A Gitmo Backpedal?

Mark Levin seems to read into a recent Bush quote that the President is abandoning Guantanamo Bay.

Here’s the relevate quote from Reuters:

“Of course Guantanamo is a delicate issue for people. I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial,” Bush said in comments to German television to be broadcast on Sunday night.

Hey, guess what? So would I. So would just about everyone including, I suspect, Mark Levin.

The tricksy part, as Gollum would hiss, is how we try those folks at Gitmo. I say that we continue to afford the prisoners the protections of the Geneva Conventions (extending them to people whose behavior has placed them outside those protections) and we give them swift military tribunals. If the tribunals find that they were not attacking Americans, then we send them home, wherever home is, regardless of what they face when they get there. It’s worth noting that we are holding some people at Gitmo who should have been released because they don’t want us to send them to their home country. It seems that we treat them better than their own governments will when they get home.

On the other hand, we have two options should the tribunals find the person was complicit in attacks on Americans: imprisonment until the end of hostilities or summary execution. Both are permissible under US law and the Geneva Conventions.

The problem will come should the SCOTUS decide that the Gitmo prisoners must be tried in civilian courts. I’m not quite sure how they would rule that insofar as the prisoners aren’t accused of being criminals. They’re accused of being agents of a foreign power in a time of war, which is a different kettle of fish.

I’d much prefer that the President give the DoD a good, hard nudge toward more tribunals and speedier trials at Gitmo so that we can consider closing the prison down.

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Category: Fighting the Islamists, President George Bush