On "Closing" Guantanamo Bay
John Yoo ·
Jan 21, 2011 at 2:24pm
Over at the Enterprise (the AEI blog, not the Ricochet podcast's favorite starship), I post on the meaning of the second anniversary of President Obama's order to close Guantanamo Bay. My argument, in short, is that Obama's decision to no longer capture al Qaeda detainees and to up the use of drones has resulted in a serious drop in actionable intelligence and harm to our security.
Joining the blogging are Senator John Cornyn of Texas, Michael Mukasey (former Bush Attorney General), Marc Thiessen (former Bush speechwriter and author), Paul Rester and Kyndra Rotunda (officers stationed at Gitmo), and author/historian Arthur Herman.
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: On "Closing" Guantanamo Bay
Bush's policy was...
Obama, the left, and the MSM have declared that this policy was inhuman, cruel, illegal, and not worthy of our ideals as a nation -- and that those still held in Gitmo are entitled to due process in US civilian courts, the same as US citizens.
OTOH, Obama's policy of...
... Is good. noble, legal, and worthy of our ideals as a nation.
I do not have a problem assassinating terrorists, but the hypocrisy is stunning. The silence of the sanctimonious righteous previously loudly hyper-critical of Bush's policy is equally hypocritical, but unsurprising.
Edited on Jan 21, 2011 at 8:24pmDec '10
Re: On "Closing" Guantanamo Bay
John Yoo:
My argument, in short, is that Obama's decision to no longer capture al Qaeda detainees and to up the use of drones has resulted in a serious drop in actionable intelligence and harm to our security.
I agree. I started guessing this about a year ago.
However, we also know that Obama is still using rendition. So maybe we are still capturing a few high intelligence value targets and shipping them off elsewhere to be interrogated. And if we are doing this it may be without Obama's direct and specific knowledge -- does the President have to sign off on rendition? Obama may be giving plausible deniability a major workout.
If he is doing anything like this, it is probable Obama is keeping his hands clean by letting non-US players capture such people when possible, based on intelligence we provide.