The White House said on Monday that President Barack Obama has a "winning" strategy in Afghanistan and enough forces on the ground to achieve U.S. goals despite advances by the Taliban.
The assurances came as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan warned that the Taliban were gaining momentum, while gunmen and bombers stormed government buildings near Kabul just 10 days before a presidential election,
White House spokesman Bill Burton said that Obama had authorized 21,000 new troops for Afghanistan since taking office in January and not all of these were on the ground yet.
"The president's strategy hasn't fully been implemented just yet. But we do believe that with the strategy that we have, with assets that we're putting on the ground, that we are going to be able to achieve the goals that we're trying to achieve," Burton told reporters on Obama's Air Force One flight back to Washington from a North American summit in Mexico.
U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who will soon present an assessment of the Afghan war, said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that the resurgent Taliban have forced a change of tactics on foreign forces and that record casualty figures would remain high for some months.
"It's a very aggressive enemy right now," McChrystal, who is also the NATO commander in Afghanistan, told The Wall Street Journal (online.wsj.com/). "We've got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work."
The White House said McChrystal was preparing a thorough assessment of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and U.S. officials will see what his review turns up.
"Obviously the president is in close contact with his commanders on the ground, but ... thinks that the strategy that he put in place is a winning one," Burton said.
Violence across Afghanistan this year had already reached its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led Afghan forces in 2001 and escalated dramatically after major offensives were launched in southern Helmand province in July.
Three Afghan police and two civilians were killed in a strike by Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers on government buildings near Kabul on Monday.
Washington plans to increase the number of its troops to about 68,000 by year's end, more than double the 32,000 it had stationed in Afghanistan at the end of 2008. McChrystal may ask for more after he submits his strategy review in coming weeks.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Jobless rate eases(reduce), Payrolls fall less in July
The U.S. unemployment rate fell in July for the first time in 15 months as employers cut far fewer jobs than expected, providing the clearest sign yet that the economy was turning around.
Employers shed 247,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said Friday, the least in any one month since last August, taking the unemployment rate to 9.4 percent, down from 9.5 percent in June.
"It suggests the recession will be ending before the end of the year. There isn't any part of the economy that hasn't shown some slowing in deterioration," said Joe Davis, chief economist at Vanguard in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Recent data ranging from home sales to manufacturing have pointed to an economy starting to dig itself out of one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The fall in the jobless rate will be good news for President Barack Obama, who has seen his standing in public opinion polls slip as Americans fret about the weak economy and high unemployment.
The White House warned it would be "quite some time" before the economy saw sustained job growth, adding it still believed the jobless rate would hit 10 percent this year.
U.S. stocks and the dollar rose on the data as investors sensed the recession was ending. Safe-haven government bond prices tumbled.
Analysts had expected non-farm payrolls to fall by 320,000 in July and the jobless rate to hit 9.6 percent. The forecast was made earlier this week before other jobs data prompted some analysts to lower their
estimates for job losses.
The government revised job losses for May and June to show 43,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.
The easing in the unemployment rate could have been the result of the labor force shrinking by 422,000 in July, far more than the 155,000 decline in June, suggesting jobless workers may have given up looking for new work.
In the U.S., for the purpose of calculating the unemployment rate, the labor force is defined as those with a job plus those out of a job but actively looking for work.
The small decline in July non-farm payrolls was a welcome reflief as some employment indicators released this weak had raised the risk of a big rise in the numbers of jobless.
Slowing job losses could also mean less pressure for a second government economic stimulus as a $787 billion package approved this year slowly works its way into the economy.
"This is another indication that the economy is on an improving track and a confirmation that we're going to see a positive GDP number for the third quarter...," said Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh.
While employers cut fewer jobs than forecast in July, unemployment remains stubbornly high, meaning households have less income to spend. This could set the economy for an anemic recovery, analysts said.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the economy has shed 6.7 million jobs, the Labor Department said, adding that the number of long-term unemployed continues to rise.
However, in a sign that the labor market deterioration was slowing, a gauge of labor market slack that measures both the unemployed, people working part-time for economic reasons, and those only marginally attached to the labor force, fell to 16.3 percent in July from a record high 16.5 percent in June.
Job losses in July were spread across all sectors, but the pace of firings slowed markedly from previous months.
