A small number and it backed down immediately on those.
A "small number" indeed. Two (2) is the exact number of US citizens held without charge as a result of the War on Terror. As for the "backing down"...stopped completely after the Supreme Court ruling in '04 would be the most accurate framing of it. The "problem" is that under international law, treaty obligations, and U.S. law (most notably the Constitution), there are only two real vehicles for handling prisoners in a declared or undeclared war.
Perhaps you can quote the most notable section of the Constitution dealing with foreign prisoners captured abroad? Good luck with that. 
The first is to treat them as prisoners of war subject to all protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention. The second is to treat them as criminals under the laws of the country where they conducted their activities and were first detained, under International Law for war crimes, or under U.S. laws. In each of these venues, prisoners have rights and the captors have responsibilities to uphold those rights. This structure has operated with a lot of success and a few blemishes for a lot of conflicts both more and less serious than the "war on terror."
That's all well and good, but my quote above that you're responding to was related to your original contention...you implied that the Bush Admin routinely denied habeas corpus to US citizens. They didn't. It happened twice and was stopped in 2004. Extending legal rights to foreign murderers captured abroad in an undeclared war is a distinctly seperate issue.
The problem of Guantanamo arose from the fact that the administration decided that all of these niceties were too inconvenient. It invented legal theories out of thin air in an effort to show that protections that have been part of our common law since 1640 and were considered pretty important to our founders are now irrelevant if the President decides they are inconvenient.
I'm rather confident that the founding fathers fought and died for those legal protections for AMERICAN CITIZENS; and not for legal protections for foreigners captured abroad trying to KILL American citizens. As an aside, I always find it amusing when liberals, who believe that the Constitution is a "living, breathing document subject to change," trot out the founding fathers' intentions...as if they actually put any stock in those intentions other than the rare instances where it actually suits their argument. But I digress... There is indeed precedent in our current handling of terrorists. In '42 we captured eight German saboteurs in the US. Roosevelt had them tried by secret military tribunal and six of them were executed...all within two months of their capture. That decision has haunted the administration as every court decision has basically said, "Hey guys, you can't just make up whatever laws you want when the old ones are inconvenient."
Each of those prisoners could have been a Mother Theresa at the time they were "collected" but could now be expected to be full-fledged America hating potential supporters for other America hating organizations for the rest of their lives.
Yes, and each of those prisoners could be citizens of the planet Klebnor. But I'm rather confident that the majority were/are murderous scum caught in the act of harming Americans or caught in the act of planning to hurt Americans. I know I would be if I had been treated the same way. There is no way this situation will ever be resolved without negative consequences for the U.S. We are, unfortunately, reaping that which we sowed.
America's chickens are coming home....to roost, eh? Does that mean I am claiming that the detainees were "innocent?" No. However, a theater of war is not noted as being a place where fine distinctions are made between the "guilty" and the "innocent." In 2006, Republican Senator Arlen Spector stated that most of the prisoners were being held of "the flimsiest sort of hearsay."
And 2000 Democrat Vice President candidate Joe Lieberman says Obama lacks experience to be president. Your point?
The buck was printed, framed and placed proudly on the President's desk by George himself almost six years ago. The intervening years have only made it worse. I don't think it's going to be at all easy to resolve.
Of course it's not easy to resolve. What to do with those detainees wasn't an easy problem to begin with (unless you want to pretend that there's examples/blueprints for our country on how to deal with the wholesale battlefield capture of thousands of countryless foreigners, many with valuable/needed information, in an undeclared war that has no borders or boundries and no precedence in our history). But you're free to pretend Bush relished the opportunity to "throw our Constitution out the window" dealing with murdering asshats. Just as you're free to pretend that Obama's choices are limited on what to do once he assumes office. There's not a damn thing stopping him from keeping his campaign promise of shutting down Gitmo and trying the remaining detainees the day after he assumes office. Something tells me that a year from then, when Gitmo's still open for business, the lefts keening over Obama's trampling of "rights" for those detainees won't be nearly as loud it is now. 
Originally Posted by Bob Gutermuth
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