Gitmo

[Tech_Esq]

Are you sure it was the SEAL teams that picked them up and not that idiot company Blackwater?

I'd lean more towards Blackwater.......

And yes......SEALS are trained for quite a few things. Why do you think they are called Special Operations?

Having trained with the SAS, SF and Rangers I'm quite familiar with why they are call Special Operations. None of it involved chain of evidence or evidence collection beyond intelligence collection, which isn't the same thing.

That's my point, they will not get any convictions or damned few. So it will not end up serving any useful purpose. It will cost a lot of money though. If you are going to try them, pick the 10 guys you can get convictions on, and let the rest go.

 

[ABikerSailor]

HEY! I know!

Let's send all the terrorists over to Mexico to make a better life for themselves. I mean, Mexico keeps sending all their rejects up here, let's send ours down there.

 

[Sky Dancer]

We ought to either charge them for crimes or release them.

 

[Tech_Esq]

You realize that some of the "terrorists" at Gitmo weren't captured on the battlefield. They were turned in by neighbors. Funny, but some of those neighbors may have had a blood feud with the people they turned in for generations.

Bush or Cheney, whoever was really in charge, set up Gitmo for the specific purpose it ended up serving. Locking up suspects for as long as they wanted them with no legal process or possibility of release.

Now we have people who have been in prison and some who were tortured who did not committ any crime against us and others who comitted crimes and because they fucked this up so bad, we may not be able to legally try them.

If any country did this to our citizens, we would bomb them off the face of the earth. In fact, after WWII we tried and killed them for this shit.

Bush and Cheney are criminals by our laws and by international laws. Worse they have set up a situation where the innocent were punished and now the guilty may go free. Great work for a bunch of chicken shits.

Jose Padilla, one of the few convicted, (not in the military courty) is for all intents and purposes a vegetable now. I don't think that was from giving him all the great meals that some of the Republican Senators talked about.

Torture is against our laws and international laws.

My understanding is that there was a process for getting to Gitmo. It wasn't the reception station, it was the end point. You had to filter through a few other places before you got there. Also, let's not act like thousands of people ever went to Gitmo. Only 500 and change ever got there. Only 210 remain there.

I would like to discuss what should have been done instead. I think it will be an informative discussion. There are certainly a lot of pitfalls to whatever choice you select. I'm not going to defend Gitmo or Bush's choice. It was one available choice, I'm not convinced it was the worst possible choice, but there were probably better available choices.

I think you are a little over the top on some of that, we didn't try Stalin and Khrushchev as war criminals for enslaving Nazi POWs for 10 years after the war and doing most of them to death. So just settle down. We're complicit in a lot more than you're admitting.

 

[Sky Dancer]

The UN recommended closing Gitmo three years ago. Only five arraignments and one trial in seven years.

 

[doeton]

Can they just be freed? Probably not, because NOW they hate our guts. So they have to be tried.

ok, i realize you are saying they need to tried and i agree on the reason.

but are you suggesting then that the trial is a formality?

i mean sounded like you were saying there's nothing to convict them on...i mean other than uh hate....

assuming they are found innocent.

don't they deserve restitution?

 

[WillowTree]

The UN recommended closing Gitmo three years ago. Only five arraignments and one trial in seven years.

Oh Yes,, and we have high regards for the UN now don't we? Not! If we move anything it ought to be the UN. I know. Let's put the UN on Gitmo! There problem solved.

 

[jillian]

A little strong on the hyperbole considering FDRs record don't you think?

A least Bush didn't throw an entire race in the Gulag right?

Fair enough... but we weren't talking about FDR. Do you really want to? One of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever written...and one of our greatest embarrassments. Korematsu is still good law.... but I wouldn't want to defend it.

But, leaving that aside. And, I guess we have to leave aside, what we should have done instead, but I'd like to come back to that. As a practical matter, how can you try them with any hope of getting convictions given that these guys we mostly from conflict areas. Can you imagine even 1/3 of government "evidence" will be admitted? I'll bet it's so full of taint that a 1L could have 90% of it thrown out.

I'm sure you're right... but we still can't morally maintain a Gulag... even if Korematsu says we can. (of course, Plessy v Ferguson used to be law, too).

But, let's say that you go through the process (cuz justice is process, right? You send it through the sausage machine and what comes out on the other end is justice). And the result is that most of the detainees are let off for lack of evidence, as they most surely will be or 'fruit of the poisonous tree' etc etc. So most go free as a result of the process. For a time, Bush gets to look even more horrible, keeping all these innocent people imprisoned. Until we start catching these guys committing more acts of terror. Seems to me you're back where you started. Obama set up some easy process where all the terrorists could get off. I'm just not sure you would get enough of these guys put away by trying them to make it come off well in the long run.

Doesn't justify doing away with habeas corpus. Pretty big no no.

 

[Tech_Esq]

ok, i realize you are saying they need to tried and i agree on the reason.

but are you suggesting then that the trial is a formality?

i mean sounded like you were saying there's nothing to convict them on...i mean other than uh hate....

assuming they are found innocent.

don't they deserve restitution?

You may not be aware of this, but in our system of jurisprudence, we don't find people innocent. We find them "guilty" or "not guilty." There is a difference between not guilty and innocent.

