FSTDT Forums
Community => Politics and Government => Topic started by: Askold on June 18, 2013, 02:49:37 pm
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A Finnish news article used NYTimes article as it's source in an article about the Guantanamo bay prisoners.
Some are being released or transferred out, but still USA is going to put many of then to trial despite all the "enhanced interrogation" that has been done to them. But that is not what enraged me.
Apparently since some of the prisoners are there due to information gained by "enhanced interrogation" and since you can't use "information" that you gained by torture in a court there is no actual evidence against them. But they are still concidered too dangerous to release so they will be held in jail for the foreseeable future.
USA is keeping people in jail without putting them in trial or giving them any opportunity to defend themselves. They do not get any opportunity to defend themselves because USA knows that if they go to court these prisoners would walk free.
The article specifically claimed that these people might be held in jail for life without a trial.
The NY Times article does not think the "Let's just keep these folks in jail without a trial after were done torturing them, DO HO HO!" part is all that important but it is there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/us/justice-dept-releases-recommended-fates-for-guantanamo-detainees.html
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/714599-savage-final-response.html
I know that I can't really blame every US citizen for this... Although the voters do carry some of the guilt. But this is my message to the US politicians and military officers who did this, the soldiers and goverment employees who obeyed these orders and the law enforcement and courts who seem to act like this behaviour is not against your constitution and human rights in general: (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GDyWyUwa-y0/T-2YDPDLCJI/AAAAAAAAE3k/MPZKilErZF8/s1600/P6260008.JPG)
That is all.
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What i find silly is we've tried some in civilian courts and got convictions so we don't really need the subterfuge.
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Does anyone remember the Daily Show Gitmo/Elmo bit? Where Gitmo tells Jon Stewart he wasn't a terrorist when he went in but he wants to be one now?
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The right thing to do would have been immediate clearance procedures along with mental and medical health evaluations, a generous monetary settlement annuity, and let them go, regardless of suspicions about them being possible terrorists. Obama should have done that first term. Every day that goes by with these people in Gitmo just "Inspire"s more terrorists abroad. You cannot command the moral high ground from the towers of a dungeon's keep.
(http://i.imgur.com/77PFwId.png)
What will happen? Hopefully something not like this example of how the US has treated persons of unknown threat potential in recent history...keeping them almost 20 years in prison limbo.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/mariel-release.htm (http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/mariel-release.htm)
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Wasn't there also some scandal once that the fire detectors in the rooms where the detainees met their defense attorneys were actually listening devices?
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
My opinion is that most, if not all, of the people currently being detained in Guantanamo should be released, that those who can be guilty in a court of law be done so, and that the entire facility be shut down and its leaders prosecuted for war crimes. Torture is against the Geneva convention for a reason.
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Doesn't matter if they are criminal detainees or POWs, they deserve better treatment regardless. That shit is inexcusable.
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With respect to freeing all of them and closing Gitmo, Obama legally cannot do it. Congress (who controls the purse strings, per the Constitution) keeps including clauses in budget documents that bar the President from using funds to repatriate Gitmo prisoners. This includes prisoners who have already been cleared of any wrongdoing.
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Eric, I wonder if it is possible to order the closure and dismantling of Gitmo as a separate action, and thereby incidentally move the prisoners elsewhere, preferably to a US base on the mainland? Clinton carried through the closure of many military bases that were extraneous, outdated and inefficient as part of his budget balancing procedures. It was a somewhat unpopular, hot button issue, but it was carried out anyway.
Besides just its reeking humanitarian and political stench, Gitmo is an old base on hostile soil, our land lease payments to Cuba for it just help fund a scuzzy, unlikeable enemy government. In this era of thousand mile range aircraft carrier strategic capability, it is obsolete. Has been for decades. Especially considering all the bases here in nearby Florida. See where I'm weaseling to? Just hoping a future executive order could be someday soon squeaked past GOP control freak derp.
The biggest problem with Gitmo as a prison is it's relative inaccessibility to observation by the world at large...precisely why it has been used to contain suspected terrorists. A dungeon, complete with torture rooms. Which is just too sexy a Man Cave theme for GOP fucks to give up on, apparently.
