Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns

j-mac said:

Just a note back at ya....:

"A declaration of war is a formal declaration issued by a national government indicating that a state of war exists between that nation and another. For the United States, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says "Congress shall have power to ... declare War". However, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation must have in order to be considered a "Declaration of War" nor does the Constitution itself use this term. Many[who?] have postulated "Declaration(s) of War" must contain that phrase as or within the title. Others oppose that reasoning. In the courts, the United States First Circuit Court of Appeals in Doe vs. Bush said: "[T]he text of the October Resolution itself spells out justifications for a war and frames itself as an 'authorization' of such a war."[1] in effect saying an authorization suffices for declaration and what some may view as a formal Congressional "Declaration of War" was not required by the Constitution."

Declaration of war by the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Boo Radley said:

Noted, though I'd love see some more thoughtful work on the issue.

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The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.

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j-mac said:

Ok, let's see if this breaks through....


"The United States is at war—and has been, continuously, for ten years. This is a reality, of course. But more than that, it is a legality. Legally—constitutionally—the United States has been in a condition of declared war for ten years.

On September 18, 2001, Congress enacted into law, and President George W. Bush signed, what is arguably the broadest declaration of war in our nation’s history. “Whereas on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States,” begins the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF),



Constitutionally, the 9-18-01 Act is a Declaration of War. Congress, not the President, has the power “to declare war,” the result of a deliberate decision by the framers of the Constitution to transfer the traditional war-initiating executive power of a king to a representative, republican legislature. The President, the framers determined, should have only the power to counter attacks on the nation—to repel and respond—but not to initiate war on his own. The President, as Commander-in-Chief, would have complete military authority to conduct war, once declared: he, and not Congress, makes the decisions as to how to wage war, including all matters of military engagement, strategy, tactics, rules of engagement, diplomacy, armistice, foreign relations with allies and adversaries, and policies toward captured enemies (including detention, interrogation, and military punishment—the subjects of so much friction in recent years). The framers’ division was clear: Congress declares wars; the President fights and concludes them.

Congress’s power to declare war does not require the use of magic words. Congress need not say “declare” and it need not say “war,” and there may be practical and diplomatic reasons to couch a war declaration in terms more congenial to the regime of “international law,” which favors the language of individual and collective self-defense over the old-fashioned, indecorous language of war. But war it is. More to the point, constitutionally, the 9-18-01 Authorization for Use of Military Force is an exercise of Congress’s legislative power “to declare war.”

The AUMF is remarkable, even stunning, in its sweep. It accounts for and justifies nearly every military action in which the United States has engaged in the past ten years in fighting the war on terror. (Iraq was the subject of a separate, overlapping war-authorization. U.S. military action in Libya, as I will discuss, is not justified by the AUMF and is probably best classified as an unconstitutional war.)"

Declaration of War: Ten Years Later | Public Discourse

So, "Bush's wars" were constitutional, and Obama's war was not.

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Deuce said:

What I want to know is when we decided that terrorists were supervillains that can't be trusted to our normal justice system. When they talked about 9/11 trials for Al-Qaeda members being held in New York, people freaked out. We can't have the trial in Manhattan! Why the **** not? These guys are backwater murdering assholes with rifles and crappy homemade bombs, not Lex Luthor. A robot army is not going to crash through the wall in the middle of a trial and free them. There's Ocean's Eleven plan to bust them out of prison.

So why can't we put them on trial and toss them in prison alongside every other murderer? They don't deserve special treatment. Treating them specially just gives the impression that they are special.

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OldWorldOrder said:

al Qaeda has certainly lost. It's really not arguable. They lost basically a decade ago and have just been dick slapped every time they've tried to stand back up since.

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DaveFagan said:

If you try any of these $$sholes in Mainland US of A, they will be found not guilty because any evidence gained by torture is inadmissable. That is why they are being tried by Military Tribunals. The Tribunals leave the outcome without doubt, which should give pause to those who believe in "liberty and justice" for all. Two different justices. In the Military Tribunal, even newspaper articles are designated "classified" and cannot be submitted as evidence. Why don't our Media sycophants initiate a hue and cry aboout this failed justice system?

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Grant said:

Recall when there was a 'hue and cry' about Gitmo? At that time it was predicted that because of all the international fuss regarding the rights of terrorists fewer Islamists would be taken to Gitmo but would just be killed in a field somewhere. They were just not worth the bad publicity they received by going the traditional way.

