“Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina accuses Dick Cheney of sending people to Guantanamo.”

Via Powerline we get Lindsay Graham's (R-SC) view of why people are being held in Guantanamo. It's because Dick Cheney sent them there.



Paul Mirengoff comments:

To my knowledge, there is no support for the proposition that Cheney decided who would be jailed at Guantanamo Bay; nor do I know of anyone who, prior to Graham's remarks, was saying that the former vice president did this ( the left is saying this now, of course). In any event, absent any evidence that Cheney made decisions on the detention of individual prisoners, it is frivolous to suggest that insinuations to the contrary are of any concern.

And ...

This puts Graham to the Left of Democrat Senator James Webb: Webb's position, a response perhaps to the prospect of having detainees transferred to Virginia, would appear to place him to the right of Lindsey Graham. In January, when Obama signed the executive order for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay facility within a year, Sen. Graham (along with Sen. McCain) issued a press release supporting the president. Graham and McCain expressed no disagreement with the president's timetable for implementing his decision.

Graham would like to have it both ways; closing Gitmo and being OK with bringing them to the US, but using the fig leaf of waiting for a "plan."

More recently, Graham has said that Congress shouldn't authorize any money to close Guantanamo Bay's prison until the nation has a new way to handle those seized because of suspected terrorist ties. However, Graham also said that he does not oppose bringing Gitmo detainees to the U.S.

Graham shares the strange belief that prisoners being held by the military can be both enemy soldiers covered by the Geneva conventions and criminals subject to American criminal justice. He may not be aware that prisoners of war cannot be tried because doing so is considered a war crime. And if they are criminals they cannot be tried and convicted because the rules of evidence were not followed during their apprehension and interrogation. Either way, Graham reveals himself to be either stupid or duplicitous.

Not a good thing for a Republican party trying to shed the stupid loser label. However, this will certainly get him good press by the NY Times which appears to be his constituency.