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Catherine Moy
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The House today came close to stopping President Obama from closing Guantanamo Bay, a Naval prisoner on Cuba for terrorists.  Two Republicans voted with the Democrats to keep Obama’s plans moving forward.

Here’s the story from FOX News:

House Republicans nearly succeeded Thursday in their efforts to block President Obama’s decision to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

While debating a bill to fund the Justice Department, lawmakers initially defeated an amendment to ban the government from spending any money to close the prison. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) authored the provision. And the House voted down Lewis’s proposal was 216-212.

But the problem is that the House considered Lewis’s plan under a condition that allows the six delegates to Congress from five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia to vote. All of those members voted against Lewis’s amendment. Since the vote outcome fell within the margin of six votes, it’s possible those members could have determined the fate of Lewis’s idea.

That triggers a re-vote anytime the outcome falls within that six-member margin and those members of Congress vote.

So the House voted again on Lewis’s proposal. The House again defeated the Guantanamo Bay amendment, but only by one vote, 213-212.

The six special members are Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU), Del. Kilili Sablan (I-MP), Res. Comm. Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR), Del. Donna Christensen (D-VI) and Del. Eni Faleomaveaga (D-AS).

These members are permitted to vote in what’s called “The Committee of the Whole.” The Committee of the Whole is a special, parliamentary construct where the House performs much of its business. The members from Washington, DC and the U.S. territories are prohibited from voting when lawmakers are assembled as the “House of Representatives.”

In the House, some 40 Democrats voted to outlaw funding to close the prison. Only two Republicans voted against the proposed ban.

Kudos to those lawmakers who voted to keep Americans safe from the terrorists and terrorist suspects that could eventually come to America under Obama’s plan.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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guantanamo Bay terrorists and terrorist suspects will not soon move en masse to the United States, thanks to a unanimous vote by the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. the committee voted “61-0 for legislation covering the Defense Department’s budget for the 2010 fiscal year that starts October 1—550.4 billion dollars—but no money for moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to US soil,” according to the AFP.

It is a scathing rebuke of President Obama’s policy to close Guantanamo Bay and move prisoners to the United States for trial. He has ordered the prison on Cuba closed, despite his own adminstration’s findings that the prison abides by all Geneva Conventions and helps protect Americans from terrorists.

“Detainees are prohibited from being transferred without the president first presenting a plan on what danger the detainees pose to the US, its territories, and possessions, how the president plans to mitigate this risk and what will happen to individual detainees” according to a summary of the bill.

“The president must consult with state governors, the Mayor of DC (the nation’s capital), or the chief executives of the territories or possessions on the proposed transfers to their localities,” it said.

The spending bill, which requires approval by the full House and the Senate before it can go to Obama, also includes about 130 billion dollars for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In early June, another House panel approved the US Justice Department’s 2010 64.4 billion dollar budget without including any monies for closing Guantanamo Bay and imposing similar restrictions.

And an emergency spending measure to cover Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and aid Pakistan also did not include the president’s request for money to close the facility.

But that measure, which the House approved late Tuesday, allows the administration to transfer detainees to US soil to face trial.

On Wednesday, US Attorney General Eric Holder said he thought the United States would be able to find countries willing to take in the roughly 50 detainees who have already been cleared for release.

“I think that by sharing information about who these people are, responding to the questions that are posed by our allies who might be recipients of these people, that we can come up with a way in which we can assure them that they will not pose a danger to their countries, will not pose a danger to us,” he said.

“And I think that we’re going to be successful in placing these people,” said Holder.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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A former guard at Guantanamo Bay, which President Obama has wrongly ordered closed, says there soldiers did not torture or abuse prisoners. The fact is that NO American troop has been charged with a crime related to Gitmo and that radicals have slandered U.S. Troops with false allegations.
here is the story from PJ Star:

PEORIA — As a former military guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Timothy Shea wants to set the record straight about what he sees as misconceptions about what went on there.

“When I read some of the blogs, it’s insulting,” said the 1994 Richwoods High School graduate. “It doesn’t hurt as much now, but some of those people just have to realize what is going on down there and what the mission is.

“A lot of good information came out of there and saved American lives,” said Shea, who now lives in Tampa.

During his time at the controversial facility, Shea he never saw any indications of torture or abuse, he said.

“The (commanding officer’s) policy was that even if we cussed at them, that was something that we could be reprimanded (for),” Shea said. “From what I saw, no, I didn’t see torture. We read today that we waterboarded them or turned dogs loose on them, but back then dogs were not allowed in the cell block area.”

