the limited circumstances spelled out here, so this is nothing new.

The initial bill reported by the committee included language expressly precluding “the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.”  The Administration asked that this language be removed from the bill. [my emphasis]

And given that SASC already voted to support this section by significant margins, it appears clear it has plenty of support.

So make no mistake. As I’ll show in my longer post, there are clear differences between the two sides (though I find both sides problematic). But whether or not the government can indefinitely detain Americans is not one of them.

Update: I took out “militarily,” as 1032 exempts automatic military detention for US citizens.

Obama’s EO on Indefinite Detention: Wanting Bud McKeon’s Cake and Eating It Too

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[Update, 12/7/11: I find I’m still linking back to this post, and cringing everytime I see I got McKeon’s name, Buck, wrong. Apologies.]

I plan to do some more reading on Obama’s proposed Executive Order on Indefinite Detention (not least, once an EO becomes public). But here are some preliminary thoughts after having read Adam Serwer’s very good summary of the debate thus far.

The biggest reason to do this, IMO, is to head Lindsey Graham (who wants to pass a law authorizing indefinite detention) and Bud McKeon (who wants to rewrite the AUMF to authorize a limitless war on terror, along with the detention that would “authorize”) off at the pass. What Graham and McKeon want is undoubtedly worse.

But there are several problems with this as is.

1) I’m with Ben Wittes. I have a real problem with doing this via Executive Order. The whole problem with an executive just inventing his own judicial system is that it is unilateral and probably no more legal than Bush’s original review boards were. So even though liberals might LIKE this outcome better (and like it FAR better than what McKeon wants), legally it seems no more defensible. It still is an abuse of separation of powers.

2) Moreover, doing this with an EO is all the more problematic because EOs, as Bush showed and Obama’s first White House Counsel endorsed, are susceptible to pixie dust–to being changed with no public notice. There is nothing in principle to prevent Obama from secretly changing the terms of his EO on indefinite detention from including just al Qaeda and related groups to including FARC and drug traffickers to including Assange.

3) You might say the AUMF prevents that from happening. But if that’s so, then why is the AUMF not sufficient (that is, if as everyone says and DOJ concluded last year, international law provides for detention during wartime, then why do we need an EO reasserting that authority?). Sure, this EO puts a nice gloss on indefinite detention authorized–they say–under AUMF, but I’m afraid it also serves to push the boundaries of the AUMF. After all, Obama’s own Guantanamo Task Force has said the Yemenis could be released but couldn’t be released to Yemen, suggesting his own lawyers agree that they are not the kind of High Value Detainees who really fall under detention guidelines under the AUMF, but we’ve got to keep them anyway–partly–because of a war against AQAP, a force not included in the AUMF, but also–partly–because our unreliable ally there is fighting a civil war that threatens to morph into our war on terror and makes it dangerous–for reasons that may not have anything to do with Islamic terrorism–to release into that country. Yet the Yemenis appear to be included in this EO. In other words, the notion that such issues should form the basis for indefinite detention when they are not tied to the terms of the AUMF seems more likely to be abused under an EO.

4) All of which comes back to Bud McKeon, who wants to rewrite the AUMF to authorize foreever whereever war. This EO seems, as much an effort to get around Republican hopes for expansive indefinite detention, also an effort to get around revisiting the terms of the AUMF, even though we badly need to do so. Mind you, I’d like us to revisit it, declare the War on Terror as defined by the AUMF won, and the ongoing fight against terrorism a law enforcement exercise. That is, in my opinion, the legally correct thing to do. But Obama doesn’t want to lose his expansive executive powers which a law enforcement approach would require (and surely is unwilling to take the politically bold stance of observing that the war we’re fighting in Afghanistan has little to do with 9/11). So he’s basically endorsing McKeon’s awful stance, while trying to avoid doing so publicly. He basically wants the untenable outcome McKeon is pushing without the backlash from civil libertarians in this country (which are admittedly an increasingly small concern for Obama) or the international community (which is probably a growing concern) that he’d get for embracing McKeon’s unjustifiable stance. He wants to have Bud McKeon’s cake and eat it too.

