AL QAEDA TO GET GENEVA CONVENTION RIGHTS? NOT QUITE!
Posted on September 6, 2006
Bush is scheduled to make some major announcements between 1:30 and 1:45. Will this be one of the announcements? If this pans out it is sure to be applauded by the ACLU…don’t you think?
ABC News has learned that President Bush will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It will be the first time the Administration publicly acknowledges the existence of the prisons.
A source familiar with the president’s announcement says it will apply to all prisoners now being held by the CIA, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept.11 attacks, and senior al Qaeda leader Ramzi Binalshibh.
Actually, this is pretty shrewd. Superficially, Bush gets to come clean about the CIA prisons and act benevolent in granting this piece of filth POW status in one fell swoop, but what he’s really after is putting public pressure on Congress to approve military tribunals, not full courts-martial, for detainees. It’ll be a lot harder for the House and Senate to grant full due process protection to Al Qaeda prisoners now that one of the potential beneficiaries is the mastermind of 9/11 himself.
What has political correctness done to us? I agree with the Hot Air analysis, but it is unbelievable that it had to come to this kind of tactic.
Dan Riehl: Stick a fork in these turkeys, they’re done.
Bill Quick: President Kerry Bush surrenders to the international “human rights” movement.
I put the question mark in the title to signify my uncertainity into the accuracy of how this is being portrayed. Rusty at My Pet Jawa is skeptical as well and quotes this from FOX. There is a difference in actual Geneva rights and “some” legal protections “consistent with”.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the president’s announcement was still pending, said the suspects would be afforded some legal protections consistent with the Geneva conventions.
Michelle Malkin has the rundown of Bush’s speech, and indeed here is the bottom line.
So, today I’m sending Congress legislation to specifically authorize the creation of military commissions to try terrorists for war crimes.
KSM, Zubaydah, bin al Shibh, and 11 others have been transferred to Gitmo [applause].
Summary by Allah:
The transfers, he says, mean that there’s no one left in the CIA program — but the program will remain so that new terrorists who are captured can be interrogated. He says he’s announcing this now because they’ve finished questioning them and because the Hamdan decision impaired their ability to interrogate terrorists because of the “vague and undefined” dignitary provisions of Article 3. Indeed.
He’s asking Congress to:
1. List specifically which interrogation procedures will violate the War Crimes Act.
2. Make clear that interrogators are authorized under Article 3.
3. Prevent terrorists from using Article 3 to sue interrogators.
The general consensus after digesting the initial shock of the misreporting and misleading headlines is that far from giving in to the “human rights crowd” Bush is laying down the guantlet for the left. He’s saying put up or shut up.
Macsmind says it was a home run hit. Indeed it will be for the better if it gets the military tribunals passed in Congress. Counterterrorism blog predicts that the bill will pass.
Mario Loyola at the Corner summarizes the general consensus pretty well:
The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court’s ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes.
And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling’s potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.
Taken as a whole, the President’s maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.
Others: Wizbang
» Filed Under ACLU, News, War On Terror
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2 Responses to “AL QAEDA TO GET GENEVA CONVENTION RIGHTS? NOT QUITE!”
Affiliations
The Giants
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“Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes.”
Don’t you think the public is getting tired of constantly hearing these false dilemma arguements from the right?
It might be a good reminder to the American people to have these people’s intentions, capabilities and sponsors made public through court trials and interviews.
Remind the American public of the ruthlessness and seriousness of this enemy.
http://www.regimeofterror.com, exposing Saddam’s links to terrorism as often as possible….