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Eric, I wonder if it is possible to order the closure and dismantling of Gitmo as a separate action, and thereby incidentally move the prisoners elsewhere, preferably to a US base on the mainland?
I don't think so, given the way the clauses are worded. However, it's been a while since I read anything about them, so can't remember the exact phrasings. It may be possible.
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Eric, I wonder if it is possible to order the closure and dismantling of Gitmo as a separate action, and thereby incidentally move the prisoners elsewhere, preferably to a US base on the mainland?
I don't know if he could, but he should. I think that northern Alaska would work - should any detainees escape, they would either freeze to death or be eaten by a polar bear. As for the detainees, I'd divide them into two categories:
1. Those who committed (or were caught trying to commit) acts of terror on US soil, or are themselves American citizens captured while fighting against US forces, will be interrogated (not tortured) for useful information, then sent to the civilian courts, to be tried for terrorism or treason.
2. Those who were captured fighting against US forces abroad will be treated as POWs. After the war in Afghanistan ends, they will be returned to the Afghan government.
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many are not from Afghanistan and over half are cleared for release. Also we are not at war with Afganistan
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many are not from Afghanistan and over half are cleared for release. Also we are not at war with Afganistan
*slaps self*
OK. The ones cleared for release should obviously be released. Those Afghans captured during the war in Afghanistan should be sent back to the Afghan government. Non-Afghans captured should be detained until the end of the war.
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Eric, I wonder if it is possible to order the closure and dismantling of Gitmo as a separate action, and thereby incidentally move the prisoners elsewhere, preferably to a US base on the mainland?
I don't know if he could, but he should.
As I said, if he does, he will be breaking the law. Congress has forbid him to do that, and they put it in budget bills that he had to sign into law.
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I think most of the prisoners there are from Yemen. Last I heard, Obama hired a lawyer to try to sort this stuff out so he could release any innocents back to their own country.
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Eric, I wonder if it is possible to order the closure and dismantling of Gitmo as a separate action, and thereby incidentally move the prisoners elsewhere, preferably to a US base on the mainland?
So any prisoner there, innocent or not, can never leave? I think that's an even more hardcore policy than Russia's Black Dolphin prison, where only one prisoner has ever left alive.
I don't know if he could, but he should.
As I said, if he does, he will be breaking the law. Congress has forbid him to do that, and they put it in budget bills that he had to sign into law.
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I would rather have the non afgans sent to regular prision after a trial
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Basically, Gitmo is a clusterfuck that no one man can fix. Too many people don't want to fix it in the first place, and those that do often have conflicting ideas about how they should. Saying that Obama "broke his promise" by not immediately closing the prison and releasing everyone who should be released (while conveniently only releasing innocents, suggesting that somehow we have 100% knowledge of who's innocent and who's guilty and we're just keeping people in prison camps because RAWR AMERICA IS EVIL) is fallaciously claiming that everything is up to the president.
Believing that the president has more power than expected or that he can somehow bully everyone into following him without causing more problems than it's worth is a very common belief, and one that cannot be held if you're planning on making any coherent statements about US politics.
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
My opinion is that most, if not all, of the people currently being detained in Guantanamo should be released, that those who can be guilty in a court of law be done so, and that the entire facility be shut down and its leaders prosecuted for war crimes. Torture is against the Geneva convention for a reason.
Yeah before leaving office, Bush and Cheney got themselves some nice immunity from persecution for any involvement in Gitmo as well as being called to the Hauge if they ever step foot outside of America.
Ironbite-no one will ever be called to the carpet for this mess.
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
My opinion is that most, if not all, of the people currently being detained in Guantanamo should be released, that those who can be guilty in a court of law be done so, and that the entire facility be shut down and its leaders prosecuted for war crimes. Torture is against the Geneva convention for a reason.
Yeah before leaving office, Bush and Cheney got themselves some nice immunity from persecution for any involvement in Gitmo as well as being called to the Hauge if they ever step foot outside of America.
Ironbite-no one will ever be called to the carpet for this mess.
And that is the thing that annoys me the most about USA.
