The next time someone calls me a racist war-mongering teabag I think I'll tell them, quite rightly, that I am merely following in the tradition of Winston Churchill (you'll have to read it all), but that is not my point here.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania last year during the campaign, Barack Obama addressed the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision granting Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their confinement through habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. Obama asserted that the "principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that's the essence of who we are." He explained:
I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.
.... In the Boumediene case, the Supreme Court disapproved of the system of military commissions Congress had adopted at the Supreme Court's urging. Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, the Nuremberg defendants' "day in court" occurred before the kind of tribunal the Supreme Court found constitutionally inadequate in Boumediene.
[....]
In short, the procedural protections afforded the Guantanamo detainees under the statute before the Supreme Court in Boumediene substantially exceeded those accorded the Nuremberg defendants.
No consideration of justice, history or tradition weighs in favor of treating KSM et al. as criminal defendants. Against the predictable negative risks and negative consequences, advocates of Obama's decision offer airy considerations of public relations....
Judging Obama's treatment of KSM et al. by its predictable effects rather than its apparent intentions, one arrives at a harsh conclusion. If Obama sought to subvert fundamental American institutions or to confuse the understanding of the American people -- upon both of which America's future depends -- he would proceed as announced.
JOHN adds: On our radio show yesterday, Andy McCarthy proposed an explanation that amplifies on Scott's last paragraph. He suggested that the Obama administration views KSM et al. as its allies (my paraphrase) in its war against the Bush administration....
I would argue that the White House cares not for a war on the Bush administration by reason of principle, but rather simply uses such a war to distract the populace from their own activities. You know, like subverting our fundamental institutions... behind a screen of Change and Transformation.
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