Phillip
Carter is a lawyer, a former Army Captain, a veteran of the Iraq War
and a very harsh critic of the Bush administration's detention and
interrogation policies. He was a vigorous supporter of Barack Obama's
campaign, and in 2008, became the Obama campaign's National Veterans
Director. In April of this year, he was appointed the top Pentagon
official for detainee affairs, but yesterday, he suddenly
"quit without explanation just days after Obama confirmed in an
inter
When Barack Obama gave his "civil liberties" speech
at the National Archives in May, he advocated a new scheme of
preventive detention for detainees whom he claimed "cannot be
prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people," and he
unambiguously vowed to develop a new statutory regime, enacted by
Congress, to vest him with the power of what he called "prolonged
detention":
On Thursday, in a long-anticipated ruling (PDF),
Judge Ellen Segan Huvelle granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohamed
Jawad, an Afghan teenager seized after a grenade attack on a jeep
containing two U.S. soldiers and an Afghan translator in December 2002,
and ordered the government to transfer him to the custody of the Afghan
authorities, who have already stated that he will be released on
arrival.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department conceded Friday that it lacks
the evidence to hold a teenage Guantanamo detainee as an enemy
combatant after a federal judge last week ruled that his confession was
inadmissible.
In a hearing last week, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled
that Mohammed Jawad's confession to Afghan officials was inadmissible
because it had been extracted through torture. She also questioned
whether the Justice Department had any evidence to proceed with a trial
to determine whether he can be held as an enemy combatant.
An important new report
(.pdf) was released Thursday by Human Rights First regarding the
overwhelming success of the U.S. Government in obtaining convictions in
federal court against accused Terrorists.
Since
sweeping into office pledging to undo all the malign results of the
Bush administration's brutal and ill-conceived "war on terror," Barack
Obama has struggled to make as decisive a point as he did on that first
day, when he pledged to close Guantanamo prison within a year, to ban
the use of torture, and to ensure that the US military abided by the
Geneva Conventions in its treatment of prisoners.
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring
expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his
wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical
memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity
and follow-through.
The backlash against President Obama's extraordinary proposal for indefinite "preventive detention" -- already widespread in the immediate aftermath of his speech -- continues to grow. On Friday, Sen.
Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to
close Guantánamo within one year.
The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Pat
Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new
president. They claimed his plan
would release dangerous terrorists into U.S. communities and allow released
terrorists to resume fighting against our troops. Fox News agitator Sean Hannity and Bush
team players like torture-memo lawyer John Yoo filled the airwaves and print
media with paranoia.