And no matter what one thinks the correct stance is, this seems to be all about Obama having missed his opportunity to take a correct and defensible legal stance in 2009 (thanks Rahm), but also refusing to take a stance he’ll need to fight for going forward. Now, frankly, of all the political fights Obama refuses to fight, I suspect an assessment that this is now an unwinnable fight might, for once, be accurate (which is different than agreeing that it was unwinnable in summer 2009). In other words, his assessment than an attempt to head Bud McKeon off at the pass may indeed be morally preferable if legally suspect. But all the claims about EOs stopping short of institutionalizing a permanent system of indefinite detention also ignore the ways that doing this via EO is at the least legally troublesome and may be far worse in the long run.

Obama Formalizes His Indefinite Detention Black Hole

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Hot on the heels of the big DADT victory in Congress, which pretty much got passed in spite of Obama instead of because of him, comes this giant lump of coal for the Christmas stockings all those who believe in human rights, due process, the Constitution, and moral and legal obligations under international treaties and norms. From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration is preparing an executive order that would formalize indefinite detention without trial for some detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but allow those detainees and their lawyers to challenge the basis for continued incarceration, U.S. officials said.

The administration has long signaled that the use of prolonged detention, preferably at a facility in the United States, was one element of its plan to close Guantanamo. An interagency task force found that 48 of the 174 detainees remaining at the facility would have to be held in what the administration calls prolonged detention.

This is certainly not shocking, as the Obama Administration long ago indicated there were at least 48 or so detainees they felt too dangerous to release and their cases unable to be tried in any forum, Article III or military commission. This is, of course, because the evidence they have on said cases is so tainted by torture, misconduct and lack of veracity that it is simply not amenable to any legal process. Even one of their kangaroo courts would castigate the evidence and the US government proffering it. That is what happens when a country becomes that which it once stood against.

Pro Publica fills in some of the details:

But the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

Nearly two years after Obama’s pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo, more inmates there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.

That is in part because Congress has made it difficult to move detainees to the United States for trial. But it also stems from the president’s embrace of indefinite detention and his assertion that the congressional authorization for military force, passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks, allows for such detention.
….
“It’s been clear for a while that the government would need to put in place some sort of periodic review, and that it would want it to improve on the annual review procedures used during the previous administration,” said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School who worked on detainee issues during the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, it does not appear as if this ballyhooed “review” amounts to anthing meaningful to the detainee. Although the detainee would have access to an attorney, it would obviously not be unfettered access, completely on the government’s self serving terms, there would be only limited access to evidence, and, most critically, the “review” would only weigh the necessity of the detention, not its lawfulness. In short, it is a joke.

So, the next time you hear Mr. Obama, or some spokesperson for his Administrations decrying the horrible Congress for placing a provision in legislation prohibiting the transfer of detainees to the US for civilian trial, keep in mind how quickly Mr. Obama rose up to take advantage of it – before the measure was even signed – and also keep in mind how Obama stood mute when he could have threatened a veto of such an inappropriate invasion of Executive Branch power by the Legislative Branch. Keep in mind that this is likely exactly what the Obama Administration wants to cover feckless and cowardly indecision and so they do not have to make the difficult political choice of actually protecting the Constitution and due process of law.

Will a Role in Afghan Peace Negotiations Trump Indefinite Detention?

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The Telegraph reports that a High Peace Council convened by Hamid Karzai may request that some Gitmo detainees be freed so they can participate in peace talks. (h/t Carol Rosenberg)

Taliban prisoners would be freed from Guantánamo Bay to potentially join peace negotiations under a proposal from the Afghan council appointed to find a settlement to the insurgency.

[snip]

The 68-strong High Peace Council was inaugurated by Hamid Karzai last month to pursue a twin-track strategy of reaching out to Taliban leaders while coaxing foot soldiers from the fight.

Mullah Rahmani, an education minister in the Taliban regime, heads a group of former Taliban on the council and chairs a subcommittee on political prisoners.

[snip]Mullah Rahmani said he wanted influential prisoners freed from American and Pakistani custody as a confidence-building gesture and potentially to join talks.

[snip]

He said: “We could use these people in negotiation. They have good contacts and are trusted by the Taliban.” Khairullah Khairkhwa, Taliban governor of Herat province until 2001, and Mullah Mohammad Fazl, deputy chief of staff in the Taliban army, were among those who should be freed from Guantánamo he said.

Khairkhwa is “a hardliner in terms of Taliban philosophy”, with “close ties to Osama bin Laden” according to his Guantánamo case file. Fazl was second-in-command of the Taliban’s army at the time of the United States’ invasion.