Their armies go across the planet acting like the world police when it suits their purposes but any US politicians and soldiers who break international laws or commit crimes against humanity are safe from prosecution. (although any US civilians who are suspected of such might be bombed to death by a drone without a trial, which can also happen to non-US citizens.)
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
Pertaining to what declared war?
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
My opinion is that most, if not all, of the people currently being detained in Guantanamo should be released, that those who can be guilty in a court of law be done so, and that the entire facility be shut down and its leaders prosecuted for war crimes. Torture is against the Geneva convention for a reason.
Yeah before leaving office, Bush and Cheney got themselves some nice immunity from persecution for any involvement in Gitmo as well as being called to the Hauge if they ever step foot outside of America.
Ironbite-no one will ever be called to the carpet for this mess.
And that is the thing that annoys me the most about USA.
Their armies go across the planet acting like the world police when it suits their purposes but any US politicians and soldiers who break international laws or commit crimes against humanity are safe from prosecution. (although any US civilians who are suspected of such might be bombed to death by a drone without a trial, which can also happen to non-US citizens.)
The same thing happens in other nations. Not the world police part (we're really the only nation that can afford to do so), but it's always much harder to prosecute high-ranking politicians than guys on the ground. Many laws that work against the plebes aren't very effective against the guys up top, especially the guys who write them. Not to mention that many of the actions undertaken by politicians are legally different from what the common man can do: a politician who breaks international law can't exactly be arrested by his own police force and put to trial. It's a different matter if he personally does something like murder a man, but his influence and cash are often enough to buy people off.
It's not exclusive to the United States by any means, even among first world countries. It's just that American leaders tend to have a lot of international power due to the country's power, so their actions are farther reaching and they come under more scrutiny than, say, Boris Johnson.
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You are missing my point.
It is the contrast of all the "world police" and "war on terror" etc. with USA committing the same crimes and targeting civilians etc. that makes it so bad.
This hypocrisy is just so blatant.
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You are missing my point.
It is the contrast of all the "world police" and "war on terror" etc. with USA committing the same crimes and targeting civilians etc. that makes it so bad.
This hypocrisy is just so blatant.
A hypocrisy that exists in many, many other first world governments. It may not be hypocrisy about identical issues, but it's there. Also, I should point out that what we're doing is NOT the same as what the terrorists are doing. We're not doing good by any means, but sending soldiers to a third-world country to assassinate criminals isn't the same as people who intentionally target civilians. For the record, the US DOESN'T intentionally target civilians (as far as we know....../conspiracy). They happen to get caught in the crossfire too much to stomach because our targets are often in civilian areas and our intelligence can be incomplete, leading to us bombing the wrong people. Unless there's something going on behind the scenes, we're not exactly planting bombs in the Baghdad market to massacre children in the hopes of getting Al Qaeda to surrender.
And if you're willing to use the "Well we don't REALLY know what the government is doing" argument to argue that they're intentionally targeting civilians as part of a terror plot, I can freely suggest that Finland is behind it all.
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While the U.S. does not actively target civilians the way terrorists do, it really does not appear to go out of its way to avoid killing them accidentally if they just happen to be near what they feel is a legitimate target. Cast in that light their actions are not really any better then the terrorists who are targeting the government and military and just not concerning themselves with collateral damage.
And if you're willing to use the "Well we don't REALLY know what the government is doing" argument to argue that they're intentionally targeting civilians as part of a terror plot, I can freely suggest that Finland is behind it all.
Luxembourg. Everyone forgets about evil little Luxembourg.
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
Pertaining to what declared war?
War on Terror.
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My opinion is that we should have just called them POWs.
Pertaining to what declared war?
War on Terror.
Not sure if sarcasm.
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Pertaining to what declared war?
War on Terror.
Not sure if sarcasm.
Probably not. Although Congress did not specifically declare war, they did (and continue to) authorize military action, which is the constitutional requirement for war.
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Pertaining to what declared war?
War on Terror.
Not sure if sarcasm.
Probably not. Although Congress did not specifically declare war, they did (and continue to) authorize military action, which is the constitutional requirement for war.
Until returning solders actually want their benefits of course.