Weeks ago Mike Huckabee courageously
bucked the “international community” by opposing the U.N.’s Law
of the Sea Treaty and calling for the impeachment of federal judges
who use foreign law in making decisions. Now he’s in favor of closing
the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay because “the rest
of the world” is demanding it. What’s more, the Washington Post
reports that, after meeting with a delegation from a liberal “human
rights” group, Huckabee has decided to join the erratic Senator John
McCain in opposing the use of the effective technique known as waterboarding
in getting life-saving information out of terrorists.  

Huckabee’s flip-flop coincides
with a massive propaganda campaign on behalf of the suspected terrorists
being held at Guantanamo Bay. The George Soros-funded Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) is running an ad on CNN and MSNBC featuring actor Danny
Glover asserting that the Bush administration is “destroying the Constitution”
by the use of renditions and “torture” against terrorists. The ad,
which shows the Constitution being shredded, was rejected by Fox News.  

As a result, the CCR is now
calling on its supporters to “take action” and “stop Fox News
censorship.” In fact, Fox News had every right to reject this irresponsible
and grossly misleading political commercial. 

The occasion of the ad is the
Supreme Court’s hearing of a case, Boumediene vs. Bush, involving
a Muslim named Lakhdar Boumediene currently being detained at the Guantanamo
facility. The CCR finds Gitmo to be a terrible place. But talk-show
host Rush Limbaugh jokingly calls it “Club Gitmo” since the detainees
are enjoying hotel living conditions. Most of the inmates are putting
on weight because of the good food and one has almost doubled in size.
Back in June, Huckabee himself was saying that detainees at Gitmo enjoyed
better conditions than prison inmates in the U.S. and that the facility
ought to be maintained.  

The CCR has some rather strange
ideas about how suspected terrorists should be treated. It has been
critical of the practice of “forced grooming,” or the shaving of
the beard or hair. It has complained that interrogators at Gitmo allegedly
threatened to “apply lipstick to him [Boumediene] to make him look
like a woman.” The CCR considers all of this to be “degrading”
treatment. 

CCR Executive Director Vincent
Warren seized on the Fox News statement, which rejected the ad because
it doesn’t prove Glover’s point that the Bush Administration is
actually destroying the Constitution. “Fox’s literal interpretation
of the ad is utterly ridiculous,” Warren
said. “To believe we are insinuating that President Bush has
destroyed one of our most treasured historical documents is foolish
and emblematic of the political bias of Murdoch’s media empire. Surely
there are other advertisements that Fox airs that use metaphors to express
their message?political or not.” 

Whether Fox objected to the
word “destroying” being taken in a literal sense or not, the ad
is still false. It is false in the sense of asserting, without evidence,
that the Bush Administration engages in torture and that the practice
of rendering terrorists somehow violates the Constitution.  

The word “torture,” as
groups like CCR bandy about the term, doesn’t mean what most people
think it means. It has become a politically loaded term that left-wingers
associate with anything that makes an accused terrorist feel uncomfortable.
One of the most objectionable procedures is said to be pouring water
over the face of a suspected terrorist. It is a matter of opinion whether
this practice, known as waterboarding, is torture or not. Calling it
torture doesn’t make it so.  

Waterboarding doesn’t leave
any lasting physical or psychological damage, which is usually the mark
of torture. And its use cannot necessarily be considered a violation
of the Constitution, U.S. laws or U.N. treaties. It has reportedly been
successful in forcing confessions of terrorist plots. 

Huckabee came out against waterboarding
after he met with a delegation of retired generals representing the
left-wing group calling itself Human Rights First. Huckabee was the
only Republican presidential candidate to meet with the group, which
seems to put the “rights” of terrorists above the rights of the
American people. 

Perhaps Huckabee’s next move
will be to denounce Fox News for refusing to run the Danny Glover ad.  

“Our ad is about reminding
Americans of their Constitutional rights that have been chipped away
by the Bush administration,” claims CCR Executive Director Warren.
He said the Fox News rejection of the ad is “another example of how
Americans are shielded from the truth about Guantanamo and the implications
of the war on terror.” 

This claim is false as well.
One of the central issues in the case is whether the inmates at Gitmo
are entitled to constitutional rights that Americans enjoy. The Bush
Administration opposes that view and has designated them as noncitizen
enemy combatants. 

Jack Goldsmith’s important
book, The Terror Presidency,
describes how the Bush Administration came to difficult decisions involving
presidential power and national security. Goldsmith, who served in the
Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Justice Department, found fault
with some of the decisions but makes it plain that one of the overriding
concerns was to save American lives after 9/11.  

On the matter of renditions,
which have become controversial under Bush, Goldsmith notes that the
OLC in the Clinton Justice Department “signed off on the CIA’s original
rendition program of snatching people from one country and taking them
to another for questioning, trial, and punishment.”  

It is interesting to see how
various law firms and domestic and foreign special interest groups have
come down in the case. 

Boumediene’s attorney, Seth
Waxman, is a former U.S. solicitor general in the Clinton administration.
His side is supported by briefs introduced by the ACLU, the American
Bar Association, Amnesty International, the Cato Institute, the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Republican Senator Arlen
Specter, and parliamentarians from Canada, Britain and Europe. Several
of these briefs insist that the administration’s detention program
is a violation of international law.  

Opposing Boumediene and siding
with the Bush Administration are briefs submitted by the American Center
for Law and Justice, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, the Washington
Legal Foundation, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
All of these legal documents can be found at the website of WilmerHale, the firm representing Boumediene.  

In total, there are 23 amicus
briefs in support of Boumediene and only 4 in support of the position
of the Bush Administration. 

The fate of Boumediene, who
is demanding to be set free, is now bound up with the survival of Mike
Huckabee as a viable presidential candidate. 

On June 10, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN, Huckabee
said that Guantanamo “was not a perfect solution” and that “The
perfect solution is to get people to quit being terrorists. If we’re
going to make a mistake right now, let’s make it on the side of protecting
the American people.” 

Now he’s been captured on tape saying it’s not in America’s interests
to maintain it.  

But wait: Huckabee has released a new statement on the controversy, saying, “As
President, my overriding concern in dealing with the suspected terrorists
will always be our national security interests. As I stated in June,
my first priority will be the protection of the American people and
ensuring that all suspected terrorists remain in our custody.” 

In the same statement, however,
he also declares, “My concern is that the facility has become a distraction
from our Global War on Terror. Other facilities, like Fort Leavenworth,
can serve the same purpose without the controversy.” 

He adds, “As for specific
procedures concerning detainee adjudication, like all Americans, I await
the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Boumediene case, which will
determine if detainees have habeas corpus rights.”  

So his flip-flop has given
way to waffling. One might think with the U.N. and foreign interests
coming down on the side of the suspected terrorist, Mike Huckabee would
come down on the other side. Instead, he will just wait and see. It’s
hardly a profile in courage. 

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