http://ga3.org/campaign/CloseGitmo/xg7xxberrj3wibmw?

Dear Kathleen,

The neo-conservatives are on a mission – to rewrite how history will view Dick Cheney’s policies, and scare Americans into keeping failed policies in place. A new group, led by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz, is doing everything it can to try to scare Americans, just like the good old days of the Bush administration. Their goal? To keep Guantanamo Bay open, to “prove” that Dick Cheney was right.

We’re fighting back, alongside Generals and former Congressman Tom Andrews. But, we need you with us!

CLICK HERE TO HELP US CLOSE GUANTANAMO AND FIGHT BACK AGAINST LIZ CHENEY

This is an issue we shouldn’t even be arguing. Closing Guantanamo takes away a major recruiting poster for al Qaeda, helps us reclaim the moral high ground, and help our troops in harm’s way. Most importantly, it will allow for us to try and convict those guilty of trying to harm and kill Americans, so we can either sentence them to death or put them away in our toughest prison – the Supermax prison – where they will live out their days in a living hell, in solitary and away from the general population.

We’ve already done that with some of the most notorious terrorists. The Supermax has been the home of Ramzi Yousef, who headed the group that carried out the first bombing of the World Trade Center; Zacarias Moussaoui, 9/11 conspirator; Ahmed Ressam, of the Los Angeles airport millennium attack plots; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who conspired to kill President George W. Bush; Wadih el-Hage, guilty of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya; Jose Padilla, who plotted detonating a dirty bomb; Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing; and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN OUR OPEN LETTER TO CONGRESS, TO CLOSE GITMO

Ours is a position of strength. Liz Cheney’s is a position of weakness. But, unless we fight back, we let them win this debate. Won’t you sign our open letter to Congress, and get five of your friends to do the same?

Thanks for all of your support.

Sincerely

Jon Soltz
Iraq War Veteran
Chairman, VoteVets.org

13. Going further, on May 21, 2009, Obama embraced Bush’s idea of indefinite detention even of those who have been processed by the courts:

“Now, let me begin by disposing of one argument as plainly as I can: We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security”

In a June 26, 2009 story, Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn reported that the Obama White House was drafting an Executive Order which would allow for indefinite detention of up to 90 prisoners at Guantanamo. One of those mentioned in this regard is Walid bin Attash who is accused of involvment in the bombing of the USS Cole. Of the 3 witnesses against bin Attash, one escaped jail in Yemen, another the Yemenis won’t let testify, and the 3rd is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri who was tortured by the US. As Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, there was certainly other untainted evidence developed in the Cole investigation, and, as I have noted, terror convictions in US federal courts are fairly easy to obtain.

On July 7, 2009, the Pentagon’s general counsel Jeh Johnson in Senate testimony reiterated this view:

“If you have authority under the law of war to detain someone” under the Supreme Court’s Hamdi ruling, “that is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.”

You surprise me. I do not make stuff up. This is Obama and members of his own Administration saying this. Both emptywheel and Glenn Greenwald have written on this subject. You might try googling them. However if I have gone all nutcase, I prefer their company to others. I prefer the truth no matter where it lands to one tailored for Republicans and another for Democrats.

Obama wants the power of idefinite detention? You need to book on Glenn Beck.