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Gitmo inmate: My treatment shames American flag [W:508,759]

Yes, they are effectively sentenced to life in prison without trial. What's your point?
The Tokyo trials concerned unlawful acts by lawful combatants.

Nothing, I suppose, as long as you accept that human beings we capture and can transport to GITMO have no human rights, no right to a list of charges, to examine the evidence, counsel, or a legitimate hearing, and will die in prison if we arbitrarily and our sole discretion deem it so. But I don't think that's a position the U.S. "land of the free" should take unless we are willing to admit our rhetoric about human rights and freedom is BS, means nothing in practice and we're no better than a tin pot dictator in that regard when it suits our purpose.
 
Nothing, I suppose, as long as you accept that human beings we capture and can transport to GITMO have no human rights, no right to a list of charges, to examine the evidence, counsel, or a legitimate hearing, and will die in prison if we arbitrarily and our sole discretion deem it so. But I don't think that's a position the U.S. "land of the free" should take unless we are willing to admit our rhetoric about human rights and freedom is BS, means nothing in practice and we're no better than a tin pot dictator in that regard when it suits our purpose.

It's the price they pay for being unlawful combatants. We owe them nothing.
 
I do not think we can ever question again why we are hated by a good third of the planet and distrusted by the majority of the planet (including those we call an ally.)
You are looking in the wrong place. Our allies cannot trust The One on the golf course. Our enemies recognize that Obama is weaker than anyone except Boehner and McConnell. They despise us because Obama is weak. he is only a danger to American citizens.

Our own citizens even distrust our own government with these abilities to spy on and go after us as well.
You conflate the actual mission of the intelligence agencies that comprise the intelligence community and the political instrument that it has become. The intelligence community is supposed to gather intelligence about foreign enemies. Instead it has been turned against American citizens. This is unconstitutional and extraordinarily dangerous. This is worthy of a revolution in and of itself.

This is the real consequence of being the world's police department in the manner we have gone about it.
Trite. Old. Worn out. Hackneyed phrase.

Where the hell are our ethics? Our principles as a nation given the results we see today from all this?
Grow up. Stop wetting the bed.
 
Good morning MMC! :2wave: I don't know if we set an example others will follow but I'd rather be the example than acting like the enemy. I can't deny what they are doing to innocent people is horrible but then those people should be captured, tried, and deat with and I just don't think we should be the ones doing it anymore. Let those countries fight the terrorism in their own countries and whatever happens happens. This may sound a little harsh and I do have the utmost respect for aid workers and journalists but they should know what and where they are going and the risks. As I just said in another torture thread, we need to start thinking of ourselves and our country for once.

Fine. Try them in military tribunals where classified materials can be used against them. then convict them and execute them. Or let them all go in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

You are naive. War has always been brutal. If you don't like what you see, politely thank the ones protecting your behind and avert your eyes.
 
Lucky for us we didn't torture.

It makes me feel better too.

But he does have a point. Some of the guys and gals we employed did things they shouldn't have and that is not allowed to happen. It would be bad to let that go.

But at least as important is to stand for what we did allow and to explain why it was the right thing to do.
 
Lucky for us we didn't torture.

No, we just did things we called torture when done TO us or our allies, but clearly is NOT "torture" when done BY us. It's just "enhanced interrogation" or preferably "EIT" which of course carries with it none of the unnecessary, heavy moral baggage of 'torture.' Hey, it's not just interrogation, it's "enhanced!" Like an 'enhanced' food product! New and improved! Thank you Orwell for showing us the way!! (with an assist from Nazi propagandists, H/T to someone else who posted that earlier)

BTW, anyone know if Frank Luntz poll tested 'enhanced interrogation?'
 
I just don't agree with torture as a means to extract knowledge. Obviously for all the people we've caught since the war on terror began over a decade again, all that knowledge hasn't seemed to help us stop terrorism and it's in fact flourishing in some parts. So maybe there is a different possibly better way to do things which don't involve torturing.