This is the same situation. Rather than have huge trials where the terrorists will be given every benefit of the doubt they will be offed somewhere else. It is the right thing to do.

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Grant said:

Recall when there was a 'hue and cry' about Gitmo? At that time it was predicted that because of all the international fuss regarding the rights of terrorists fewer Islamists would be taken to Gitmo but would just be killed in a field somewhere. They were just not worth the bad publicity they received by going the traditional way.

This is the same situation. Rather than have huge trials where the terrorists will be given every benefit of the doubt they will be offed somewhere else. It is the right thing to do.

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DaveFagan said:

I'm not defending the terrorists. I'm stating, unambiguosly, that the Military Tribunals are pre-arranged frauds and that the Major Media should publicize that fact. Otherwise, maybe one of these days you or yours will be tried by a military Tribunal. "Liberty and Justice for all."

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Boo Radley said:

You start with the assumption that everyone held is a terrorist. What if that assumption is false? Due process is largely in place to pretext the wrongly accused. We do know we have gotten it wrong. Does that matter to you?

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Boo Radley said:

You start with the assumption that everyone held is a terrorist. What if that assumption is false? Due process is largely in place to pretext the wrongly accused. We do know we have gotten it wrong. Does that matter to you?

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Grant said:

We may have gotten it wrong in many wars, but war is Hell. We didn't arrest Japanese or the Nazis on the battlefield to bring them for trial, why should it be different for other enemy combatants?

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Boo Radley said:

Those were nations, and. As such, not comparable. They largely also didn't face a never ending war. But two things:

1. Not everyone we have was captured on a"battlefield."

2. We did things wrong from time to time during WWII. Being done doesn't wrong right.

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Grant said:

When its one side against the other nationhood becomes less important.

A battlefield can be anyplace where there is a confrontation between a terrorist and a member of the allied forces. It doesn't necessary have to take place on a field.

We did the main thing right in WWII. We won. That is always and forever the goal.

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j-mac said:

Just a note back at ya....:

"A declaration of war is a formal declaration issued by a national government indicating that a state of war exists between that nation and another. For the United States, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says "Congress shall have power to ... declare War". However, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation must have in order to be considered a "Declaration of War" nor does the Constitution itself use this term. Many[who?] have postulated "Declaration(s) of War" must contain that phrase as or within the title. Others oppose that reasoning. In the courts, the United States First Circuit Court of Appeals in Doe vs. Bush said: "[T]he text of the October Resolution itself spells out justifications for a war and frames itself as an 'authorization' of such a war."[1] in effect saying an authorization suffices for declaration and what some may view as a formal Congressional "Declaration of War" was not required by the Constitution."

Declaration of war by the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Boo Radley said:

It's about what it is or not. We can have a war against organized crime, but that doesn't mean we should follow the rules of traditional war without admitting differences.

And because we won doesn't make wrongs right, or tell us if we could have still won without doing wrong.

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j-mac said:

Ok, let's see if this breaks through....


"The United States is at war—and has been, continuously, for ten years. This is a reality, of course. But more than that, it is a legality. Legally—constitutionally—the United States has been in a condition of declared war for ten years.

On September 18, 2001, Congress enacted into law, and President George W. Bush signed, what is arguably the broadest declaration of war in our nation’s history. “Whereas on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States,” begins the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF),



Constitutionally, the 9-18-01 Act is a Declaration of War. Congress, not the President, has the power “to declare war,” the result of a deliberate decision by the framers of the Constitution to transfer the traditional war-initiating executive power of a king to a representative, republican legislature. The President, the framers determined, should have only the power to counter attacks on the nation—to repel and respond—but not to initiate war on his own. The President, as Commander-in-Chief, would have complete military authority to conduct war, once declared: he, and not Congress, makes the decisions as to how to wage war, including all matters of military engagement, strategy, tactics, rules of engagement, diplomacy, armistice, foreign relations with allies and adversaries, and policies toward captured enemies (including detention, interrogation, and military punishment—the subjects of so much friction in recent years). The framers’ division was clear: Congress declares wars; the President fights and concludes them.

Congress’s power to declare war does not require the use of magic words. Congress need not say “declare” and it need not say “war,” and there may be practical and diplomatic reasons to couch a war declaration in terms more congenial to the regime of “international law,” which favors the language of individual and collective self-defense over the old-fashioned, indecorous language of war. But war it is. More to the point, constitutionally, the 9-18-01 Authorization for Use of Military Force is an exercise of Congress’s legislative power “to declare war.”

