Hey, it’s worked before. Trying to bounce back a bit after last week’s lousy week for the GOP, Senate Republicans returned to a classic theme today: national security and the terrorist threat.
Specifically, they’re warning about the prospect of terrorists running loose in our neighborhoods.
Today’s talking point after the weekly Senate Republican luncheon was about how closing the Guantánamo Bay detention center within a year will be a lot harder than President Obama thinks. And to make it that much harder, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said he’ll introduce a bill Wednesday that would bar the use of federal funds to release former detainees on U.S. soil.
But wouldn’t that cause legal problems if, say, they’re transferred to U.S. prisons and there is no longer any reason to hold certain prisoners? Chambliss doesn’t think so. “The president has the authority to detain any of these individuals indefinitely,” he said.
So much for those nagging constitutional questions.
Mainly, the Republicans were trying to hammer away at one key point: What, exactly, should be done with the former Gitmo detainees? But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada didn’t seem interested in debating the question. “It would seem to me that the Republicans need to get a different set of talking points,” he said at his own press conference.
Beyond that, though, Reid didn’t offer much of a defense for Obama’s post-Gitmo plans. “Let’s just wait and see,” he said. “There are a lot of things easier said than done.”
Then Reid wrapped up the press conference and ducked into the Senate chamber — presumably to order up a stronger answer next time he gets that question.
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Comments
"Senate Republicans returned to a classic theme today: national security and the terrorist threat.
Specifically, they’re warning about the prospect of terrorists running loose in our neighborhoods."
The Gitmo prisoners have not yet received the benefit of habeus corpus and have not had fair civilian jury trials and been convicted of acts of terrorism, so how can they be called terrorists? Don't they also get the presumption that they are innocent until proven guilty?
Posted by: HERLING1
| May 6, 2009 9:34 AM
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