As these peace talks have developed, I’ve been suspecting something like this would happen. In particular, I’m curious whether this request would need to — and would — trump the US government’s decision that Khairkhwa and Fazl needed to be indefinitely detained.

I asked Rosenberg whether she knew if Khairkhwa was among the 40-some detainees slotted for indefinite detention, and she responded that she did not recall his name submitted for trial.

I asked that question because the Gitmo Task Force Report (pdf) had included top Taliban leaders among those who had been picked for indefinite detention.

In contrast to the majority of detainees held at Guantanamo, many of the detainees approved for detention held a leadership or other specialized role within al-Qaida, the Taliban, or associated forces.

[snip]

Others were Taliban military commanders or senior officials, or played significant roles in insurgent groups in Afghanistan allied with the Taliban, such as Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin.

Khairkhwa and Fazl would certainly qualify as “military commanders or senior officials.”

Now, if Khairkhwa and Fazl are senior enough members of the Taliban and legitimate and necessary peace partners, doesn’t that suggest they were not illegal combatants, but rather legitimate political leaders? And doesn’t that mean they should have been treated as POWs from the start?

Who We Are: Zeitoun and Camp Greyhound Five Years On

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In a country founded on “self evident truths” such as life, liberty, equality, and due process of law, the timeless quote from Ben Franklin speaks to the peril imposed when the founding principles are discarded or compromised:

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

Yet, of course, since 9/11 that is exactly what the United States has done and what has resulted in return. Fareed Zakaria has a piece up at Newsweek speaking to the senseless and destructive madness that has consumed the US since the 9/11 attacks:

The error this time is more damaging. September 11 was a shock to the American psyche and the American system. As a result, we overreacted.

….

Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications in the United States. And yet no one in Army intelligence noticed that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been making a series of strange threats at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he trained. The father of the Nigerian “Christmas bomber” reported his son’s radicalism to the U.S. Embassy. But that message never made its way to the right people in this vast security apparatus. The plot was foiled only by the bomber’s own incompetence and some alert passengers.

Such mistakes might be excusable. But the rise of this national-security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government’s powers that now touches every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism.

…..

In the past, the U.S. government has built up for wars, assumed emergency authority, and sometimes abused that power, yet always demobilized after the war. But this is a war without end. When do we declare victory? When do the emergency powers cease?

Conservatives are worried about the growing power of the state. Surely this usurpation is more worrisome than a few federal stimulus programs. When James Madison pondered this issue, he came to a simple conclusion: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germs of every other … In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended?.?.?.?and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual war,” Madison concluded.

Indeed it is a chilling picture we have allowed our political “leaders” to paint us into, and Zakaria does not even hit some of the most disturbing impingements on due process and the rule of law such as the government arrogating itself the right to summarily execute American citizens with no judicial trial or due process whatsoever and the legal black hole that is Guantanamo and the Obama Military Commission and indefinite detention program. That is, as a nation, who and what we are today and it has bought us nothing except world scorn, geometrically more enemies, a plundered treasury, ignored and dilapidated domestic infrastructure, swelling joblessness and exploding income inequality.

But, hey, at least we have increased security and all those oppressive terrorist modalities are only for al-Qaida and the bad foreigners, right? No. The rot is now who we are, towards ourselves in addition to “them”. And that is where we finally get to the subject of the title of this post. Nothing demonstrates the deadly rot virus that has been injected into the blood of the American ethos than the story of Zeitoun. (more after jump) Read more →

Netroots Nation: Close Gitmo and Use the Legal System

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I’m going to be liveblogging today’s panel discussion, Close Gitmo and Use the Legal System at Netroots Nation 2010. Panelists featured are Adam Serwer, Matthew Alexander, Rep. Jerry Nadler, Vince Warren, and your very own emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler. (Video of this panel may be available later, technology permitting.) This is a rough paraphrase, not a word-for-word transcript.

Wheeler: Lists good news and bad news about the topic of detention and Gitmo; we have seen some positive changes but over the big picture, no real change.

Nadler: Very frustrated as not much has happened this year. Notes that the administration has not behaved as anticipated prior to taking office. Congress has enacted bills to restrict transfers of detainees; although it’s possible to try detainees in court, nothing has happened.

Gitmo used as a tool of political fear. 192 detainees remain at Gitmo; 35 have been identified as those who could be charged with offenses, the majority could be released.