Manufacturing employment fell by 52,000 after shrinking by 131,000 in June. This was the first time since last September that manufacturing job losses were less than 100,000 and was probably due to the re-opening of General Motors and Chrysler assembly plants after the two automakers emerged from bankruptcy.
"Because layoffs in auto manufacturing already had been so large, fewer workers than usual were laid off for seasonal shutdowns in July," Labor Commissioner Keith Hall said, adding that the seasonally adjusted gain did not indicate an improvement in the industry.
Payrolls in construction industries slipped 76,000 after falling 86,000 in the previous month, likely reflecting spending on infrastructure projects from the government's $787 billion stimulus package and a modest pickup in ground breaking for new homes.
In the services sector, 119,000 workers were laid off, and the goods-producing industries lost 128,000 positions.
Education and health services continued to add jobs though, with payrolls increasing 17,000 in July after rising 37,000 in June. Government employment increased 7,000 after slipping 48,000 in June.
The closely watched average work week, the total amount of labor input, inched up to 33.1 hours in July after having slipped to 33.0 in June. The average work week in the manufacturing sector rose to 39.8 hours from 39.5 hours in June, the department said.
Average hourly earnings increased to $18.56 in July from $18.53.
Employers shed 247,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said Friday, the least in any one month since last August, taking the unemployment rate to 9.4 percent, down from 9.5 percent in June.
"It suggests the recession will be ending before the end of the year. There isn't any part of the economy that hasn't shown some slowing in deterioration," said Joe Davis, chief economist at Vanguard in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Recent data ranging from home sales to manufacturing have pointed to an economy starting to dig itself out of one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The fall in the jobless rate will be good news for President Barack Obama, who has seen his standing in public opinion polls slip as Americans fret about the weak economy and high unemployment.
The White House warned it would be "quite some time" before the economy saw sustained job growth, adding it still believed the jobless rate would hit 10 percent this year.
U.S. stocks and the dollar rose on the data as investors sensed the recession was ending. Safe-haven government bond prices tumbled.
Analysts had expected non-farm payrolls to fall by 320,000 in July and the jobless rate to hit 9.6 percent. The forecast was made earlier this week before other jobs data prompted some analysts to lower their
estimates for job losses.The government revised job losses for May and June to show 43,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.
The easing in the unemployment rate could have been the result of the labor force shrinking by 422,000 in July, far more than the 155,000 decline in June, suggesting jobless workers may have given up looking for new work.
In the U.S., for the purpose of calculating the unemployment rate, the labor force is defined as those with a job plus those out of a job but actively looking for work.
The small decline in July non-farm payrolls was a welcome reflief as some employment indicators released this weak had raised the risk of a big rise in the numbers of jobless.
Slowing job losses could also mean less pressure for a second government economic stimulus as a $787 billion package approved this year slowly works its way into the economy.
"This is another indication that the economy is on an improving track and a confirmation that we're going to see a positive GDP number for the third quarter...," said Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh.
While employers cut fewer jobs than forecast in July, unemployment remains stubbornly high, meaning households have less income to spend. This could set the economy for an anemic recovery, analysts said.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the economy has shed 6.7 million jobs, the Labor Department said, adding that the number of long-term unemployed continues to rise.
However, in a sign that the labor market deterioration was slowing, a gauge of labor market slack that measures both the unemployed, people working part-time for economic reasons, and those only marginally attached to the labor force, fell to 16.3 percent in July from a record high 16.5 percent in June.
Job losses in July were spread across all sectors, but the pace of firings slowed markedly from previous months.
Manufacturing employment fell by 52,000 after shrinking by 131,000 in June. This was the first time since last September that manufacturing job losses were less than 100,000 and was probably due to the re-opening of General Motors and Chrysler assembly plants after the two automakers emerged from bankruptcy.
"Because layoffs in auto manufacturing already had been so large, fewer workers than usual were laid off for seasonal shutdowns in July," Labor Commissioner Keith Hall said, adding that the seasonally adjusted gain did not indicate an improvement in the industry.
Payrolls in construction industries slipped 76,000 after falling 86,000 in the previous month, likely reflecting spending on infrastructure projects from the government's $787 billion stimulus package and a modest pickup in ground breaking for new homes.
In the services sector, 119,000 workers were laid off, and the goods-producing industries lost 128,000 positions.
Education and health services continued to add jobs though, with payrolls increasing 17,000 in July after rising 37,000 in June. Government employment increased 7,000 after slipping 48,000 in June.
