Military Commissions on Hold
| Tue Jan. 20, 2009 9:53 PM PST
MILITARY COMMISSIONS ON HOLD....I'm sure the usual executive orders changing our abortion policies will be signed on Wednesday, but for those keeping score at home it looks like Obama's first major act has already taken place:
In one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — a clear break with the approach of the outgoing Bush administration.
The instruction came in a motion filed late Tuesday with a military court handling the case of five defendants accused of organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States....The legal maneuver appears designed to provide the Obama administration time to refashion the prosecution system and potentially treat detainees as criminal defendants in federal court or to have them face war-crimes charges in military courts-martial. It is also possible that the administration could re-form and relocate the military commissions before resuming trials.
This only gets two cheers until we see what the current procedure gets replaced with, but it's a good start.
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Comments
Submitted by Eric Ferguson (not verified) on Wed Jan. 21, 2009 8:33 AM PST.
Come on, let's give credit where it's due. Obama can't instantly make that awful place go away, but of what he could do immediately, he did the right thing, and he's going to get pilloried by the authoritarian right for doing that, and for doing it fast and first. Cheering for him when he does the right thing is part of how we create the parade for our leaders to jump in front of.
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