President has outlined procedures which are different, but outcomes are the same. Detainees may be charged, tried in civilian court, tribunals, or detained indefinitely — simply because we say a detainee is dangerous. Habeas corpus has not been recognized. We still have people who have been cleared altogether who have been detained because we can’t release them. The refusal to take some of these people into the U.S. has made it difficult to negotiate with other countries to take some of the same. If they are not dangerous, there’s no good reason why they cannot be released into the U.S.

Gitmo is not under writ of habeas corpus; also a question as to whether Bagram airport is also under writ of habeas corpus. Also in contention whether black sites are as well. May be maintained that battlefield sites may not be covered by habeas corpus, but what about detaining individuals seized in Sweden? Or case of individuals who were taken into detention by locals and turned over for bounties.

Prisoner of war is used as an excuse for indefinite detention, but it’s the war is not clear. No uniform, taken away from battlefield, no change over the year on this issue. Not an optimistic assessment.

Serwer: Not one of the happier panels here at NN10 because so little has happened. One of the places where uniformity of Republican opposition has been affected has been on issue of Gitmo; even Bush said Gitmo should be closed, Republicans agreed, and yet the resolve has changed. The lack of urgency now gives impression that Gitmo is not as bad as it is.

Alexander: Aware that al Qaeda uses Gitmo as a recruiting tool, showing our hypocrisy in detaining people, making this a key reason why Gitmo should be closed. We compromised our principles in using and keeping Gitmo open, partly out of fear, partly out of prejudice against Muslims and Arabs. One of the fundamental reasons Gitmo should be closed is one the left doesn’t use — it should be closed for patriotic reasons. It should be closed to remove it as a recruiting tool for terrorism.

Warren: Points out that Nadler is his congressman; Nadler had fought the defunding of ACORN as an unconstitutional bill of attainder. Believes Alexander’s point about Gitmo as a recruiting tool is important, but brings a couple other perspectives to the table. This is Obama’s Guantanamo. Previously fought against the Bush administration on the Boumediene case, but now this is the current administration.

Roughly 177 men in Gitmo, some have been cleared. The underwear bomber incident stopped the release of the 60 men cleared, brought process to a halt.

Obama’s story is about what we hear as well as what we don’t hear. Chinese Uighurs were ordered released as they were no threat; Bush administration fought the order. Now the Obama administration maintains that the Uighurs should not be released because China might detain and torture these individuals. Yet Obama administration has vigorously opposed release Uighurs into the U.S. as it was in conflict with immigration laws. Abdul Aziz Naji has been injured, poorly treated, could be released to Algeria, but could be tortured or killed by one of two factions — Algerian government or fundamentalists, which Naji described as being caught between two fires. His case went to Supreme Court, was released to Algeria but “disappeared” as no record of his arrival in Algeria has been recorded. A source has said Naji has been taken into custody for “routine interrogation” but the Algerian government itself has not acknowledged. This is a situation which Obama administration claimed it was trying to get away from.

Obama administration is now itself caught between two fires.

(cont’d.) Read more →

When Lawyers Equate Law with PR

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Jack Goldsmith and Ben Wittes have an op-ed up in which, claiming that the PR value to military commissions is minimal, Obama should just not give KSM a trial of any sort. They make a clever move in which they first cursorily dismiss the value of civilian trials.

A trial potentially adds three things: the option of the death penalty; enhanced legitimacy in some quarters, especially abroad; and a certain catharsis and historical judgment in the form of a criminal verdict.

These are non-trivial benefits, but as the battle over the past few months has shown, they come at great cost. Domestically, the political costs of trying high-level terrorists in federal courts have become exorbitant for the administration — unaffordably high, it seems to be turning out.

They make no consideration of the importance of a trial for our rule of law, our system of justice. And fail to consider any potential direct benefit in showing potential terrorists that we don’t stoop to the arbitrary authoritarian ways of the oppressive countries many of them are fighting. This is not about impressing Europe, as they seem to suggest, but about impressing young Saudis or Pakistanis, showing them the rule of law.

And from there, Goldsmith and Wittes treat the political debate over civilian trials equally cursorily. They might consider, after all, the reasons why civilian trials have become so costly: the fact that Dick Cheney and his daughter, trying to avoid any consequences for instituting a torture regime, are paying a lot of money to sow fear about civilian trials.