We are making people uncomfortable. They tell us stuff. We combine that stuff with other stuff. Smart people toss it in a salad bowl. What idiot told you it would STOP terrorism?

For liberal wackos everywhere I offer kumbaya. That always works.

 
Fine. Try them in military tribunals where classified materials can be used against them. then convict them and execute them. Or let them all go in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

You are naive. War has always been brutal. If you don't like what you see, politely thank the ones protecting your behind and avert your eyes.

Of course many of those 'protecting our behind' are/were disgusted by the torture/detention program. They believe in what America stands for and it's not that.
 
No, we just did things we called torture when done TO us or our allies, but clearly is NOT "torture" when done BY us. It's just "enhanced interrogation" or preferably "EIT" which of course carries with it none of the heavy moral baggage of 'torture.' Hey, it's not just interrogation, it's "enhanced!" Like an 'enhanced' food product! New and improved! Thank you Orwell for showing us the way!! (with an assist from Nazi propagandists, H/T to someone else who posted that earlier)

BTW, anyone know if Frank Luntz poll tested 'enhanced interrogation?'

Well, at least you have achieved a Godwin episode. There's quite a wide difference between the way we conducted ourselves and the way our enemies (past and present) conducted themselves. Your claim of equivalence is without foundation.
 
It makes me feel better too.

But he does have a point. Some of the guys and gals we employed did things they shouldn't have and that is not allowed to happen. It would be bad to let that go.

But at least as important is to stand for what we did allow and to explain why it was the right thing to do.

Well, we can debate whether with perfect hindsight it was the right thing to do, but I'll gladly concede that the times have changed and that those who approved the program were acting with honest motives - to get information needed to protect the U.S. and our people here and abroad.

What worries me, or is a problem IMO, is the attempts to whitewash it and pretend that it was something other than what it was. I don't favor prosecuting anyone for what happened, but I find it abhorrent to cheer it as something we should be proud of or ready to do again. This was torture, and we need to decide if we're a country where torture is accepted as a legitimate interrogation technique.
 
He is similar to a prisoner of war. An unlawful combatant can, and should be held until the war ends. Or we should have a military tribunal, determine his guilt or innocence and then release or execute him.

This wasn't shoplifiting.

13 years, with no evidence that he was a combatant. The war ended in October. That's what I'm saying, kill him or let him go, holding him indefinitely for no given reason is wrong.
 
That's a misleading summary of the issues and the result. The facts are different - Germany =/= GITMO, and the Germans actually had a legitimate process that was followed - detailed charges and a hearing and a finding. The "hearings" set up for the prisoners at GITMO were a farce. Kangaroo court is a good enough description, and when decided the Executive branch had six years to set up a legitimate process and deliberately failed to do so.

So the core issue was whether we (the Executive branch) effectively terminated prisoners' rights held under our exclusive control, on land we'd continuously occupied without interference from the Cuban government for a century based on the distinction between an indefinite lease and U.S. owned territory. And the court rationally held that we could not - that the executive branch could not operate without any restraints with regard to those prisoners, and so ordered the Executive branch to provide these prisoners with actual rights to challenge their detention, which is a basic human right.

Nothing I said was misleading in the least. I've read Johnson v. Eisentrager, and it directly addressed the central issue in Boumediene--whether an unlawful enemy alien being detained outside sovereign U.S. territory has a right to file a habeas corpus petition in any U.S. court. The answer was no. You are trying to peddle the nonsense that unlawful enemy combatants are entitled to the protections of the Constitution. That helps our enemies spread their propaganda, and it is false. They are not entitled to those protections, nor have they ever been. See Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942). In the Quirin case, a captured Nazi saboteur was electrocuted without ever been indicted by a grand jury or having had a jury trial, even though he was a U.S. citizen! Too G--damned bad, and good riddance. The alien jihadist war criminals at Guanatanamo deserve even less.

