This will of course never been done. Not by this president, nor by any future ones.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
I voted for Obama, but sadly on this issue, he has been mostly a disappointment, to put it mildly. The great Glen Greenwald over at Salon.com recently wrote: "Obama -- for reasons having nothing to do with Congress -- worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime. Even with these new added levels of detention review (all inside the Executive Branch), this new Executive Order is little more than a by-product of that core commitment, and those blaming it on Congress either have little idea what they're talking about or are simply fabricating excuses in order to justify yet another instance where Obama dutifully "bolsters" the Bush War on Terror template."[1]
This latest Wikileaks revelation is shameful, and for awhile I bought into the idea that Congress prevented Obama from closing Gitmo. I am no longer convinced.
[1] http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/08...
Then I fundamentally disagree with what constitutes "enough time and capital" when it comes to ending endable human rights abuses.
That's what any sane man would do about, say, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
This detainment is illegal, it doesn't matter what the hell they did. Release them, and try again legally this time.
Failing that, we could live up to our so-called standards and laws and live with the consequences of torturing him, ie that all evidence tainted by torture is now inadmissible.
Not that I have a problem with that, really. The real problem is that our legal categories haven't caught up with reality. Regular criminals we catch, try and imprison. But soldiers of an enemy nation we shoot on sight... unless they surrender, in which case we're obliged to keep 'em as POWs until hostilities end and then return them to the other country. Unless they're not legit combatants (e.g. they're spies or saboteurs or otherwise not dressed in proper military uniforms) in which case we can declare 'em illegal combatants and shoot them.
That's the way it used to be, but now that we live in a world where non-state organizations make war against states (well, war against everything) there's a need for some new legal classification. If you're a real honest-to-Allah member of Al Qaeda then I don't think that the civilian "release 'em until they actually kill someone then try 'em for murder" is a good strategy. On the other hand "kill 'em as soon as they pop their head up" has too high a risk of false positives.
That's a very big if.
Why should anyone trust the US government to decide who is and who isn't a member of Al Qaeda?
The US government repeatedly proven themselves to be liars (or at least incompetents) on precisely this subject (not to mention many, many others).
what process do you suggest for proving that?
Without a court trial, how can your membership in Al Qaeda reasonably be established?
Also, membership of what other clubs or groups also allows the government to imprison you indefinitely without trial and torture you? who decides that?
