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Does an Army Colonel Now Outrank POTUS ?
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by Emilio Lizardo | January 29, 2009 at 02:36 pm
117 views | 10 Recommendations | 2 comments
In a decidedly suprising development, an Army colonel seems to have overruled the President of the United States!
What came down from the White House as a 'request' to suspend for 120 days proceedings at Guantanamo Bay's military Terrorist Tribunal has been ignored in at least one case involving a detainee accused of planning the attack on USS Cole which occurred in October of 2000.
As anybody whose been in the Armed Services is well aware, a 'request' from anybody higher in the 'food-chain' to somebody lower down is really the same thing as an order.
So the suprise in this case is doubly interesting. Firstly, not only has a 'request' from POTUS been rebuffed by a mere four-striper, a military rank significantly below that of the Commander in Chief, but secondly, and perhaps just as shocking, is that the Washington Post is running a story about it !
Hopefully this will be as far as things go, and we won't be waking up some morning during the next four years to find an Army colonel sitting behind the desk in the oval office with an announcement to the nation that our President has been placed in protective custody !
Military Judge Denies Obama Request to Suspend Hearings at Guantanamo
A military judge in Guantanamo Bay today denied the Obama administration's request to delay proceedings for 120 days in the case of a detainee accused of planning the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship, an al-Qaeda strike that killed 17 service members and injured 50 others.
The decision throws into some disarray the administration's efforts to buy time to review individual detainee cases as part of its plan to close the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. The Pentagon may now be forced to temporarily withdraw the charges against Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen of Yemeni descent.
Nashiri is facing arraignment on capital charges on Feb. 9, and Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, said the case would go ahead.
"We just learned of the ruling here . . . and we are consulting with the Pentagon and the Department of Justice to explore our options in that case," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. Asked at a news briefing whether the decision would hamper the administration's ability to evaluate the cases of Guantanamo detainees, Gibbs replied: "No. Not at all."
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 21:14 on January 29th, 2009
I am not sure I like the sound of this.
at 08:25 on January 30th, 2009
Certainly these 'policy tweaks' happen all the time -- but we never hear about them ... there must never be any public suggestion of disarray at the highest levels of military command ...
That's why I am somewhat suprised to see a major news outlet like the Washington Post reporting on it and framing their story the way they did. IMHO this fact is the big news of this story - that it was reported on at all !
Thanks for reading and commenting, Paschen !