Ben Wittes angrily details some options for the White House in the wake of the Gitmo trials ban poised to pass the Senate this week:
Calling something a national security imperative and then failing to fight for it erodes your credibility–and it should. Can you imagine the Bush administration publicly and repeatedly declaring something a national security imperative and then standing back as it gets horse-traded like some piece of pork-barrel spending? You would have a veto threat. Or you would have one of those infamous signing statements informing us that the administration interprets the language saying that it may not transfer people to the United States to mean that it should probably exercise appropriate executive discretion in doing so. And, let’s face it, you would also have a lot of quiet phones calls to the Hill warning key members that they should not plan on that bridge going up in their districts if this language stays in. You would have, in short, the power of the presidency put behind his administration’s words.
I don't know whether the administration blessed this deal, but they certainly haven't brought out the big guns--a few words from Defense Secretary Robert Gates would probably go a long way towards dissuading the Senate from going through with this. If the White House ultimately wasn't a party to the deal, as Wittes suggests, Obama could threaten a veto or issue one of those Bush-style signing statements indicating he has no intention of letting Congress take away the executive branch's prosecutorial discretion, even temporarily.
The urgency of closing Gitmo died a long time ago, when Democrats in Congress first denied the administration funding to buy a new facility here. The initial delay reinforced the idea that keeping Gitmo wasn't actually that dangerous--certainly not as dangerous as having detainees with Muslim heat vision on American soil. The administration can say "national security imperative" all they want, they lost the public on this long ago--which makes a veto or a signing statement a difficult option to take. Even with General David Petraeus emphasizing the urgency of shutting it down, Democrats in Congress were too spooked by Republicans to take the necessary steps--and the administration didn't press the issue enough.
UPDATE: I didn't meant to suggest Wittes said that the administration had blessed the deal, I was merely saying that the viablity of the options he had suggested would depend on whether or not they had been a party to it. It's still unclear where the administration stands on this.