Shea, 32, was deployed to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, with the Army’s 984th Military Police Company, just months after the facility opened. Then, it was rather small, about the size of the Journal Star’s campus off War Memorial Drive, he said. Shea, then a specialist, a rank just above private first class, was one of those who “walked the cell blocks,” he said in a posting on pjstar.com.

“What Congressman (Aaron) Schock is going to see is a lot better living conditions than when I was there in 2002 and 2003. Then, there were grated trailers with fans on either side, and no air conditioning,” he said in a phone conversation late Monday. “It didn’t seem to bother the detainees rather much because they come from regions that are extremely hot.”

Schock, the Republican U.S. representative from Peoria, was among a handful of congressmen who made a fact-finding trip to Guantanamo Bay on Monday.

President Obama has vowed to close the prison by early 2010. Though Schock said he initially supports keeping the facility open, he’s remaining open-minded.

When Shea’s company left the facility in 2003, there were between 350 and 400 detainees. While he was there, Shea said detainees were well treated, got to go outside and were given three meals a day. In essence, he said, the camp was like a typical prison.

“There were people who would act up,” he said, but added there were many safeguards in place to ensure prisoners were treated humanely.

“There were so many medical checks in those cell blocks. They (detainees) would get checked out by a Navy corpsman every day. If a guy fell off his bunk, we had to log that in and tell our CO.”

Shea said he’s glad to hear Schock visited Guantanamo to see get a first-hand account.

“It is about time the politicians look in the face at the problem, instead of using second- or third-hand knowledge,” he said, referring to comments made in 2005 by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who criticized operations at the camp and compared it to Nazi concentration camps. The senator later retracted those statements.

“They (politicians) need to find a viable solution to the problem,” said Shea.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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Congressional Democrats have changed course and will now allow terrorist suspects from Guantanamo Bay to be tried in U.S. courts. Wow. These guys really should not be in our country. They will work inside the prisons to brainwash and recruit other terrorists. We already know this happens. And we just need look at homegrown gangs that run their businesses from inside prison. It’s just scary. I hope the Dems will change course again and protect their citizens.

Here’s the story from Bloomberg:

Democrats Set to Agree to U.S. Trials for Guantanamo Detainees

By Brian Faler

June 11 (Bloomberg)—Democrats plan to allow President Barack Obama to transfer detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to U.S. shores for trial, lawmakers said, backing away from efforts to bar such proceedings.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat, said he expects his colleagues to formally agree later today to a compromise war-spending bill that would authorize bringing the suspected terrorists to the U.S. for trial. If convicted, though, the detainees couldn’t be imprisoned in the U.S. under the compromise.

“That, I suppose, is what will be agreed to,” said Inouye.

Representative Jack Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who heads the House’s defense spending subcommittee, said Obama has agreed to the plan. The proposal also would require the White House to submit details of its closure plans for the Guantanamo facility before transferring detainees to the U.S. One detainee, a Tanzanian national, has been brought to the U.S. for trial.

Obama announced shortly after taking office in January that he would close the prison by early next year. The White House has yet to work out plans for relocating the approximately 200 detainees being held at Guantanamo.

House and Senate negotiators plan to meet later today to adopt a compromise on the bill that is mainly designed to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure then may be put to a floor votes in each chamber next week.

The Guantanamo issue helped stall final action after the House and Senate adopted differing drafts of the bill last month. The Senate’s version would bar the administration from transferring suspected terrorists to the U.S.

The move came after weeks of complaints from Republicans that Obama did not have a plan for closing the prison and that transferring detainees onto American soil could endanger public safety.

Since then, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, said his colleagues have had second thoughts about the restrictions because they could make it harder for the administration to proceed with closing the facility.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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KSM Would have had “Miranda Rights” under the Obama Adminstration

President Barack Obama’s adminstration is now making sure terrorists caught in Afghanistan will be read “Miranda” rights, which are given to American citizens when they are arrested. Miranda Rights give a suspect the right to stay silent so they don’t incriminate themselves. Well, isn’t that special?

Here’s the story from the Weekly Standard:

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the “global justice” initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Thanks in part to the popularity of law and order television shows and movies, many Americans are familiar with the Miranda warning – so named because of the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case Miranda vs. Arizona that required police officers and other law enforcement officials to advise suspected criminals of their rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama administration’s approach. “If the US is mirandizing certain suspects in Afghanistan, they’re likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the suspect and the collection of information is done in a manner that will ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the future.”

But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. “When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the ‘right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up.”

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. “The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people – ‘Take the option. You want a lawyer.’”

Rogers adds: “The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”

One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, “I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people.”