The very purpose of accords like the Geneva Conventions was to encourage belligerents to obey the laws of war by protecting only those who did. Combatants who have violated the laws of war--i.e. war criminals--have almost no rights. They may in some cases be executed right on the spot, after only the briefest hearing. During the Battle of the Bulge, for example, the U.S. Army captured a number of Germans who spoke English, wore American uniforms, and had gone behind U.S. lines to commit sabotage. They were taken to the nearest captain or lieutenant who could be found, and when they couldn't sell their stories, they were taken aside and shot. The Army even documented these executions, which were entirely legitimate, on film.

It is your statement of what was before the Court in Boumediene that is misleading, as is your statement of its holding. No one had even suggested that the U.S. could "operate without any restraints with regard to" the detainees. Although the detainees were unlawful combatants and not legitimate prisoners of war, the laws of war, as Congress has codified them, still imposed certain restraints. The majority cooked up a constitutional right to habeas under the unconvincing argument that a law Congress had passed regarding treatment of the detainees, the Military Commissions Act, violated the Suspension Clause. This was an outrageous, arrogant intrusion by the Supreme Court on both the Legislative and Executive branches in a matter of war, something almost unprecedented in this country's history and itself unconstitutional. President Bush should have ignored it.

In the end, the government complied with the habeas requirement the Court imposed not by giving the detainees access to U.S. courts, but rather through Combatant Status Review Tribunals. These are held at Guantanamo, and the transcripts of at least some have been published. I have read parts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's, for example, on the internet. He and the others have gotten far better treatment than they deserved. The bastards should long ago have been marched onto a gallows, had their filthy necks stretched, and their stinking carcases thrown to the sharks. If, that is, a self-respecting shark would eat such rotten stuff.
 
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Well, we can debate whether with perfect hindsight it was the right thing to do, but I'll gladly concede that the times have changed and that those who approved the program were acting with honest motives - to get information needed to protect the U.S. and our people here and abroad.

What worries me, or is a problem IMO, is the attempts to whitewash it and pretend that it was something other than what it was. I don't favor prosecuting anyone for what happened, but I find it abhorrent to cheer it as something we should be proud of or ready to do again. This was torture, and we need to decide if we're a country where torture is accepted as a legitimate interrogation technique.

Any government fails in its obligation to its people if it fails in war to do everything in its power to defend its citizens and defeat its enemies. This is easily demonstrated. No government anywhere would choose defeat when victory was available through "immoral" means. No government would ever explain to its people that their defeat was OK because their government adhered to its convictions. Not going to happen.
 
Well, at least you have achieved a Godwin episode. There's quite a wide difference between the way we conducted ourselves and the way our enemies (past and present) conducted themselves. Your claim of equivalence is without foundation.

You keep saying that but can't avoid or address the fact that we called waterboarding "torture" and charged our enemies who did it TO us with war crimes. I don't need to and did not claim anything like 'equivalence' except on that narrow issue.

And you have to admit Orwell would be proud of a term like Enhanced Interrogation - gives no hint whatsoever of the intended result, which is to cause enough pain and discomfort and mental anguish, panic, to our enemies that they will talk rather than endure any more of this "enhanced" interrogation.

BTW, it is unfortunate that the Nazi's used the SAME TERM to describe their new and improved "enhanced!!" interrogation techniques, but that's not a problem I created. I've certainly seen far worse examples that qualify for the Godwin rule.
 
The CIA needs to be policed by those we send to Congress to represent us. During the time of waterboarding and other means of making a captured terrorist talk, the Intelligence committee was informed 39 times. During it all, the majority did not have a bit of problem with what was occurring including most Democrats.

...cite please...
 
I thought it WAS an instant process.
As in... "this guy knows where the nukes are, lets waterboard him"...
Instead, it seems to be a time consuming process.
By the time a KSM gives up any info, it would be obsolete.
Terrorists would adjust their MO's when any of their leaders are captured.
As far as I know it's never been an instant process. Perhaps historically, but usually torture was used to extract a confession - of guilt, of spying, of adultry... whatever. When extracting usable intelligence however, one can't just take the word of the person. Usually it starts with simple things that can be verified easily and over time, working towards more difficult intelligence. I would seriously doubt they'd waterboard KSM for short term information ... it's for more general intelligence, names, future plans, routes, information lines, .... all that can create leads to other intelligence that may be worth taking action.


