Jefferson schmefferson–we have a #%$&@ deal! (official White House photo by Pete Souza)
Lindsey Graham is telling reporters about an emerging deal with Rahm Emanuel to close Guantanamo in exchange for stopping civilian trials for suspected terrorists:
The South Carolina senator said that in a series of meetings and phone calls over the last “several weeks,” he has pressed to establish a new national security court that would keep most Guantanamo detainees out of the federal courthouse. He expressed confidence that he could strike a deal to extend some measure of habeas corpus rights to prisoners detained on terrorism charges and to draft a “law of war” statute that ensures no one can be detained on the whim of the executive branch without oversight or judicial recourse.
A breakthrough on those issues could lead to agreement on trials for Guantanamo prisoners outside the federal court system, he said.
I dealt with this at length (too much length, maybe) on the merits in this Windy post just now, so why repeat myself. And as a political proposition, I still don’t get what Emanuel thinks he’s buying. Lindsey Graham will bring not a single GOP vote. For anything. How’s that climate bill coming? And the GOP is going to oppose absolutely everything the administration does, especially on national security, and just ignore the things the administration does that it likes, as with Afghanistan. Has the Afghanistan surge bought the White House any GOP goodwill? Within weeks of the announcement, the GOP freaked out over Abdulmutallab.
The amazing thing about this is that the administration is holding a very good national-security hand right now, and it’s barely playing it. You’ve got Eric Holder out there yesterday securing the life sentence of an aspirant terrorist, having busted up his plot before it occurred and getting information on al-Qaeda in the process, all within the civilian court system:
In this case, as it has in so many other cases, the criminal justice system has proved to be an invaluable weapon for disrupting plots and incapacitating terrorists, one that works in concert with the intelligence community and our military. We will continue to use it to protect the American people from terrorism.
As I have stated on other occasions, the criminal justice system also contains powerful incentives to induce pleas that yield long sentences and gain intelligence that can be used in the fight against Al Qaeda. We will use all available tools whenever possible against suspected terrorists.
And you trade that away for what, exactly?
