What rule was broken?

 

The President is supposed to give Congress 30 days notice of the release of any prisoner from Gitmo. They had no notice. The law is potentially unconstitutional though.

That is a problem. The whole Gitmo situation is a problem.

I think we need some historical perspective here.

 

For one thing, prisoner transfers have been done during wartime forever.

 

For another, we did a lot of them in the Bush/Cheney years too - because that is what they all do.

 

Finally, Congress, this President, and the public have all been screaming for years to close Gitmo. But Congress and the states have also been adamant that they don't want these guys in the US. So, what are the options? Pretty much what they did anyway - transferring guys out, ideally to another country (like Qatar, in this instance).

 

Basically, these transfers out of Gitmo were going to happen anyway, we just happened to also get an American soldier back in return. Something for nothing. Makes it hard for me to get upset about it.

 

The key issue here is the difficulty of the "War on Terror", or asymetrical warfare generally. The POW's aren't the same players - the guys we are holding are, in some cases, beyond just "soldiers". I don't know what the answer is, but, what do you do with them?

 

When I read "he left his post", I thought it meant he was on a mission and just walked away but leaving bunks in the middle of the night is what he did. Yeah, I'm not ok with this.

 

They better interrogate the crap outta him and get intel.

One other detail worth noting is that the Taliban negotiators the U.S. dealt with in this case are a group of actual recognized diplomatic personnel. The negotiating team is actually recognized as the Taliban delegation in Qatar and have diplomatic protection in that country.

 

Also the President reportedly briefed several members of Congress on the status of these negotiations in 2012, so it's not like this was completely out of the blue for Congress. Link

 

All that said, as this article points out, with the circumstances in this case, the press conference and "victory lap" on Sunday by Obama/Hagel does seem excessive.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks this was a ploy to get the VA mess out of the papers.

I love when civilians say things like "they better gather intel." Video games, man.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks this was a ploy to get the VA mess out of the papers.

 

I wish it would take something like that. The VA mess will be forgotten too soon regardless of what other news is out there.

Obama made such a bad trade that Brian Sabean and Kevin Towers are mocking him for it.

Sounds like a few GOP folks were fine with this a few months ago and now flip flopped.

 

Shocking.

Sounds like a few GOP folks were fine with this a few months ago and now flip flopped.

 

Shocking.

 

I haven't read they were fine with it. I've read they were informed that the admn was talking about an exchange, but weren't informed that it was actually going to be done.

I haven't read they were fine with it. I've read they were informed that the admn was talking about an exchange, but weren't informed that it was actually going to be done.

McCain, Inhofe, Ayotte all said in public on record that we should get them back, and in fact a couple of them said if we need to exchange prisoners so be it.

 

Doesn't mean it was the right thing to do or handled well, but fact is some of these blow-hards are doing an about-face.

 

I haven't read they were fine with it. I've read they were informed that the admn was talking about an exchange, but weren't informed that it was actually going to be done.

Congress would absolutely have the right to take the President to court over this if they chose to do so.

 

Of course, the reality is that if Congress did that, first there is a solid chance that the entire law saying that the President can't move prisoners out of the Gulag would be declared unconstitutional. Second, then there would be the optics of the Congress taking the President to court over getting a military prisoner back during an election year, which might not play well in some districts no matter what Fox is saying.

 

So, the end result is that Congress will complain for a few days on TV but take no action, a few complete idiots like John McCain will be caught completely contradicting themselves, and this particular potential issue will be forgotten. Instead, the President will continue to understand that he may well have the ability to ignore that law, but as long as he (or in the future she) does not massively overstep that law by, for example, transferring all of the Gitmo detainees to a U.S. Prison, the conflicting legal possibilities will never be settled.

Congress would absolutely have the right to take the President to court over this if they chose to do so.

 

Of course, the reality is that if Congress did that, first there is a solid chance that the entire law saying that the President can't move prisoners out of the Gulag would be declared unconstitutional. Second, then there would be the optics of the Congress taking the President to court over getting a military prisoner back during an election year, which might not play well in some districts no matter what Fox is saying.

 

So, the end result is that Congress will complain for a few days on TV but take no action, a few complete idiots like John McCain will be caught completely contradicting themselves, and this particular potential issue will be forgotten. Instead, the President will continue to understand that he may well have the ability to ignore that law, but as long as he (or in the future she) does not massively overstep that law by, for example, transferring all of the Gitmo detainees to a U.S. Prison, the conflicting legal possibilities will never be settled.

 

I don't think it's a constitutionality question as to what the President can do with Gitmo, it's that Congress doesn't need to be involved in this situation at all, so even if they raised a big stink about it, that requirement that the President informs the Congress under the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014 is meaningless. He's the commander in chief.

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/03/rep...p-gop-2011.html

 

They were told about the possibility as far back as 2011.

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/03/rep...p-gop-2011.html

 

They were told about the possibility as far back as 2011.

 

In other words, if you briefly discuss something years ago, but then drop it and suddenly do it when everyone pretty much forgot you ever said anything, it's ok? Sounds like a shady, albeit not surprising or unexpected political practice from either side.

haha. Obama.

McCain, Inhofe, Ayotte

 

A worthless crew indeed.