The President-elect appears to have rowed back from his earlier equivocation on the wisdom closing Guantanamo, as well as reversing various other policies of his predecessor that have served to aggregate war fighting power under the commander-in-chief during wartime, rather than in the 535-member deliberative body known as the US Congress (latest popularity rating 11%) where it rightly belongs.
President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to reverse executive orders regarding torture of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other controversial security policies, sources close to his transition said, in dramatic gestures aimed at reversing President Bush’s accumulation of executive power.
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration’s most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush’s practice of using “signing statements” to amend legislation.
For the most part, the home countries of Guantanamo detainees either do not desire to repatriate them, or will only do so in hopes of efficiently torturing them to death. Since some standards do apply, even in what’s left of George W. Bush’s amerika, that means they’ll have to settle elsewhere. Probably here.
Where, Scott Ott assures us, they’ll probably be very welcome:
As news broke that Barack Obama reportedly plans to issue an executive order on his first day in office closing the U.S. terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Democrat governors across the country lobbied Mr. Obama for the privilege of welcoming the remaining 248 former enemy combatants as residents of their states.
As word of the planned shuttering of “Gitmo” leaked from Obama transition team officials through reliable anonymous sources to The New York Times, phones in the Office of the President-Elect began to ring, with one governor after another offering increasingly sweeter deals to woo released detainees…
“The governors see an opportunity to right a grievous wrong perpetrated by America,” said the source, “and at the same time they’re eager to make their home states, and the ranks of state employees, more diverse. They see President-elect Obama as the second Great Emancipator and they want to secure their places in history alongside of him.”
The President-elect’s home state governor could not be reached for comment. His spokesman said something about the phone lines being tapped.
Update: (click the pic)
Just saw a headline proclaiming something like 61 former GITMO detainees have returned to being active terrorists. DUH.
Oh, joy. Instead of having to insert themselves as sleepers, the bastards will be welcomed with open arms and be allowed to work their evil will in public? Time to get well-armed
Change we can believe in! Like it or not.
Yet another case of truth stranger than fiction. The very fact that most countries of origin don’t want these critters back should be telling the Governors something. Thank goodness Alabama has a Republican in the statehouse. This is madness! It’s like 9/11 never happened. Turn the wolves loose amongst the flock, they won’t bite.
When I first read the post (skimmed actually) I mis-interpreted. I was thinking the Governors were wanting to take the detainees and imprison them. You know, show the world how humanely they could treat them, etc. (also thinking they might score some Fed bucks to build a prison).
I never in my wildest dreams thought they wanted to actually take them and make them citizens and give them government jobs!
This has got to rated as a most egregious example of a YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SH****** ME moment since I learned to read.
And thus the nightmare begins….
Scrappleface is satire, of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me a smidge if something like this ends up in our future (short though it may be).
Isn’t the solution to this obvious? We put all the detainees on a tanker with crude oil cruising through the Gulf past Somalia. With any luck they and the pirates will kill each other.
OK I Am on idiot. I didn’t realize it was satire. But it does say something that I found it plauasible that it could happen that way. How far we have fallen, or I have fallen, or whatever.
Begs the question “Now what?” . And seems the prosecutors are dismissing charges on some because of torture allegations:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090114/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_torture
Wonder where this will lead.
A sleep over at Harry Reids, and Pelosi’s house for every Gitmo detainee…and a invite to the Democrat’s slumber party….I am bring the sharp blades…
Nice, at least 67 of them that were let go are doing what they do best; terrorism. Good one, we should just let out all the murderers in our state prisons. What are they thinking? I just do not get it, when will we learn.
Lex,
Excellent test to see who’s actually reading your blog. My first reaction on reading the excerpt was YGBSM! Nobody could be that stupid! Then I thought, Lex wouldn’t mislead his loyal herd, would he? Then I clicked the link and saw the Scrappleface logo and gained a new appreciation for the depths of your subtlety. Most Excellent!
Crap… Been had again. I’m with OldT6, the fact that the BS meter didn’t start pinging worries me.
Oh,
This is an easy one. Take them out of Delta and put them in the back of real Peterbuilt truck/trailers and drive them off the base into Cuba. We’ll run a reverse smuggle op and instead of itinerant Cubans sneaking into the USA we’ll smuggle truckloads of true losers into Cuba. Sort of a payback for the Mariel boat lift.
If I was Bush, this would happen bright and early on January 20.
Oh, yeah, you’re wondering where do we find drivers……. Easy, we take the really hard core and say that the trailers are full of explosives and they get to blow up infidels in Havana and toss in a few bucks for their deliriously happy remaining family members if they succeed.
That is true application of “soft power”.
Oh sure, some of them will end up in the more progressive European countries since they love Cuba. On the other hand, what’s one more radical islamic terrorist in Norway or Holland?