Wow. The Bush administration is taking it from just about everyone these days. If it was the stony silence of the UN General Assembly, or the recent loud and public musings of centrist Republicans that our president isn’t fit to lead (and really, who thinks he is?) in Iraq, now it seems by their own admission that they can’t prosecute the War on Terror, because they have no legal underpinnings to it.
What am I talking about? The release of Yaser Hamdi to Saudi Arabia of course. This man, once considered so dangerous by the Army and Justice Department that he was held incommunicado for roughly two years, is being released to his family in Saudi Arabia, no trial, no hearing, just a boot to the butt and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
When the Supreme Court bluntly refuted President Bush’s stance that he could detain without a hearing or deny a visit from a lawyer for an indefinite period of time, not a single person bought that argument.
And now, instead of risking a sure to fail prosecution, we’re releasing one of the most “dangerous” criminals we’ve seized back to his home country. The home country of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers and the home of Wahhabist Islam, the most virulent and intolerant strain of Islam today.
Truly, Bush no longer has a single foothold on which to take a moral and principled stand in the war on terror, as he calls it. He can’t detain prisoners like he wants, he cannot show that Iraq is safe, or even free (Iyad Allawi is not to be confused with Nelson Mandela) and he cannot show us to be safer these days.
In fact, the security of America has been seriously compromised by diverting resources we could have used on port security, airline security, and a host of other security related issues, but instead have poured them into the desert.
Oh, that $75 million in back-up cash for the Iraq war that was to be spent next spring? It’s getting spent now.
Bush CANNOT run on the war on terror, it’s great. He’s losing it, wholesale, through his inept, misguided policies. And it’s going to cost him the election. Kerry has finally hit his stride and is nailing Bush to his own cross.
