No consensus on what to do with detainees

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - A Senate hearing Wednesday on the detainees held at the Guantanamo Naval Base revealed that there is no consensus among senators as to what Congress should do in order to speed up the tribunals trying the prisoners held there, or whether it should impose a time limit on detentions.

Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter called the hearing “just the start of a lot of hard work by this committee to establish rules” to govern what should be done with the detainees.

“There’s a real question as to why Congress hasn’t handled it,” Specter remarked. “It may be that it’s too hot to handle for Congress, it may be that it’s too complex to handle” or that Congress is waiting for the courts to take the lead in designing detainee policy.

But Specter complained that the Supreme Court in three rulings last June and the lower federal courts, in decisions since then, had created “a crazy quilt” of muddled case law.

Complaining that the appeals courts had been mulling over some detainee cases for months, Specter said his committee would consider approving a law imposing time limits on federal courts for settling detainee cases.

Need for Congress to 'buy in'
Another GOP member of the committee, Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, urged his fellow senators to consider legislation to clarify detainee policy, if only for the reason that Congress needed to “buy in” to the president’s effort.

“There’s not enough ‘buy-in’ by the Congress as to what’s going on at Gitmo” he said.

He suggested that “if Congress developed statutory provisions to define enemy combatant status and standardizing intelligence gathering techniques and detention policy, it would help our cause.”

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee argued that the allegations of abuse of Guantanamo detainees is causing Muslims to hate the United States and making it harder to win the struggle against al Qaida.

Republicans on the panel didn't seem to buy this argument.

“We’re doing real badly,” said Sen. Joe Biden, D- Del. “It’s a disaster.... We’ve got ourselves a communications problem.”

Biden called for an independent commission to investigate treatment of detainees and to make recommendations for changes in policy.

Biden also raised two crucial questions: when will the war end and should detainees be held until it does end?

When will war end?
“If there’s no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever that these folks are held at Guantanamo Bay,” Biden said. “Has anybody at the Justice Department defined when is the end of the conflict?”

Earlier in the hearing, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, the legal advisor to the Office of Military Commissions, which is in charge of trying detainees, testified under questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that “I don’t know how long this war is going to last” and that the United States could hold al Qaida members at Guantanamo “as long as the conflict endures.”

He added that the Defense Department set up annual review boards to review detainees' cases, “releasing them if they no longer present a threat.”

One Republican on the committee, Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio complained to Hemingway that the military was using a “horribly slow process” to decide which detainees to put on trial, which to keep, and which to let go.

In his reply, Hemingway said that until military interrogators finished questioning a detainee and decided he had no more information to provide, they didn’t turn him over for possible trial before a military commission.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R- Ala., expressed impatience at Democrats who called for more legal rights for detainees. He said the newly constructed facility at Guantanamo was on “a beautiful site” and “would make a magnificent resort.”

As for the detainees held there, “some of them need to be executed,” Sessions said.

MORE FROM POLITICS

Politics Section Front

Obama: Parties must 'transcend petty politics' GOP flexes muscles, defeats Obama nominee   N.Y. governor says scandal rumors are dying   Police: Man who took over Clinton office flees White House pokes fun at Sarah Palin NYT: McCain takes on GOP foe by tilting right First lady begins fight against childhood obesity GOP wary of Obama's health care summit Loan guarantees recharge nuclear debate Ala. senator releases holds on Obama nominees Politics Section Front   Add Politics headlines to your news reader: