Like Azkaban, but worse

DISCLAIMER: I don't mean to sound like an angry dissenter or whatever, but as this is a site for sillyness, I think this qualifies:

From: The Washington Post

*President Obama acknowledged publicly for the first time yesterday that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have to be held without trial indefinitely, siding with conservative national security advocates on one of the most contentious issues raised by the closing of the military prison in Cuba.

"We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country," Obama said. "But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States."

Translation: We'll prosecute everyone except those who we don't have enough evidence against to prove they are terrorists. But they're still dangerous, so we'll just lock them up forever without a trial.

Apart from those who cannot be tried but must be held, Obama laid out four other categories that would apply to the 240 detainees remaining at Guantanamo: those who can be tried in federal court, those who will be brought before revamped military commissions, those ordered released by U.S. courts and those who can be transferred to other countries.

**Some of Obama's top legal advisers, along with a handful of influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers, have pushed for the creation of a "national security court" to supervise the incarceration of detainees deemed too dangerous to release but who cannot be charged or tried.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release...The other half of the cases, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted in federal court or military commissions. In many cases the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services or has been tainted by the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques. (Translation: they tortured confessions out of them, but can't use these confessions in a courtroom, so they'll just keep 'em forever. Well, gee, that's helpful.)

Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system. (For now)


So, in short:
If they think you are a terrorist, they will try you in a federal court (after torturing you of course). If they do not have enough evidence to convict you in a federal court, then they will bring you before "revamped military commissions" which require much less evidence. If they still can't convict you, they'll just bring you in front of a "national security court" and hold you indefinitely.

I, for one, am not altogether very happy about this, what about you?

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html
**http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062603361.html