Obama considering indefinite detention of some Gitmo detainees

AP:

The White House is considering whether to issue an executive order to indefinitely imprison a small number of Guantanamo Bay detainees, concerned that Congress might otherwise stymie its plans to quickly close the naval prison in Cuba.

Under the proposal, detainees considered too dangerous to prosecute or release would be kept in confinement in the U.S. or possibly overseas, two administration officials said Friday. Otherwise, the White House could get bogged down for months seeking agreement with Congress on a new legal detention system....

Underscoring the difficulty of where to send the detainees before Guantanamo closes, a senior Defense official said some detainees who were picked up as enemy combatants cannot be charged with war crimes or terrorism even though they are believed to pose a threat. If no country volunteers to take them, traditional law of war authority allows the United States government to hold them until the end of hostilities, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

I still find it odd that Republicans, and now Democrats too, feel that our criminal justice system somehow isn't up to the challenge of trying dangerous terrorists. How do we try criminals? How does the world try war criminals? How did the world try the Nazis? And Milosevic? I simply don't buy this notion that terrorism is something new and of such unimaginable evil that our system of justice just can't handle it.

Personally, I got a chuckle out of the notion of the Obama administration having the gaul to even consider charging anyone with "war crimes," after refusing to investigate the same charges against our own country's leaders.

And finally, there's the notion that it's all right for us to hold prisoners indefinitely because under standard rules of war you can hold the enemy's prisoners until hostilities end. So, during the Cold War, did that mean we could hold Russian spies indefinitely, until the cold war ended? Considering that terrorism will likely never end, then what is the finishing point of the "war on terror"? And how do we justify holding "dangerous" terrorists in perpetuity, without trial, but we don't hold American criminals - really dangerous ones - forever? Some of them we know are dangerous and are just going to commit the same crime when they're released after having done their time. So why not suspend the Constitution and hold them too?

I just find these exceptions we make for "terrorists" - and the fact that Senators refuse to have a terrorist incarcerated in their state - to be a telling sign of just how wimpy many Americans really are. We like to talk tough, but man, when the going gets tough it's fascinating to see who crumbles.