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Obama, In A Blow To Closing Guantanamo, Signs Law

whysoserious said:
There is another thread on this forum which asks when the US fell from greatness. I said, of course, when the country began allowing itself to be run by corporations. I must add to the list:

While I suppose this nation was never fully a moral one (with the whole slavery issue and what not), at least we kept up with the rest of the world's morality. We don't even do that anymore.

There is no reason that we are not able to try these people and imprison them when they are found guilty. There is no reason we cannot stop torturing. There is no reason that we need extraordinary rendition.

Obama has failed to end all of these things and I am greatly disappointed because of it. It sickens me that any of you can support torture, rendition, or jailing without trial.
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Heck, some of these goofballs could have been tried over the last two years if Obama hadn't banned military tribunals. Indignance aside, maybe you should think about why Obama is lifting the ban and also not closing Gitmo. Maybe the realities of national security in a dangerous world cannot be reconciled with high sounding liberal platitudes. Perhaps this is something even Obama has learned.
 
X Factor said:
Heck, some of these goofballs could have been tried over the last two years if Obama hadn't banned military tribunals. Indignance aside, maybe you should think about why Obama is lifting the ban and also not closing Gitmo. Maybe the realities of national security in a dangerous world cannot be reconciled with high sounding liberal platitudes. Perhaps this is something even Obama has learned.
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Well if that's true then putting these people on trial should be no problem. You're telling me there is no legal recourse besides extraditing people to countries where we can hold them indefinitely? I wouldn't be surprised to hear we still torture as well.
 
The Prof said:
today, monday, march 7:

Obama to resume military commission trials for Guantánamo detainees - TheHill.com

embarrassed yet?
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He doesnt have to close GITMO. He can just send them all covertly to their black ops prison at Bahgram that does the exact same thing that no one seems to give a **** about. There they can keep them til their happy little hearts content.

It might help people to understand the process it took for someone to deserve to be sent to GITMO. We arent talking about Achmed tossing a hand grenade. We are talking about captured terrorists that went through several layers of screening to determine possible/potential intel value.

Me...Im all for sending them to Karzai...let the Afghan government transport them across their country a few times in the back of a metal semi...problem solved.
 
whysoserious said:
Well if that's true then putting these people on trial should be no problem. You're telling me there is no legal recourse besides extraditing people to countries where we can hold them indefinitely? I wouldn't be surprised to hear we still torture as well.
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Do you know how our Defense Dept. came up with it's "torture" techniques? By looking at that types of things soldiers in training have to endure (well maybe with the exception of the pushing and the slapping).
 
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X Factor said:
Do you know how our Defense Dept. came up with it's "torture" techniques? By looking at that types of things soldiers in training have to endure (well maybe with the exception of the pushing and the slapping).
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Not completely true:

The CIA interrogation strategies were based on work done by James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in the Air Force's Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) program.[14][15][16][17][18][19] The CIA contracted with the two psychologists to develop alternative, harsh interrogation techniques.[14][15][16][17][18] However, neither of the two psychologists had any experience in conducting interrogations.[16][17][18][20] Air Force Reserve Colonel Steve Kleinman stated that the CIA "chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation... to do something that had never been proven in the real world."[17][18][20] Associates of Mitchell and Jessen were skeptical of their methods and believed they did not possess any data about the impact of SERE training on the human psyche.[18] The CIA came to learn that Mitchell and Jessen's expertise in waterboarding was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was medically safe or effective.[16] Despite these shortcomings of experience and know-how, the two psychologists boasted of being paid $1000 a day plus expenses, tax-free by the CIA for their work.[16][17][18]

The SERE program, which Mitchell and Jessen would reverse engineer, was originally designed to be defensive in nature and was used to train pilots and other soldiers on how to resist harsh interrogation techniques and torture were they to fall into enemy hands.[15][18]

Enhanced interrogation techniques - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, in essence, they borrowed from the techniques used by brutal regimes, lighted them a little, and rebranded them. But the core of the act remaines the same, torture.
 
the only questions remaining are:

will obama close gitmo before or after he prosecutes the cia, before or after he ends rendition and detention, before or after he moves ksm to manhattan, before or after we pullout of afghanistan, OBAMA'S WAR?

the white house is no place for on the job training
 
chevydriver1123 said:
Who here honestly thought he was actually going to do this? Honestly
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When it comes to presidents and their promises, I tend not to believe what they say. They fall in that "full of crapola" group, where it's the samo, samo bullpucky.
 
Did anyone actually believe he was going to close it?
 
The GC provides that Enemy Combatants can be held until the close of hostilities.

whysoserious said:
Well if that's true then putting these people on trial should be no problem. You're telling me there is no legal recourse besides extraditing people to countries where we can hold them indefinitely? I wouldn't be surprised to hear we still torture as well.
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The Prof said:
Obama, in blow to closing Guantanamo, signs law - Yahoo! News …
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Another tragedy compounded on top of the 9-11 tragedy. How can we ever obtain justice when the alleged mass murderers were severely victimized while in the custody of our government? All the evidence is tainted. They will never see the inside of an American court. We are left now without resolution, in a kind of limbo, holding them all their natural days: no justice for them or, more important, for us.
 
