by Mark Luedtke

Created on: April 15, 2009

Imagine if Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had closed down all allied prisoner of war camps during WWII. Imagine if they had either released all the prisoners into Britain or the US, returned them to their home countries, or put them into the civilian court system. The thought is laughable. It should go without saying, but in our crazy society, everything must be stated clearly - any of these options would increase the duration, casualties and cost of the war. Any would lead to greater erosion of rights at home. Any person who suggested such a thing during WWII would have been put in a straight jacket and a padded cell, and rightly so.

But that's exactly what President Obama promises to do in the War on Terror, with the full support of radical liberals. The first official act of President Obama was to order the prisoner of war camp in Guantanamo Bay shut down in one year. In the same week, Obama complained there were no complete files in the White House on detainees for his staff to investigate so they could determine what to do with the detainees. Maybe I'm nave, but it seems to me that the responsible course of action would have been to investigate before making any decision.

Obviously Obama was just playing politics for his radical left base. He has no idea what to do with the detainees, and he's admitted as much. Now Attorney General Holder says Obama might release some detainees into the US. Obama is playing politics with American lives so he can force the most radical leftist agenda in history down our throats.

But Obama didn't make this mess President Bush did. Like nearly everything else, Obama is making a bad situation created by George Bush worse.

Over the last seven years, only two detainees have been tried by military commission. That reflects the poor rules developed by President Bush and Congress. Many of the detainees at Guantanamo were not captured on a battlefield, but criminals arrested for terrorist crimes. By blurring the distinction between enemy combatants and criminals, Bush opened the door to powerful, legitimate criticisms over civil rights violations at Guantanamo. By using harsh interrogation techniques on criminal suspects, he destroyed the ability to try the criminals in a civilian court and opened the door to irresponsible accusations of torture.

This failure of leadership and disrespect of the rule of law by President Bush also opened the door to the Supreme Court sticking its nose in the process of detention at Guantanamo.

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