Obama to offer more moral preening to justify bad Gitmo policy

Washington Post:

President Obama will attempt today to answer critics of his dismantling of Bush-era policies on detention and interrogation, in a speech reminding Americans that strong national security and adherence to laws and national values are not mutually exclusive.

Beyond this lofty reassurance, senior administration officials said, Obama will also repeat the case he made on his third day in office that the Bush administration's system of dealing with "enemy combatants" -- resulting in three prosecutions in seven years and challenged by U.S. courts and allies -- did not work and could not continue indefinitely.

Speaking at the National Archives, a backdrop chosen because it is the home of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, the president will say that America must continue to see those documents as the "foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world," a senior administration official said early this morning.

He will say that Bush administration policies "established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable -- a framework that failed to trust in our institutions and failed to use our values as a compass," the officials said. "That is why we lost our way. That is why we were alienated from our allies."

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To the frustration of a White House that claims the moral high ground, virtually every detainee-related decision Obama has made since then -- including making public classified Bush administration descriptions of how to waterboard terrorism suspects and refusing to support the release of photographs depicting detainee abuse -- has provoked criticism from some or all of those who initially approved his policies.

Congressional dissatisfaction peaked yesterday when the Senate joined the House in overwhelmingly rejecting, 90 to 6, Obama's request for funds to shutter the Guantanamo facility until he explains what he plans to do with its 240 occupants. Lawmakers of both parties spoke out against imprisoning or releasing any of the detainees in the United States.

In a move that is likely to further antagonize lawmakers, a Justice Department task force reviewing the detainee cases has decided to send the first Guantanamo prisoner to the United States for criminal trial. A Justice Department official said that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an alleged al-Qaeda operative indicted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, will be tried in New York. Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was captured in Pakistan in 2004, held at a secret site by the CIA and transferred to Guantanamo with other "high-value" prisoners in 2006.

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What he is finding is that there were good reasons for the Bush policies he objected to and his objections do not outweigh the concerns of voters and Congress. Taking risks with public safety for political posturing has its limits.

It is also a bootstrap argument to suggest that all of the delays called by the ACLU's terrorist rights campaign is caused by the Bush administration laws that Congress passed. There would have been numerous trials by now if they had not been engaged in a deliberate attempt to thwart justice.