The Gitmo Debate's Biggest Loser

U.S. President Barack Obama is being sniped at for his apparent flip-flop in now okaying military tribunals in Guantanamo instead of civilian trials in New York for certain detainees.

Instead, Obama should be complimented for adjusting to reality.

Actually, since Republicans won command of the House of Representatives last November, the mood was overwhelmingly against civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and four other hard line detainees. KSM is the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America.

Congress voted to refuse funding to transfer the defendants to the mainland, and Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder used this as an excuse to back off their insane desire for civilian trials.

An ungracious Holder accused Congress of taking “one of the nation’s most tested counter-terrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications.”

Utter nonsense. What “serious ramifications” would these be?

New York police Commissioner Ray Kelly estimated it would cost $200 million a year to provide security for a civilian trial that could last years, and be more restrictive than a military trial.

This for the guy whose terror plan killed more Americans than the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Supposedly, KSM was waterboarded 183 times, during which he confessed everything the Americans wanted confessions for. The guy clearly is anxious for martyrdom, and a military trial may well grant his wishes.

That waterboarding statistic, if true, merely suggests that the “torture” isn’t that effective. More likely it’s an agreed statistic to enable KSM to confess without recriminations from his own people.

There’s irony, too, in the fact that the military trial will be held at Guantanamo Bay which Obama vowed during his election campaign to close as his first act if elected president.

In fact, Gitmo is a perfect place – both for the U.S. administration and for detainees. Security is assured, and life for detainees is a hell of a lot better than it would be in a maximum security prison on the U.S. mainland.

At Guantanamo detainees are well fed, live in a warm climate, have amble board games and perpetual access to lawyers, the Red Cross, human rights activists, with arrows painted on the floor point towards Mecca to help them pray in the right direction. When interrogated, they sit in an armchair.

None of the above would be so available in a federal prison.

Obama sometimes seems like he’s just trying to survive in a job that’s over his head. Holder is a different matter. He’s the one who wanted KSM and others tried in New York and even convened a grand jury to review the evidence – with the indictment again kept secret under seal. Curious.

That was in late 2009. Yet nothing happened. Then the Democrats lost the House in the 2010 mid-term elections, and things changed. A close call.

Obama also erred over Libya. He was shrewd, even wise, to delay decision until the European Union, Britain and the Arab League demanded action and inherited responsibility for the Libyan “no fly zone.”

Pity Obama had to say that air attacks weren’t aimed at regime change, and that America’s only goal was to save Libyan lives. More nonsense. Why, some wondered, are Libyan lives worth saving but not lives in Ivory Coast, Yemen, Syria, Iran et. al. are not?

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