The AUMF is remarkable, even stunning, in its sweep. It accounts for and justifies nearly every military action in which the United States has engaged in the past ten years in fighting the war on terror. (Iraq was the subject of a separate, overlapping war-authorization. U.S. military action in Libya, as I will discuss, is not justified by the AUMF and is probably best classified as an unconstitutional war.)"

Declaration of War: Ten Years Later | Public Discourse

So, "Bush's wars" were constitutional, and Obama's war was not.

Click to expand...

OldWorldOrder said:

al Qaeda has certainly lost. It's really not arguable. They lost basically a decade ago and have just been dick slapped every time they've tried to stand back up since.

Click to expand...

DaveFagan said:

I'm not defending the terrorists. I'm stating, unambiguosly, that the Military Tribunals are pre-arranged frauds and that the Major Media should publicize that fact. Otherwise, maybe one of these days you or yours will be tried by a military Tribunal. "Liberty and Justice for all."

Click to expand...

j-mac said:

Ok, let's see if this breaks through....


"The United States is at war—and has been, continuously, for ten years. This is a reality, of course. But more than that, it is a legality. Legally—constitutionally—the United States has been in a condition of declared war for ten years.

On September 18, 2001, Congress enacted into law, and President George W. Bush signed, what is arguably the broadest declaration of war in our nation’s history. “Whereas on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States,” begins the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF),



Constitutionally, the 9-18-01 Act is a Declaration of War. Congress, not the President, has the power “to declare war,” the result of a deliberate decision by the framers of the Constitution to transfer the traditional war-initiating executive power of a king to a representative, republican legislature. The President, the framers determined, should have only the power to counter attacks on the nation—to repel and respond—but not to initiate war on his own. The President, as Commander-in-Chief, would have complete military authority to conduct war, once declared: he, and not Congress, makes the decisions as to how to wage war, including all matters of military engagement, strategy, tactics, rules of engagement, diplomacy, armistice, foreign relations with allies and adversaries, and policies toward captured enemies (including detention, interrogation, and military punishment—the subjects of so much friction in recent years). The framers’ division was clear: Congress declares wars; the President fights and concludes them.

Congress’s power to declare war does not require the use of magic words. Congress need not say “declare” and it need not say “war,” and there may be practical and diplomatic reasons to couch a war declaration in terms more congenial to the regime of “international law,” which favors the language of individual and collective self-defense over the old-fashioned, indecorous language of war. But war it is. More to the point, constitutionally, the 9-18-01 Authorization for Use of Military Force is an exercise of Congress’s legislative power “to declare war.”

The AUMF is remarkable, even stunning, in its sweep. It accounts for and justifies nearly every military action in which the United States has engaged in the past ten years in fighting the war on terror. (Iraq was the subject of a separate, overlapping war-authorization. U.S. military action in Libya, as I will discuss, is not justified by the AUMF and is probably best classified as an unconstitutional war.)"

Declaration of War: Ten Years Later | Public Discourse

So, "Bush's wars" were constitutional, and Obama's war was not.

Click to expand...

Gaius46 said:

If this is the case then isn't the United States obligated to treat those captured in the war on terror as POWs and thus entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions?

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Grant said:

Yes, it's great to sit back and point out the shortcomings of those who fought and died during WWII, and we can enjoy our philosophical accusations comfortable in the knowledge that they have already won it for us and that we don't have to get our hands dirty.

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Diogenes said:

No. The GC lays out the requirements: wear uniforms or other identification; don't hide behind civilians; don't fight from hospitals, schools, churches; etc. If they don't follow those rules of war, they are illegal combatants and can be summarily executed. Although the GC is vague on whether they can be interrogated first...

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Grant said:

They are actually growing in Iraq, Libya and Syria and of course the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over Egypt. The Taliban is also poised to take over as soon as the US pulls out.

While the formalities of war are quite important to many in the Democracies, Islamists just wait and wear down their enemies. The west, in many ways. has not changed their strategies much since WWII.

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Henry David said:

No, they just opened under new management in Africa. That's why we're operating there, "getting rid of" all those bogeymen.

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Hell, another 30 or 40 years we will have killed every camel there, and the bad guys will have to walk everywhere. :mrgreen:

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