Obama: No more ‘enemy combatants’

[unhappycamper]

Obama: No more ‘enemy combatants’
By Nedra Pickler - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Mar 13, 2009 18:22:37 EDT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of President George W. Bush’s key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant.

The Justice Department said in legal filings that it will no longer use the term to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

But that won’t change much for the detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba — Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold them. Human rights attorneys said they were disappointed that Obama didn’t take a new stance.

“This is really a case of old wine in new bottles,” the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been fighting the detainees’ detention, said in a statement. “It is still unlawful to hold people indefinitely without charge. The men who have been held for more than seven years by our government must be charged or released.”

In another court filing Thursday criticized by human rights advocates, the Obama administration tried to protect top Bush administration military officials from lawsuits brought by prisoners who say they were tortured while being held at Guantanamo Bay.


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/03/ap_guantanamo_combatants_031309/%2e