A week ago U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was released after five years of captivity by the Taliban. Since then you’d have to be a cave dweller to have missed the firestorm that’s erupted. President Obama invited Bergdahl’s parents to a reception in the Rose Garden to make the announcement and I think that was … Continue reading Bashing the Bergdahls
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is lucky there’s a Democrat in the White House because by now Republicans probably would have declared him an enemy combatant and whisked him off to a secret prison someplace. If he died while being waterboarded … too bad. What’s another dead terrorist. Never mind that he’s an American citizen on American soil, entitled to … Continue reading Tsarnaev to be tried in US criminal court system
Imagine you are at the mall one day and suddenly you are surrounded by a bunch of strangers, arrested, and taken to jail. Then you are transferred to prison and ultimately to the infamous U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. No one bothers to tell you that you are suspected of being a terrorist … Continue reading So the terrorists don’t have to
George Bush did a lot of things that upset a lot of people. One of them was authorizing the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists in Guantánamo prison, where he hoped they’d be beyond the reach of the U.S. legal system. The very idea reeked of arrogant American imperialism run amok. Because we were Americans, we … Continue reading Et tu, Barack?
In just the last two days, two different rates of terrorist recidivism have been reported — 7% and 14%. These are only the latest in an ongoing, ever-changing, never-twice-the-same stream of recidivism rates since the U.S. began detaining so-called enemy combatants after 9/11. Statistically, there should be an average number somewhere that holds relatively steady, … Continue reading Terrorist recidivism — pick a number
President Obama is considering indefinite detention for some of the Guantánamo prisoners, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. Not good. Is he continuing to backpedal on campaign promises, or was he intentionally vague in the first place? Weren’t we led to believe that the closing of Gitmo would be closely followed by finally … Continue reading Obama waffling on Gitmo detainees