The closely watched average work week, the total amount of labor input, inched up to 33.1 hours in July after having slipped to 33.0 in June. The average work week in the manufacturing sector rose to 39.8 hours from 39.5 hours in June, the department said.
Average hourly earnings increased to $18.56 in July from $18.53.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Obama enters 'The Matrix'
As the president moves forward on his ambitious legislative agenda, it might seem as if he is entering "The Matrix," a surreal world that only has the vaguest connection to real life.
And, indeed, the Congress has its own rules that make quick legislative action, no matter how popular with the American people, hard to achieve.
The Obama agenda is breathtaking in its scope and eye-popping in its cost.
He seeks to completely recast the health care, energy, financial services and automobile sectors of this country, as he seeks to make the tax code more progressive, retirement programs more sustainable, and the immigration system more welcoming to immigrants. And he also wants to stimulate the economy and get us out of what some people are calling the "Great Recession." But can it all get done, and in a form that makes his political base happy?
The president insists that he can get this all done, and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has implied that the financial crisis has actually given the White House more momentum to get it all done. But history tells a different story.
Congress has its own code, and cracking that code usually means taking into account five different factors. These five factors are:
Money: It may seem trite, but the biggest factor in determining the size and scope of a legislative agenda is how much money -- and more importantly, the perception of how much money -- is available for the government to use. Bill Clinton's legislative agenda was necessarily limited because his budget constraints made it difficult to spend money on big things.
George Bush, who inherited a fairly large budget surplus, had money to burn, which allowed him to pass a prescription drug benefit. President Obama has no money, which means that if he wants to pass a big new entitlement like a health care public option, he will have to make the Congress take the painful step of raising a lot of taxes.
Time: The legislative calendar is simply not that long. A new administration has a little less than a year to pass its big-ticket items, mostly because it is very hard to get major initiatives done in an election year. Take away the three months it takes to hire key staff, a couple of months for the various congressional recesses, and you have about six months to really legislate.
Since Congress is supposed to use some time to pass its annual spending bills (there are 12 that need to be passed each year, not counting supplemental spending bills), time for big initiatives is actually very limited. Each day the president takes time to travel overseas or to throw out the first pitch at an All Star game, he is taking time away from making contacts with legislators whose support is crucial for the president's agenda. Time is not a limitless resource on Capitol Hill.
Political capital: A president enters office with the highest popularity ratings he will ever get (barring a war or some other calamity that brings the country together), which is why most presidents try to pass as much as possible as early as possible in their administrations. The most famous example of that was Franklin Roosevelt's Hundred Days. But there are other examples. Ronald Reagan moved his agenda very early in his administration, George Bush passed his tax proposals and the No Child Left Behind law very early in his White House. They understood the principle that it is important to strike while the iron is hot.
President Bush famously misunderstood this principle when he said that he was going to use the "political capital" gained in his re-election to pass Social Security reform. What he failed to understand was that as soon as he won re-election, he was a lame duck in the eyes of the Congress, and he had no political capital.
President Obama believes he has a lot of political capital, and perhaps he does. But each day he is in office, his political capital reserve is declining. And each time he goes to the well to pass things like "cap and trade" makes it more difficult for him to pass his more important priorities like health care.
Focus: Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. But focus is essential to achieving results. Presidential focus quite often moves off the domestic agenda and into the wider world of diplomacy. But that can spell greater political danger for a president and his party.
George H.W. Bush spent most of his presidency winning a war against Iraq and successfully concluded the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. But neither of those foreign policy successes helped him win re-election. His son, George W. Bush, understood that he had to keep a tight focus on the economy and one big domestic policy item (education), and while the war on terror did end up dominating his presidency, Bush never forgot to focus on his domestic achievements.
The biggest danger to President Obama is not just foreign entanglements, it is also competing domestic priorities that threaten to undermine his ability to get big things done. For example, the House vote on cap and trade has made it very hard for conservative and moderate Democrats to join with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a more important health care bill.
After the cap and trade vote, opponents deluged the offices of centrist House Democrats with loud complaints about the costs of the energy bill, and according to media reports, that has made these critical members even more nervous about the budget ramifications of the health care reform package being pushed by the president.
