You know, from several different sources it has been more than a “two year debate.” Several sources indicated early early on (in connection with the Afghanistan invastion) that the issue of what was going to happen with captures was at issue. CIA and DOD knew already the President’s approach wasn’t a criminal prosecution approach, so the warehousing issue came up early – with the Army wanting to hand off to CIA and vice versa.

In the end, Army got stuck with GITMO and CIA got to become Penitentiary Pals with Egypt and got a crash course on its own in being third world jailers.

The WaPo article, and everything else I see, pretty much ignores the Seeton Hall studies and the cases that have created an unrefuted factual record that we are holding people who have (or at least had – hard to say how they feel now, after years of wrongful detention, abuse and isolation) no relationship with al-Qaeda or terrorism whatsoever.

It’s no wonder that Addington and Cheney were worried the release of the “road to Guantanamo” detainees to Britain might open floodgates. Bc even the Presidential “enemy combatants” farce (now smacked around by Hamdan) didn’t leave a heck of a lot of cover if you don’t have someone who is an enemy combatant.

Frontline had a great series of interviews on its site on the torture issue, but the all, ALL, started with the assumption that the GITMO detainees were “enemy combatants” as the term could arguably be argued. Now the factual record shows that is dead wrong for at least some of the detainees whose lawyers were given access to the courts – even, sadly, to courts that issued opinions saying the Kafkaesque Govt approach left the court no recourse to the wrongful detentions.

From the WaPo article:

Two months later, in January 2005, the four men were sent home to Britain and immediately freed. But as Cheney’s lawyer David Addington had predicted, the decision opened up the floodgates of Guantanamo Bay. Over the coming months, every European prisoner was sent home and a total of 100 detainees were released.

Policymakers including Cheney and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales who were heavily invested in the detainee program were losing ground

How Congress went forward with Gonzales and how anyone works for him, is beyond my ability to understand life. YOu can see why Dana Priest is on his hit list, though.

A turning point in the debate, senior administration officials said, came 10 months later, when The Washington Post reported the existence of the secret CIA prisons in November 2005. At the time the White House refused to confirm or deny the program but said the report had harmed national security.

Apparently, European govts who still have prosecution wings that believe in prosecuting crimes, even those involving acts perpetrated on terrosim suspects, were getting pretty nervous. My understanding is that the “black sites” and “rendition flights” reporting in Europe has been much more aggressive than here and shows much less signs of going away.

Given all the problems, it is almost comical, if not so depressing, that they acknowledge no one even THOUGHT about what might happen if a court called foul on the illegal State Sponsorship of torture track they were on.

Even though comments from the justices at oral argument had suggested that they might rule against the administration’s detainee policies, the White House counsel had made no contingency plans for a loss and was stunned by the decision.

If they are truly so stupid as to be stunned by it, that is almost frightening. If stunned is just more cya, that’s is predictable in the fiction over fact setting they have created.

It would be interesting to see who the “other lawyers’ were:

Most senior Justice Department lawyers believed the ruling would force the government to close the CIA’s “black sites.” Other lawyers disagreed.

and to hear what kind of “passion” is generated in defense of torture, murder and kidnap:

…Bush convened his principal advisers at the end of August to make a final decision. Several had moved far away from the impassioned defenses of secret prisons that they had mounted a year earlier.

*s* All a pretty sad mess with a bunch of people who bailed all their integrity to keep that ship afloat. Interesting that they are now spinning more of the ‘isn’t Condi wonderful, wouldn’t you like to have a cup of coffee with her’ storyline.

Somehow I keep picturing her in Africa, AirForce 1, saying “are you sure you’re done with this” and my coffee urges fade.

[Rice] noted that the secret sites were having a corrosive effect on the nation’s ability to win cooperation on a range of intelligence issues. Rice urged the president to resolve the issue rather than hand it off to his successor.

Of course, IMO, the latter part is the real issue they were trying to address. What if the successor doesn’t feel the same way – what if there is not new legislation or pardons?

lotus #113,

Well to be honest we were laughing in that way when somebody tells you something really stupid but you’re right it was never funny.

Hugh, it honestly did crack me up … before I appreciated how many of my compatriots were swallowing without chewing.

Schwarzenegger: Cubans, Puerto Ricans ‘all very hot’

SANTA MONICA, California (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized Friday for saying during a closed-door meeting that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of “black blood” and “Latino blood.”

He said the tape-recorded comments “made me cringe” when he read them in Friday’s Los Angeles Times.

“Anyone out there that feels offended by those comments, I just want to say I’m sorry, I apologize,” Schwarzenegger said. He added that if he heard his children make similar comments, “I would be upset.”

[…]

Well to be honest we were laughing in that way when somebody tells you something really stupid but you’re right it was never funny.

Granted, the things may not need much fixing, since even Dems Congress appear to have embraced their inner Rwanda

Zing! I may use that in my next letter to Senators Pryor and Lincoln. Cluster bombers deluxe.