re: #177 abolitionist

Reality is somewhat at odds with the speedy trial ideal.

Yeah, they need to be tried already.

Mr. Obama’s pledge to steer national security in a new direction was important to many of his supporters in the 2008 campaign. But his attempts as president to depart from Bush administration policies gave ammunition to Republicans who accused Mr. Obama of weakening U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

During the past two years, Mr. Obama has moved closer to embracing some of the Bush policies he had earlier criticized. In a March 2009 speech Mr. Obama endorsed the idea of restarting military commissions, which he had halted upon taking office. And he also announced he would set up a system to hold indefinitely without trial certain prisoners too dangerous to release.

Mr. Holder’s November 2009 plan to try the five 9/11 defendants in civilian courts in New York followed Mr. Obama’s order, signed on his second day in office, to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January 2010.

But the proposal to try Mr. Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan just blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center provoked a storm of opposition because of security concerns.

Congress voted last December to stop the administration from moving terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay to U.S. soil for any purpose. That blocked not only the 9/11 trials in New York, but also put a freeze on the administration’s plan to buy a prison in northern Illinois to use for Guantanamo detainees.

On Monday, groups representing the 9/11 families split in their reaction to Mr. Holder’s announcement. Debra Burlingame, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration and sister of a pilot killed in the attacks, welcomed the decision, saying it was “driven by hard-knuckle politics.”

That bolded paragraph— that was when civil libertarians like me who had supported Obama knew that he was going to be the same as Bush. He was announcing a two-tier system for trials, as well as asserting the right to detain people indefinitely without charge.

Closing Gitmo was only ever going to be for show anyway. As was his order vetoing the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques *cough*.