Ego: Probably the most intangible and most unpredictable part of the legislative process is the rather large egos of the legislators. Despite having generally milquetoast reputations, each member of Congress has a variety of factors that impact how and why they vote. Of course, their chief motivation is political survival. But each assesses their political viability differently, and loyalty to the White House is not always top of the list. Some members of Congress, who have been in the trenches for decades, have healthy egos that need love and affection from the Obama administration.
For example, when the White House concluded deals with health care providers, legislative leaders like Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman, who weren't party to the talks, threw a fit, said the deals didn't apply to them, and sent a strong message that they weren't going to honor those commitments. That of course, threw the larger health care negotiations into disarray. Egos matter on Capitol Hill, and stroking them is an essential part of cracking the congressional code.
In the movie "The Matrix," Keanu Reeves, playing Neo, ends the film with the line, "Anything is possible." In a Hollywood movie, anything is possible. But in Congress, with limited money, limited time and limited patience, the president can't get everything he wants. And after watching his cap and trade proposal fall flat in the Senate, his health care bill lose support in both chambers, his tax proposals meet stiff resistance from the business community and key centrist Democrats, and his financial service reform proposals go nowhere, he risks getting nothing that he wants.
And, indeed, the Congress has its own rules that make quick legislative action, no matter how popular with the American people, hard to achieve.
The Obama agenda is breathtaking in its scope and eye-popping in its cost.
He seeks to completely recast the health care, energy, financial services and automobile sectors of this country, as he seeks to make the tax code more progressive, retirement programs more sustainable, and the immigration system more welcoming to immigrants. And he also wants to stimulate the economy and get us out of what some people are calling the "Great Recession." But can it all get done, and in a form that makes his political base happy?
The president insists that he can get this all done, and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has implied that the financial crisis has actually given the White House more momentum to get it all done. But history tells a different story.
Congress has its own code, and cracking that code usually means taking into account five different factors. These five factors are:
Money: It may seem trite, but the biggest factor in determining the size and scope of a legislative agenda is how much money -- and more importantly, the perception of how much money -- is available for the government to use. Bill Clinton's legislative agenda was necessarily limited because his budget constraints made it difficult to spend money on big things.
George Bush, who inherited a fairly large budget surplus, had money to burn, which allowed him to pass a prescription drug benefit. President Obama has no money, which means that if he wants to pass a big new entitlement like a health care public option, he will have to make the Congress take the painful step of raising a lot of taxes.
Time: The legislative calendar is simply not that long. A new administration has a little less than a year to pass its big-ticket items, mostly because it is very hard to get major initiatives done in an election year. Take away the three months it takes to hire key staff, a couple of months for the various congressional recesses, and you have about six months to really legislate.
Since Congress is supposed to use some time to pass its annual spending bills (there are 12 that need to be passed each year, not counting supplemental spending bills), time for big initiatives is actually very limited. Each day the president takes time to travel overseas or to throw out the first pitch at an All Star game, he is taking time away from making contacts with legislators whose support is crucial for the president's agenda. Time is not a limitless resource on Capitol Hill.
Political capital: A president enters office with the highest popularity ratings he will ever get (barring a war or some other calamity that brings the country together), which is why most presidents try to pass as much as possible as early as possible in their administrations. The most famous example of that was Franklin Roosevelt's Hundred Days. But there are other examples. Ronald Reagan moved his agenda very early in his administration, George Bush passed his tax proposals and the No Child Left Behind law very early in his White House. They understood the principle that it is important to strike while the iron is hot.
President Bush famously misunderstood this principle when he said that he was going to use the "political capital" gained in his re-election to pass Social Security reform. What he failed to understand was that as soon as he won re-election, he was a lame duck in the eyes of the Congress, and he had no political capital.
President Obama believes he has a lot of political capital, and perhaps he does. But each day he is in office, his political capital reserve is declining. And each time he goes to the well to pass things like "cap and trade" makes it more difficult for him to pass his more important priorities like health care.
Focus: Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. But focus is essential to achieving results. Presidential focus quite often moves off the domestic agenda and into the wider world of diplomacy. But that can spell greater political danger for a president and his party.
George H.W. Bush spent most of his presidency winning a war against Iraq and successfully concluded the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. But neither of those foreign policy successes helped him win re-election. His son, George W. Bush, understood that he had to keep a tight focus on the economy and one big domestic policy item (education), and while the war on terror did end up dominating his presidency, Bush never forgot to focus on his domestic achievements.