Chappy said:
Another tragedy compounded on top of the 9-11 tragedy. How can we ever obtain justice when the alleged mass murderers were severely victimized while in the custody of our government? All the evidence is tainted. They will never see the inside of an American court. We are left now without resolution, in a kind of limbo, holding them all their natural days: no justice for them or, more important, for us.
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Yeah, we randomly just pick up Arab looking dudes and waterboard them.

We're just awful.
 
Erod said:
Yeah, we randomly just pick up Arab looking dudes and waterboard them.

We're just awful.
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Not quite, but a lot of the people we do lock up indefinitely and without trial were simply people on the battlefield in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
StillBallin75 said:
Not quite, but a lot of the people we do lock up indefinitely and without trial were simply people on the battlefield in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Whatever. You have absolutely no proof of that. We do know that we have released prisoners that have turned up on the battlefields all over again.
 
Erod said:
Whatever. You have absolutely no proof of that. We do know that we have released prisoners that have turned up on the battlefields all over again.
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both are true. What's sadder is that some of them aren't terrorists to begin with but end up becoming terrorists after returning.

Bolded part: some of the JAG lawyers would disagree.
 
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SirPwn4lot said:
And... his justice department had been fighting the idea anyway.

His term has been largely similar to Bush's 2nd.
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Bush's first term was largely similar to his 2nd
 
instead of keep people imprisoned for years without charging them or granting them access to any sort of legal counsel, we could always use direct, conclusive evidence to get a conviction and then sentence them accordingly.

shouldn't be that hard should it?
 
StillBallin75 said:
Not quite, but a lot of the people we do lock up indefinitely and without trial were simply people on the battlefield in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Not the people that end up at GITMO. They dont send just anyone there. And frankly...when your passport says Jakarta and you are captured after a skirmish with Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan, its safe to say that thats not a simple case of mistaken identity. You also cant mirandize them, send in a CSI team (like...in the TV shows and stuff) and collect evidence. Those folks typical arent treated like comman Aerican criminals that have been arrested by the cops following nice and clean rules because...well...they arent American citizens...dont fall under the constitution, and you cant issue a warrant before you go into battle.

Its kinda complex...but then...not.
 
Serenity said:
instead of keep people imprisoned for years without charging them or granting them access to any sort of legal counsel, we could always use direct, conclusive evidence to get a conviction and then sentence them accordingly.

shouldn't be that hard should it?
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Right. Darn it...were all those evidence bags and strips of yellow tape in a combat zone when you need them.

Do you people have any concept of where these people are captured and under what circumstances? Geezus...if only Horatio Caine was leading the war effort, his CSI guys would be able to present things all nice and clean... :roll:

Obama got the picture pretty quick. He went from "these people deserve protection under the constitution and Im closing GITMO" to...ummm...no...they dont and we are building up a black ops prison at Bahgram (where are those weeping wailing liberal voices???). Someone here earlier said the Presidency is no place for on-the-job training. Well...yeah...it is...because until someone is there they dont really get it. Obama does now.
 
Since half the inmates have been found not to be a threat, but none of their countries will take them back, and most of any evidence against the rest is inadmissible in a civilian court, President Obama has very few options.
 
Manc Skipper said:
Since half the inmates have been found not to be a threat, but none of their countries will take them back, and most of any evidence against the rest is inadmissible in a civilian court, President Obama has very few options.
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Send them back to their country. If they arent a threat, no harm...right?
 
VanceMack said:
Right. Darn it...were all those evidence bags and strips of yellow tape in a combat zone when you need them.

Do you people have any concept of where these people are captured and under what circumstances? Geezus...if only Horatio Caine was leading the war effort, his CSI guys would be able to present things all nice and clean... :roll:

Obama got the picture pretty quick. He went from "these people deserve protection under the constitution and Im closing GITMO" to...ummm...no...they dont and we are building up a black ops prison at Bahgram (where are those weeping wailing liberal voices???). Someone here earlier said the Presidency is no place for on-the-job training. Well...yeah...it is...because until someone is there they dont really get it. Obama does now.
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They weren't all "picked up on the battle field". We did offer bounties on "terrorists", people did claim said bounties. There was no investigation to see if alligations were true or not.
 
Ikari said:
They weren't all "picked up on the battle field". We did offer bounties on "terrorists", people did claim said bounties. There was no investigation to see if alligations were true or not.
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People that were picked up were interviewed, interviewed again, and interviewed yet again. The only people sent to Guantanimo Bay are the ones that were believed to have been of real intel value. You know...like the ones we are still picking up these days and sending to Bagram. And yet...the sounds of crickets chirping...
 
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