Again with the long process.
What sort of actionable info do you think KSM would have stored in his brain that would be critical in the never-ending "War on Terror"
Do you think he has intricate plots, Osama's phone number, addresses.....what exactly would he give up?

Don't believe Hollywood movies - they're stories are to get you to pay your 15 bucks, not to be accurate. He has information on person A, who tells low level person B and sends information to person C. The CIA then watches movements of these people using turned agents, locals or I'm sure other ways. Person B may lead to five other people one of whom talks to the guy who runs information back and forth to a compound called the Waziristan Haveli in Abbotabad, which has a guard and locked gates and when observed, looks suspicious. That kind of actionable intelligence can lead somewhere or nowhere... it just so happened that it led somewhere.
 
You keep saying that but can't avoid or address the fact that we called waterboarding "torture" and charged our enemies who did it TO us with war crimes. I don't need to and did not claim anything like 'equivalence' except on that narrow issue.

And you have to admit Orwell would be proud of a term like Enhanced Interrogation - gives no hint whatsoever of the intended result, which is to cause enough pain and discomfort and mental anguish, panic, to our enemies that they will talk rather than endure any more of this "enhanced" interrogation.

BTW, it is unfortunate that the Nazi's used the SAME TERM to describe their new and improved "enhanced!!" interrogation techniques, but that's not a problem I created. I've certainly seen far worse examples that qualify for the Godwin rule.

Not all water boarding is equal. EIT falls short of Orwell. In his telling the term would have been Truthful Cooperation Incentives.
 
Any government fails in its obligation to its people if it fails in war to do everything in its power to defend its citizens and defeat its enemies. This is easily demonstrated. No government anywhere would choose defeat when victory was available through "immoral" means. No government would ever explain to its people that their defeat was OK because their government adhered to its convictions. Not going to happen.

I don't think you've thought that through at all. Because if you have, then the problem with ISIS and AQ et al isn't what they DO - kill civilians, terror attacks, etc. Those are the options it has to defeat their enemy (us). They can't line up toe to toe, so they're simply fighting the war with the same moral compass - none - that we have, but for practical reasons must choose alternative methods that require them to target innocent civilians, which we'd do in a heartbeat if required to meet OUR objectives.

Do you believe that?
 
I don't think you've thought that through at all. Because if you have, then the problem with ISIS and AQ et al isn't what they DO - kill civilians, terror attacks, etc. Those are the options it has to defeat their enemy (us). They can't line up toe to toe, so they're simply fighting the war with the same moral compass - none - that we have, but for practical reasons must choose alternative methods that require them to target innocent civilians, which we'd do in a heartbeat if required to meet OUR objectives.

Do you believe that?

In war there is no imperative other than victory.
 
Not all water boarding is equal. EIT falls short of Orwell. In his telling the term would have been Truthful Cooperation Incentives.

Oh, OK, we do it differently!! You should have mentioned it earlier, but if you don't mind can you explain the differences? I've read accounts and the basic process sounds identical - board, incline, restraints, towel, water, choking, can't breath, panic, etc. repeat as needed. Admittedly sometimes they'd strap the person to a ladder, and immerse their head in water, till they started choking, but the end result is or can be the same. Water into the lungs and stomach, can't breath, etc.

And Truthful Cooperation Incentives is WAY too literal.

If you don't know better, you can read "Enhanced Interrogation" and believe it's just new AND improved - interrogation enhanced! A better way to ask questions! Green walls versus white! Wood versus foam bottom! Nothing hints that it's interrogation, but with intense physical, or mental pain and anguish, and often a healthy dose of panic thrown in, intended to totally break hardened criminals and killers (i.e. torture!).
 
As far as I'm aware, the Saudis are a large source of ISIS funds, but we don't seem to mind much. They cut us in on the oil deals, so all's good.

Now that is an interesting accusation. ISIS had oil fields. Have we retaken them? Have we destroyed the wellheads?
 
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