The biggest danger to President Obama is not just foreign entanglements, it is also competing domestic priorities that threaten to undermine his ability to get big things done. For example, the House vote on cap and trade has made it very hard for conservative and moderate Democrats to join with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a more important health care bill.
After the cap and trade vote, opponents deluged the offices of centrist House Democrats with loud complaints about the costs of the energy bill, and according to media reports, that has made these critical members even more nervous about the budget ramifications of the health care reform package being pushed by the president.
Ego: Probably the most intangible and most unpredictable part of the legislative process is the rather large egos of the legislators. Despite having generally milquetoast reputations, each member of Congress has a variety of factors that impact how and why they vote. Of course, their chief motivation is political survival. But each assesses their political viability differently, and loyalty to the White House is not always top of the list. Some members of Congress, who have been in the trenches for decades, have healthy egos that need love and affection from the Obama administration.
For example, when the White House concluded deals with health care providers, legislative leaders like Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman, who weren't party to the talks, threw a fit, said the deals didn't apply to them, and sent a strong message that they weren't going to honor those commitments. That of course, threw the larger health care negotiations into disarray. Egos matter on Capitol Hill, and stroking them is an essential part of cracking the congressional code.
In the movie "The Matrix," Keanu Reeves, playing Neo, ends the film with the line, "Anything is possible." In a Hollywood movie, anything is possible. But in Congress, with limited money, limited time and limited patience, the president can't get everything he wants. And after watching his cap and trade proposal fall flat in the Senate, his health care bill lose support in both chambers, his tax proposals meet stiff resistance from the business community and key centrist Democrats, and his financial service reform proposals go nowhere, he risks getting nothing that he wants.
Policy on detaining terror suspects : Deadline missed
In a move already drawing fire from liberal activists, aides to President Obama acknowledged the administration will miss its own Tuesday deadline to submit a report detailing its policy on detaining terror suspects.
The report is a key part of laying out the White House's plan for shutting down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
In a briefing for reporte
rs, four senior administration officials confirmed the task force dealing with detention policy has been granted a six-month extension to flesh out its plans. A separate task force dealing with interrogation policy has been given a two-month extension to submit its own report to the president. The reports had been mandated to be completed this week by executive orders the president signed during his first week in office.
The administration will miss its deadline to submit a report detailing its policy on detaining terror suspects.
Meanwhile, the task force did issue a preliminary report late Monday regarding the process of determining whether suspected terrorists will be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions. However, the memo gave few details, instead reiterating the administration's intent to reform the military commissions and affording basic protections for detainees.
Despite the delays, the four senior officials insisted the Obama administration is making strong progress in resolving the thorny legal issues surrounding the 240 terror suspects that were detained at Guantanamo as of January of this year, and is still on track to shut the prison down next January as spelled out by executive order.
"I think we're all comfortable with where we are in the process," one senior administration official said of shutting the controversial prison.
A second senior administration official said it is the administration's "goal" to still shut the prison. When pressed by reporters on whether this was a softening of the promise to actually close the prison down, this official insisted there has been no change and the administration is still planning to comply with the executive order.
This second official downplayed the delays in finishing the reports. "We wanted to get this right," said the official. "We wanted to do this carefully."
But officials at the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the delay in the release of the report on detainee policy in particular, noting Obama officials have also left the door open to holding some Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without charge or trial.
"The Obama administration must not slip into the same legal swamp that engulfed the Bush administration with its failed Guantanamo policies," said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director. "Any effort to revamp the failed Guantanamo military commissions or enact a law to give any president the power to hold individuals indefinitely and without charge or trial is sure to be challenged in court and it will take years before justice is served."
Romero added, "The only way to make good on President Obama's promise to shut down Guantanamo and end the military commissions is to charge and try the detainees in established federal criminal courts. Any effort to do otherwise will doom the Obama administration to lengthy litigation. A promise deferred could soon become a promise broken."
But a third senior administration official insisted the White House is making good progress in dealing with all the terror suspects being held at Guantanamo. This third official told reporters the administration is "over halfway through reviewing the detainees at Guantanamo" by either transferring them to other countries or moving toward putting them on trial for prosecution.
This third official said that "substantially more than 50" of the detainees are prepared for transfer, while a "significant number" are being prepared for prosecution.
A fourth senior administration official said the White House is making "great progress" in getting European countries like Italy to publicly agree to take on some detainees. The official said other European countries have privately agreed to take detainees, but will not publicly discuss it yet.
