Jameel Jaffer Quotes

Though many will criticize the president for mis-steps in Iraq and at home, it is with the complicity of Congress that we have become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrolled spying on the American people. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home. More likely the opposite is true.

The Justices are currently considering a case, argued last month, which seeks to extend the writ of habeas corpus to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

The legal foundation for the targeted killing campaign is not simply shaky, but rotten.

We now have an accepted practice of the President assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it’s sad.

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

George W. Bush and his administration embarked on a full-scale assault on civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law, walking away from his international obligations, tearing up international treaties, protocols and UN conventions.

Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy.

A state of war is not a blank check... when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.

These are show trials. If the defendant is convicted, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. If he is acquitted, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. If the trial is abandoned, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. I don’t know why they are holding this trial.….

In 2006, I argued and won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a Supreme Court case that struck down President George W. Bush's use of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.

Conservatives believe in providing Constitutional rights to our citizens, not to enemy combatants like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Actually, the notion of what is acceptable for a moral government to do seems to have eroded in some ways since 9-11. Not to get too political here, but countries, including our own, seem to have accepted what was once almost unimaginable - condoning torture, for example, and even criminalizing peaceful protest.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

When I asked the president [Barack Obama], can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It's an easy question. It should have been a resounding and unequivocal no. The president's response, he hasn't killed anyone yet.

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.

Al Qaeda doesn't abide by the Geneva Conventions, so in my opinion, they should not be afforded the protections of them.

In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil, basically, and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting.

There are laws for peace as well as war.

I think there would be less torture with a warrant requirement than without one.

The detention of Japanese Americans during World War II would qualify as an example of majoritarian tyranny and misuse of executive prerogative, driven by fear and racial bias.

Few people know that President Obama has used drone attacks many times more than Bush ever did. Obama's off the charts in terms of drone attack.

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

The true test of whether Mr. Obama has improved on the Bush era lies in how his administration justifies its decisions on the 241 remaining Guantanamo detainees, whose cases will now be evaluated internally and reviewed by the courts.