Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely – W.P.

The Washington Post is reporting this morning in a piece entitled Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely that an Executive Branch study group is recommending that we hold about fifty people in prison “indefinitely”.  That is a breathtaking American legal position.  They have not been charged with anything.

Here is an excerpt from the piece:

“Human rights advocates have bemoaned the administration’s failure to fulfill President Obama’s promise last January to close the Guantanamo Bay facility within a year as well as its reliance on indefinite detention, a mechanism devised during George W. Bush’s administration that they deem unconstitutional.

“There is no statutory regime in America that allows us to hold people without charge or trial indefinitely,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.’

Now I fully understand that these people are without a doubt sworn enemies of the United States.  There is no doubt in my mind that they would attempt to kill Americans if they were released.  But there is a bigger problem here, a much more dangerous one.

If the U.S. government can hold them in prison idefinitely without charging them, it can do the same to you and me, whenever it wants, under what ever conditions it deems reasonable.  This is something that petty kings did to their serfs in the Middle Ages.  This is a stunning legal stance for an Administration to take.

I am not actually worried about the legal rights of people who are almost certainly maniacal terrorists.  I am worried about my legal rights. Under American law, there is no barrier between how the government treats them and how the government treats me.

And that is what strikes terror into the heart of any free man who understands the dangers here.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)