Monday, June 01, 2009

Another Bushian Move

I promised myself that I would judge Obama by his actions, not by his words, nor by any perceived lack of action since he may be doing things unseen or may be prevented by forces beyond his reasonable control. So, when he fails to reverse Bush policy I wait (for the most part) patiently, but when he actively embraces and utilizes Bush policy I criticize.

More than seven years ago we had a group of Chinese Uighurs fall into our hands who wound up in the camp at Guantanamo. It rapidly became known that, while they almost certainly were planning to engage in attacks on China, they never had any designs on attacking us and that we were detaining them illegally. A judge ordered them released into the US forthwith in October of last year. Bush delayed that action and, after more than five months in office, the Obama administration is actively fighting against it.

We cannot return these Uighurs to China; they would be tortured or killed if we did so, and our laws make it illegal for us to do that. Several nations offered to accept some of the prisoners in Guantanamo if we released them but, after Congress made it clear that this nation was unwilling to accept any of them, those other nations withdrew their offers. So these Uighurs have nowhere to go except the US, and the US will not accept them even though a court has ordered that they be released here. The Obama Administration is actively fighting that court order.

The gist of the Obama filing, by US Solicitor General Elena Kagan,

"Petitioners are free to return to their home country, but they understandably do not wish to do so, because they fear inhumane treatment there. Petitioners are also free to go to any other country
that is willing to accept them."

The filing is a bit disingenuous. We cannot legally deport them to any country which will torture or kill them. Other countries have declined to accept them, and those refusals are based on our refusal to do so.

This is not a Bush court filing that President Obama inherited and is maintaining; this is a brand new filing that Obama is initiating on his own. The filing goes on to say that it is just fine to keep them in Guantanamo because they are housed in a nice part of the prison and are provided with
a television and a DVD player.

To top that one, the Obama Administration is actively backing a Terry-Schaivo-type law pending in Congress, the type of law that allows our government to take some specific, illegal action that it wants to take merely because it wants to take it.

A court has ordered the release of photos, of the same type previously released, of the mistreatment of prisoners held at military facilities. Obama has actively fought that release, after initially agreeing to it and being dissuaded by the military, and is all but certainly going to lose on appeal. So now Congress is coming up with this absurd law retroactively making it illegal to release photos and Obama is, in full Bush mode, supporting it.

Glenn Greenwald has details. The gist,

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States."

My God, "The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009."
The Senate of The United States actually passed this piece of nonsense, and the President is actively supporting it.

"Your actions speak so loudly," Mr Obama, "that I can't hear what you say."

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