Who are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons?
“The Bush administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges,” writes Attorney General Eric Holder in a new letter to Republican critics in Congress. The letter is part of the Obama administration’s aggressive defense of its decision to grant full American constitutional rights to al Qaeda soldier Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day bomber. That defense boils down to one sentence: Bush did it, too.
Republicans on Capitol Hill object. They argue that one of the reasons some terrorists were handled in the criminal justice system is that it took George W. Bush and Congress years to establish a military tribunal system that satisfied constitutional requirements — a process that was lengthened by legal challenges filed by some of the same lawyers who now work in Holder’s Justice Department.