NO RUSH AT ALL:

Rush to Error: Congress should not allow itself to be pushed into approving a flawed plan for holding terrorist suspects. (Washington Post, September 27, 2006)

AFTER BARELY three weeks of debate, the Senate today will take up a momentous piece of legislation that would set new legal rules for the detention, interrogation and trial of accused terrorists. We have argued that the only remedy to the mess made by the Bush administration in holding hundreds of detainees without charge at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere since 2001 was congressional action. Yet rather than carefully weigh the issues, Congress has allowed itself to be stampeded into a vote on hastily written but far-reaching legal provisions, in a preelection climate in which dissenters risk being labeled as soft on terrorism.

As we have said before, there is no need for Congress to act immediately. No terrorist suspects are being held in the CIA detention "program" that President Bush has so vigorously defended. Justice for the al-Qaeda suspects he has delivered to Guantanamo has already been delayed for years by the administration's actions and can wait a few more months.

Indeed, they can wait indefinitely, like every other group of war prisoners has. There is no need for such innovative and aconstitutional legislation. They get to go home when we decide the war is over.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 27, 2006 1:09 PM