"In the weeks and months ahead we will build on that strong foundation," said the official.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the administration for announcing its intent to shutter the Guantanamo prison "before it actually had a plan."
"Bipartisan majorities of both houses and the American people oppose closing Guantanamo without a plan, and several important questions remain unanswered," he said.
The report is a key part of laying out the White House's plan for shutting down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
In a briefing for reporte
rs, four senior administration officials confirmed the task force dealing with detention policy has been granted a six-month extension to flesh out its plans. A separate task force dealing with interrogation policy has been given a two-month extension to submit its own report to the president. The reports had been mandated to be completed this week by executive orders the president signed during his first week in office.The administration will miss its deadline to submit a report detailing its policy on detaining terror suspects.
Meanwhile, the task force did issue a preliminary report late Monday regarding the process of determining whether suspected terrorists will be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions. However, the memo gave few details, instead reiterating the administration's intent to reform the military commissions and affording basic protections for detainees.
Despite the delays, the four senior officials insisted the Obama administration is making strong progress in resolving the thorny legal issues surrounding the 240 terror suspects that were detained at Guantanamo as of January of this year, and is still on track to shut the prison down next January as spelled out by executive order.
"I think we're all comfortable with where we are in the process," one senior administration official said of shutting the controversial prison.
A second senior administration official said it is the administration's "goal" to still shut the prison. When pressed by reporters on whether this was a softening of the promise to actually close the prison down, this official insisted there has been no change and the administration is still planning to comply with the executive order.
This second official downplayed the delays in finishing the reports. "We wanted to get this right," said the official. "We wanted to do this carefully."
But officials at the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the delay in the release of the report on detainee policy in particular, noting Obama officials have also left the door open to holding some Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without charge or trial.
"The Obama administration must not slip into the same legal swamp that engulfed the Bush administration with its failed Guantanamo policies," said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director. "Any effort to revamp the failed Guantanamo military commissions or enact a law to give any president the power to hold individuals indefinitely and without charge or trial is sure to be challenged in court and it will take years before justice is served."
Romero added, "The only way to make good on President Obama's promise to shut down Guantanamo and end the military commissions is to charge and try the detainees in established federal criminal courts. Any effort to do otherwise will doom the Obama administration to lengthy litigation. A promise deferred could soon become a promise broken."
But a third senior administration official insisted the White House is making good progress in dealing with all the terror suspects being held at Guantanamo. This third official told reporters the administration is "over halfway through reviewing the detainees at Guantanamo" by either transferring them to other countries or moving toward putting them on trial for prosecution.
This third official said that "substantially more than 50" of the detainees are prepared for transfer, while a "significant number" are being prepared for prosecution.
A fourth senior administration official said the White House is making "great progress" in getting European countries like Italy to publicly agree to take on some detainees. The official said other European countries have privately agreed to take detainees, but will not publicly discuss it yet.
"In the weeks and months ahead we will build on that strong foundation," said the official.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the administration for announcing its intent to shutter the Guantanamo prison "before it actually had a plan."
"Bipartisan majorities of both houses and the American people oppose closing Guantanamo without a plan, and several important questions remain unanswered," he said.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Ruling could reveal Gitmo secrets in late July by Judge
The U.S. government cannot collectively seal its records in more than 100 cases involving the indefinite detention of suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The ruling in favor of detainees and news media outlets means some judicial records in the cases involving Guantanamo detainees 
could become public on July 29, a deadline set by Monday's ruling.
The government had tried to designate all of its responses in cases seeking indefinite detention -- whether classified or not -- as protected from public disclosure.
A detainee walks inside an open-air yard at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on May 31, 2009.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan said the government request was too broad.
"The government's motion attempts to usurp the court's discretion to seal judicial records," the ruling said.
"Moreover, the public has a limited First Amendment and common law right to access the factual returns," it added, referring to documents filed in response to habeas corpus petitions.
While denying the government motion, the ruling gives the government until July 29 to determine what information in the factual returns is classified and therefore can be protected from disclosure.
"Today's decision is a victory for transparency," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project."For far too long, the government has succeeded in keeping information about Guantanamo secret, and used secrecy to cover-up illegal detention and abuse.
"The decision marks an important step towards restoring America's open court tradition that is essential to both accountability and the rule of law," Hafetz said.
News media organizations that joined the case were The Associated Press, The New York Times and USA Today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
