Dafna Linzer reports that, in the face of Congress' unprecedented decision to cut off funding for terrorism trials of Guantanamo detainees, the White House is preparing a signing statement that will contest those limits. Liberals pounced on President George W. Bush's use of such statements to essentially disregard the law. Ironically, if the Obama administration goes forward with this, it will be doing so in order to undo one of the most visible remaining legacies of the Bush administration's terrorism policies.
Officials said the White House is still weighing how to calibrate the signing statement. A statement rejecting all of the bill's Guantanamo provisions would almost certainly be viewed as provocative by Congressional Republicans and some Democrats. But administration officials view the provisions as clear encroachments on the president's right to prosecutorial discretion and some are pushing for their blanket repudiation.
The reliance on detention orders and a signing statement -- tools used repeatedly by former President Bush, who built Guantanamo nearly a decade ago -- is seen by Obama's advisers as among the few options left for an administration that has watched the steady erosion of its first White House pledge nearly two years ago: to close the prison.
There's a pretty clear ethical dilemma here for liberals. One signing statement doesn't turn Obama into Bush, who literally did this hundreds of times, but at this point closing Gitmo will require Obama asserting the kind of broad executive authority they found outrageous during the last administration.
For what it's worth, I think Congress telling the President who he's allowed to try where is outrageous, and it never would have occurred during the Bush administration, where the use of federal trials for terror suspects was the default option. But I'm also not sure how I feel about this decision, since it would validate the idea that the president can simply do what he wants no matter what the law says.
