AND NO PRESIDENT HAS EVER BEEN MORE RISK AVERSE:

Overdue Process (When it comes to terrorist suspects in detention, Obama is finding that Bush set a difficult precedent to break. (Adam Serwer, August 20, 2009, American Prospect)

At the core of the dispute over the detention of suspects like Jawad is whether or not there are, as President Barack Obama claims, "detainees at Guantánamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." This is the so-called "fifth category" of detainees -- exactly how many there are, the government has yet to determine. (Assistant Attorney General David Kris told Congress in July that half of the Guantánamo detainees' cases had been reviewed, and none had yet been put into the "fifth category.") "There will be some, who we have picked up and who are in Guantánamo ? who for a variety of reasons can't be prosecuted," says former CIA counsel Jeff Smith. "We have convincing intelligence information, but it is not enough to prosecute them." [...]

In his inauguration speech, Obama declared, "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." And in his first weeks in office, he took some important first steps to that end. He outlawed the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the Bush administration's euphemism for torture), suspended military commissions, and ordered Guantánamo closed within a year. But when it came to detainees like Jawad, Obama found that Bush had set a precedent that was difficult to break. "It ultimately comes down to a question of risk aversion," says Matthew Waxman, who was the deputy secretary of defense for detainee affairs from 2004 to 2005. "How much risk is the government willing to take in releasing someone who is believed to pose a continuing danger?"