A Middle Ground on Enemy Combatants

Photo: Brennan Linsley / AP

From Time Magazine:

"The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion," Barack Obama said in his elegant Notre Dame commencement speech, "and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm." You can say that again. In recent weeks, the President and just about every other major politician from both parties have been boggled by soldier-lawyer disputes. Some have been small: whether or not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was adequately briefed on the CIA's use of waterboarding in 2002. Others cut to the core of asymmetrical warfare, especially the question of what sort of rights to grant prisoners captured in a war that is likely to be fought in perpetuity against an amorphous, stateless enemy.

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My Comment: Joe Klein, the Times correspondent, believes that there is some middle ground on this issue. I wish him luck .... I have trouble seeing how you can find middle ground between good and evil.

Obama Administration Dropping 'Enemy Combatant' Term

U.S. military guards walk around Camp 4 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Brennan Linsley / Associated Press

No More 'Enemy Combatants' At Guantanamo Bay -- L.A. Times

The Obama administration abandons the term favored under Bush and declares that the president may no longer order suspects deemed to be dangerous captured and held without trial.

Reporting from Washington -- There will no longer will be "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration said Friday. Moreover, the new president no longer claims that his title as commander in chief allows him to order people deemed to be dangerous captured and held without trial.

Having abandoned a favored Bush administration term in the war on terrorism, however, the new administration has claimed roughly the same power to hold Guantanamo's detainees indefinitely -- even those who never held a gun or went near a battlefield.

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More News On Dropping The "Enemy Combatant" Term

U.S. Won’t Label Terror Suspects as ‘Combatants’ -- New York Times
U.S. Retires 'Enemy Combatant,' Keeps Broad Right to Detain -- Washington Post
U.S. reverses policy, drops 'enemy combatant' term -- CNN
Reaction | To Obama Enemy Combatant policy -- Miami Herald