By CONGRESSDAILY STAFF
At least three Republican senators have said that President Obama should reconsider his choice for the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq, dimming the chances that veteran diplomat Christopher Hill could be confirmed.
Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas said they were disappointed with Hill's appointment, announced Wednesday by the White House. All three senators cited a lack of experience in the Middle East to explain their opposition to Hill.
During the Bush administration, Hill led nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea. While considered a seasoned negotiator, Hill was regarded by many Republicans as too willing to make concessions to try to prod Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
If confirmed, Hill would replace Ryan Crocker as America's top diplomat in Baghdad.
(Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
National Journal's Kirk Victor recently spoke with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who set out his concerns about the implementation of President Obama's order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Graham, who has served as a judge advocate and as a prosecutor, worries that closing the prison is the "easy" move, but the more difficult call is what to do with the approximately 245 prisoners there. Graham also voiced concern that the president will feel pressure from critics on the left who favor prosecuting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others from the previous administration as war criminals for approving brutal interrogation techniques. Edited excerpts follow.
NJ: Have any of President Obama's actions in his first days in office surprised you?
Graham: The one thing I am somewhat concerned about is executive orders on Guantanamo Bay. I support closing it. I support making sure that we have a process that restores our image in the world, but I do not support a plan that would criminalize the war. I think we can find a system, a rule of law called the Law of Armed Conflict, to deal with these detainees when they are brought to the United States. The point I am trying to make is that we are at war and the Law of Armed Conflict should apply, not domestic criminal law. I don't know where this is going to take us, but I am hopeful they will not create a system that restricts our ability to defend ourselves and not advance our moral standing at all.
NJ: What do you do with some of these prisoners who may not be prosecutable but are very dangerous?
Graham: That's the point. Some of them can be tried as war criminals, like [Khalid] Sheikh Mohammed. I think you try them in the military.... Some will be repatriated to third countries. Probably half of them are going to be kept in jail because they are part of al-Qaida. The evidence is not such you would submit [their cases] to a criminal court because of the sensitive nature of it, but we know they are part of the al-Qaida network and a judge agrees with the military that they are part of al-Qaida.You don't let those people go. You have a review process that keeps them in jail, constantly reviews their cases until they are no longer a threat. Sixty-one people have gone back to the fight after being released already.... Let me tell you -- closing Guantanamo Bay and moving them is the easy part. What to do with them is the hard part. We're talking about people who would kill us if they could.
NJ: Are you worried that Obama might be persuaded by critics on the left who want to pursue officials in the Bush administration who may have countenanced torture?
Graham: Yes, I am worried that the radical left who thinks that everybody at Guantanamo Bay is a victim and that Dick Cheney and George Bush are war criminals will have more sway [with the administration] than they deserve. But so far so good. I met with the administration on this issue.
NJ: Can President Obama withstand the pressure from the left on this issue?
Graham: This will be a good test. This is about a system that will render justice within our values, recognizing that we are at war. This is about a fresh start. If we're talking about prosecuting people because of political vendettas, then I think President Obama will have failed the test. If there is some competent evidence out there, somewhere, then that will be different, but this idea that policy disagreements lead to criminal [prosecution] will destroy our democracy. And I don't believe he is inclined to do that.
By CORINE HEGLAND
(Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
With a few strokes of the pen Thursday morning, President Obama toppled most of his predecessor's dilapidated framework for handling prisoners from the war on terrorism. The final vestiges of "enhanced" interrogations and secret prisons, both already shrunk from their post-9/11 heyday by court order and congressional action, were swept away by an executive order putting the entire U.S. government under the interrogation standards of the U.S. Army Field Manual and prohibiting the CIA from operating detention facilities.
"It is a blanket repudiation of the Bush approach," said Elisa Massimino, the CEO and executive director of Human Rights First. She pointed in particular to the order's effective overruling of all legal advice on interrogations issued between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 29, 2009, saying it "wipes away all of the barnacles that the Bush administration had accumulated over the legal standards."
A second executive order ensures that the last 250 or so detainees in Guantanamo Bay, all that remains of the approximately 770 prisoners who have been there since January 2002, will depart the island within the next 12 months. After individual case reviews, some of the detainees will go home; some, who face the possibility of torture at home, will settle in third countries; some will be prosecuted, and some may well continue their indefinite detention as enemy combatants in prisons on the soil of the continental United States.
"We are not," Obama said as he signed the orders amidst beaming retired military officers, "going to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."
The slew of orders leaves quite a few questions unanswered: What, for example, will happen to prisoners like Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose torture at American hands makes prosecution difficult, but whose alleged role in the 9/11 hijacking makes his release dangerous? What about people like the Uighurs, who pose no security risk but face almost-certain persecution if they are returned to China? Or to the detainees without al-Qaeda connections whose low potential risk could be mitigated by rehabilitation and surveillance, if their countries had programs for such things?
On the other hand, none of the questions raised by Obama's executive orders are new. Over the past two years, they were all fiercely debated inside the Bush administration, which wanted to close Guantanamo, too. Obama's signatures Thursday morning simply commit him to mustering the political will necessary to find the solutions that eluded Bush.
His initial steps toward finding that solution garnered swift support from an unlikely source later that day as his former White House rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., issued a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "Numerous difficult issues remain," the Republican pair noted, but "we support President Obama's decision to close the prison at Guantanamo, reaffirm America's adherence to the Geneva Conventions and begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees."
CORRECTION: The original version of this post misstated the date of Obama's executive orders.
