Dean's World

To jail for how long or not to jail for how long — that is the question...posed by the administration's proposed plan for long term jailing of terror suspects.

It's a plan that'll likely open up a can of worms because its aim is going to raise red flags in many quarters. Reports the Washington Post:

Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.

"We've been operating in the moment because that's what has been required," said a senior administration official involved in the discussions, who said the current detention system has strained relations between the United States and other countries. "Now we can take a breath. We have the ability and need to look at long-term solutions."

That's the issue: what are the pluses and minuses in any long term solutions? What questions do they raise? What, if any, American internal consquences will there be? What is the likely impact on U.S. foreign policy (positive and negative)? Should the questions be answered completely first via detailed debate or should a plan like this just go through? What are the SPECIFIC arguments for this being the best course of action? More:

One proposal under review is the transfer of large numbers of Afghan, Saudi and Yemeni detainees from the military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center into new U.S.-built prisons in their home countries. The prisons would be operated by those countries, but the State Department, where this idea originated, would ask them to abide by recognized human rights standards and would monitor compliance, the senior administration official said.

As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, according to defense officials.

But it's likely to raise some red warning flags. Detailed warnings are already coming from the left, such as here. Meanwhile, Newshog blog argues that if you lock someone up for their whole lives without due process it means it is a concentration camp. And Cernig ends his argument with a challenge:

Is it possible to overstress how important this matter is? ...Now, here we have BushCo planning, and proudly crowing about planning, to take this right away from people (who may well be bad people) that they cannot prove are bad people even in a military tribunal set up so that they could try these people without the worrisome constraints of civil law!

If this goes through, then for as long as it exists, America will be unable to say word one about infringement of human rights by other nations, and the American people will have to hang their heads in shame. When Bush said he would export democracy, he didn't tell us he would be exporting it all, leaving none at home.

I know the lefties out there are going to be disgusted by this, but are the right truly such sheep as to let this go by? I challenge the right to speak out in condemnation of this terrible "solution" in full and clear realisation that the only solution more awful would be the final one.

Should this be of concern to people on the right and the left? (You can give your take in comments. Specific arguments for or against are always more convincing than denouncing people on either side of this issue.)

UPDATE: The idea has already been condemned by a Republican Senator:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them in courts was swiftly condemned on Sunday as a "bad idea" by a leading Republican senator...

Influential senators denounced the idea as probably unconstitutional.

"It's a bad idea. So we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this," Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, cited earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions. "There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process ... if you're going to detain people, whether it's for life or whether it's for years," Levin said, also on Fox.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department declined comment and a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke of the Air Force, had no information on the reported plan.