US Congress to Obama: “You can’t bring them here!”
Published: 22 May, 2009, 00:37
US President Barack Obama delivers a major speech on national security at the US National Archives in Washington, DC, May 21, 2009 (AFP Photo / Jim Watson)
(24.2Mb) embed videoTAGS: Interview, Politics, Human rights, Terrorism, Law
The argument for keeping Gitmo open is that some of its detainees can’t be prosecuted and they shouldn’t be freed.
US President Barack Obama has defended his decision to shut down the Guantanamo prison camp and to work with Congress in dealing with its detainees.
He was speaking to military lawyers after his bid for $80 million dollars to close the base was rejected by Congress.
The U.S. president also held his ground over reviving prisoners' military trials, something he criticized before becoming president.
But political analyst James Pinkerton of the New America Foundation thinks that Obama may have promised more than he could actually deliver.
“As the saying goes, the more things change – the more they stay the same. There is a kind of protocol regression going on here where Obama is discovering that the decisions the Bush administration made either cannot or should not be undone,” notes Pinkerton.
 |
“I think most analysts say that if suspected terrorists who committed crimes in Afghanistan or some other far away place are brought to the US court system, you can never get a normal trial. How could you? How you could get witnesses to come in from Afghanistan, Pakistan or some other place? It is just crazy. And that is what Obama’s campaign said during the election and nobody was paying attention,” says Pinkerton.
“Now that he is in charge and actually trying to do this, he realizes that he simply cannot do it that way. You cannot have a courthouse in Washington D.C. or New York or Chicago become a place where you try these people. You have to do this in some other setting, with some other set of rules,” says James Pinkerton.
“They’ve got to be left in limbo for a long, long time,” ends up James Pinkerton.
21.05.2009, 22:10
2 comments
Georgian mutiny suspect killed, two arrestedAn alleged organizer of the mutiny at a military base in Georgia has been killed and two others injured in a shoot-out with police, the country’s Interior Ministry says. |
22.05.2009, 00:59
12 comments
Rotting from the inside: sex abuse and the Catholic ChurchCatholic sex abuse has a long and ongoing history intertwined with that of religious institutions. |
Media all over the world serve willing or else the communication strategies of the US and this exactly shows its dominance in this field, under the auspices of the sionists. Media taulk time and again about these half a thousend prisoners, who are kept, often without pricise accusation, for various reasons like for instance black mailing, or obtaining by torture doubtful information. At the same time who knows how many thousents are kept in the CIA prisons in Egypt, Albania, Skopia, Georgia, Bulgaria, and other uknown, or known "secret" locations. In Bagdat 100.000 ? More? Less? And rarely talk about the average 15.000 palestinian prisoners kept at all times whithout judgement, in the illigal state of "Israel", only because Palestinians try rightfuly to leberate their occupied country by order of the GOt of the chosen people. The cow boys "defenders of human rights and demokracy world wide"! CIA dictatorhip in greece {1967-1974} had 10.000 prisoners. Myself I was self exiled in Switzerland. How many CIA dictatorships? How many political prisoners on behalf of the US and the "free world"?