It’s a political ploy. Nothing more. Yet one that plays to the weaknesses of someone like Rahm, who apparently doesn’t see much value in defending principle. But the political cost doesn’t have to be that high; Obama has just let it be made so.

And so, with those five lines dismissing the value of the rule of law on which our country is based, they go on to focus more on their straw man target, military commissions.

The legal and political risks of using the ill-fated military commission system are also significant. After the Supreme Court offered a road map for a legally defensible system, Congress has twice given its blessing. But serious legal issues remain unresolved, including the validity of the non-traditional criminal charges that will be central to the commissions’ success and the role of the Geneva Conventions. Sorting out these and dozens of other novel legal issues raised by commissions will take years and might render them ineffectual. Such foundational uncertainty makes commissions a less than ideal forum for trying Mohammed.

Moreover, the public relations and related legitimacy benefits of trying Mohammed in a commission are not that great, especially since the administration insists that he will remain in detention even if acquitted. The possibility that the administration might try him in a commission has been met with anger and disdain by the American left and many European elites, who think commissions are as illegitimate as they believe the underlying detention system to be. They will work hard to delegitimize their proceedings too.

In short, a military commission trial might achieve slight public relations and legitimacy benefits over continued military detention of Mohammed, and might facilitate his martyrdom by ultimately allowing the government to put him to death. But this would add so little to the military detention that the administration already regards as legitimate that a trial isn’t worth the effort, cost and political fight it would take.

Now, there’s a reason Goldsmith and Wittes focus so much more closely on military commissions than civilian trials. That’s because there are real drawbacks to them. They are legally dicey, they are likely to result in years of delay, they actually offer fewer tools with which to try KSM successfully. And of course, Goldsmith and Wittes don’t acknowledge that that is one key basis for criticism of military commissions: they simply won’t be as effective as civilian trials. Instead, they falsely suggest that leftist opposition to military commissions is some nihilist attempt to discredit the trials just for the sake of principle. By making the criticism of not just the left but the military into a strawman, they avoid the fundamental agreement between us and them about the weaknesses of military commissions.

And so, with that canard, Goldsmith and Wittes dismiss the PR value of military commissions, too.

Poof! By weighing our entire legal system as one big PR gimmick (and failing to do that very well) Goldsmith and Wittes manage to decide it’s just not worth all that much.

But the clever op-ed is valuable for something. It shows what a slippery slope Obama is on. Because once you fail to make the case for the principle of rule of law, when you fail to point out the benefits it offers both as a necessary step to reclaim the America that used to inspire others rather than inflame them and as a proven way to adjudicate crimes, then there’s little to distinguish the benefits of civilian trials and the arbitrary rule of indefinite detention. (I’d also say that, short of pointing out that most candidates for indefinite detention are such because they’ve been tortured into craziness by Goldsmith’s former employers, you fail to point out how Cheney’s mistakes have gotten us here.)

Even Eric Holder, who genuinely wants civilian trials, has conceded the possible efficacy of military commissions and indefinite detention. And once you’ve done that, rather than defend the principle and efficacy of civilian trials, you’re on the slippery slope where our entire rule of law is just a big PR ploy. One that can be discarded for arbitrary indefinite detention when it becomes convenient.

In 2007, Rahm Opposed Indefinite Detention

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On June 29, 2007, Congressman Norm Dicks sent George Bush an eloquent letter urging him to close Gitmo. It said, among other things,

Since the time that captured “enemy combatants” were first brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the detainment facility has undermined America’s image as the model of justice and protector of human rights around the world. Holding prisoners for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with a crime goes against our values, ideals and principles as a nation governed by the rule of law. Further, Guantanamo Bay has become a liability in the broader global war on terror, as allegations of torture, the indefinite detention of innocent men, and international objections to the treatment of enemy combatants has hurt our credibility as the beacon for freedom and justice. Its continued operation also threatens the safety of U.S. citizens and military personnel detained abroad.

[snip]

The closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay would represent a positive first step toward restoring our international reputation as the leader of democracy and individual rights. [my emphasis]

Guess whose signature appears right at the top of the long list of those who signed this letter?

Then-Congressman Rahm Emanuel.

I wonder what changed between the time when Rahm recognized how unacceptable indefinite detention is and his willingness now, in cahoots with Lindsey Graham, to set up a system of indefinite detention? Heck, this Rahm has even called closing Gitmo a distraction.

Would I be foolish to ask for that other Rahm back?