You could be guilty as hell, but the evidence does not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. If that's the case, should you get restitution?

 

[Alpha1]

He needs to close Gitmo because it's a symbol of abuse of legal process. The U.S. doesn't disappear people... we don't take away the right to habeas corpus... we don't torture people.

Or didn't until Bush.

That's why.

That said, these people should be tried and convicted if there's evidence against them.

I don't know if you're intentionally partisan or conveniently ignorant of your history ...history as recent as the Clinton administration....
++++++++++++===
Washington Times - EXCLUSIVE: Panetta faces rendition queries

Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will question Mr. Panetta, chief of staff for President Clinton from 1994 to 1997, about what, if any, role he played in shaping the policy known as "extraordinary rendition," a Republican aide on the committee said. Mr. Panetta's confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27. The aide asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The practice -- which involves seizing a terrorist suspect in one country and taking him to another without formal judicial proceedings -- also occurred under the administration of President George H.W. Bush and possibly even earlier, said a former senior U.S. official in that administration. However, it took place dozens of times under the Clinton administration and rose dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to human rights organizations and former national security officials.

the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramsey Youssef, who was abducted by the CIA in Pakistan.

Talaat Fuad Qassim, a leader of al-Gamaa Islamiya, the Egyptian jihadist group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, in the 1990s, was subjected to extraordinary rendition.

Snatched in 1995 in Bosnia, Qassim was questioned aboard a U.S. Navy vessel in the Adriatic, then sent to an Egyptian prison, according to a Human Rights Watch report released in 2005.

Five suspected terrorists in Albania were seized and sent to Egypt in 1998 for interrogation, according to the report. Human rights groups and the U.S. State Department have accused Egypt of torturing detainees.

"The Clinton policy in practice meant torture," Joanne Mariner, counterterrorism director for Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Times. "We haven't been able to interview the people themselves, but we have evidence that they were tortured."

Muntassir al-Zayyat, an Egyptian lawyer who represented four of the suspects seized in Albania, told The Times that "all were subjected to torture."

Two of the suspects -- Ahmed Ibrahim al-Naggar and Ahmed Ismail Uthman -- were executed in 1999, while two others -- Shawky Salama Mostafa and Mohammed Hassan Mahoud -- remain in prison, Mr. al-Zayyat said.
-------------------

As a matter of fact, Sandy Berger admitted using rendition during the Clinton admin. and its effectiveness, because it circumvented US law in treatment of prisoners....
Where was your outrage then....do you want to arrest Clinton and Panetta and others in the 90's for this "inhumane" treatment of prisoners...?

No one disappeared in Gitmo, its a symbol of a Navy base, and torture was never proven....

So where was your outrage then? Gonna plead ignorance ?
Do you want to try Clinton, Berger, Panetta and others in the Clinton Admin...
Its not too late as long as you're going after Bush and his gang...hell, make it a clean sweep

 

[Alpha1]

Can't repudiate the truth, huh Jillie ?

 

[Shadow]

From my understanding, Obama is going to change the process. Couldn't he do this while still utilizing the facility? I just wonder where anyone there will go, that's all. Thanks.

Well Germany offered to take them..that is as long as we can PROVE they aren't terrorists.

Only the Left is stupid enough to want to bring terrorists to the USA and house them here.

 

[Dr Grump]

One reason being they will be killed and how would that look ....

Killed for what?

 

[Annie]

Well Germany offered to take them..that is as long as we can PROVE they aren't terrorists.

Only the Left is stupid enough to want to bring terrorists to the USA and house them here.

How would a country 'prove' that someone that's been locked up for being a terrorist, isn't? Either the parameters were wrong or they believe he was terrorist? Am I missing something? Think Germany was being insincere?

 

[Dr Grump]

Since they have been able to document that 61% of those released so far have returned to the battlefield, that really doesn't look like a promising avenue.

I would just love you to produce the 61% evidence..I really would. And if you can, what percentage were initially caught in the battlefield or just rounded up under a general sweep through an area and looked "suspicious"..

 

[jillian]

Killed for what?

cause if they're released, it looks like they gave information.

 

[Dr Grump]

cause if they're released, it looks like they gave information.

Possibly. How woudl they know who gave up what unless the US told the other guys. It's not like those tribesmen or Taliban have access to US intel as to who said what..

 

[Shadow]

How would a country 'prove' that someone that's been locked up for being a terrorist, isn't? Either the parameters were wrong or they believe he was terrorist? Am I missing something? Think Germany was being insincere?

Probably. I talked with a person in the military that worked at GITMO. He says the low level insurgents were sent somewhere else. The only folks left there are the worst of the worst,and they are still there because no one WANTS them... well except for the idiots on the left here in the good ol USA.

 

[Annie]

Probably. I talked with a person in the military that worked at GITMO. He says the low level insurgents were sent somewhere else. The only folks left there are the worst of the worst,and they are still there because no one WANTS them... well except for the idiots on the left here in the good ol USA.

From what I've read, your friend seems to be correct.

 

[jillian]

Possibly. How woudl they know who gave up what unless the US told the other guys. It's not like those tribesmen or Taliban have access to US intel as to who said what..

I figure that's exactly what they do... give info.. that way no more problem.