No Courage from White House on Detainees
Conn Carroll /
The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.
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The administration’s decision avoids a potentially rancorous debate that could alienate key allies at a time when President Obama needs congressional and public support… The administration has concluded that its detention powers, as currently accepted by the federal courts, are adequate to the task of holding some Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely.
There is strong bi-partisan recognition that U.S. detention policy must be placed on a legally sustainable long-term footing. At Brookings Senior Fellow for Governance Studies Ben Witttes has written a A Model Law for Terrorist Incapacitation while Heritage’s Senior Legal Fellow Cully Stimson has long called for a durable legal detention framework.