Were these people tortured after being found guilty by courts or before?
I don't accept that the U.S. ever tortured anyone as a matter of policy. If there is good reason to believe any individual violated any U.S. laws regarding torture by acting without authority, then let the relevant federal authorities charge that person with a crime.
For someone who says once great nation how could you advocate for limiting the rights of everybody.
As a lawyer, I know very well that the Constitution is the highest law in this country, and I have the greatest respect for it. I have never called for limiting the constitutional rights of anyone.
How could you justify torture for information before people were found guilty
As I said, I don't accept that the U.S. ever tortured anyone as a matter of policy. Torture is a crime under section 2340 of the U.S. Code and other federal laws, and I do not justify crimes.
Who was this who supposedly had a right to a trial but was denied that right? Aliens captured abroad and designated by the President as unlawful enemy combatants have no right to a trial in a U.S. court. Any trial they got would be before a military commission, in which there is no jury. But last I heard, none of them--even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the murders of almost 3,000 people on 9/11--had been tried. This should have happened a decade ago, and those convicted of war crimes imprisoned or quickly executed. Meanwhile, the U.S. is detaining them as long as hostilities continue, as it has the right to do under the laws of war.
These terrorists are outside the law--they are not entitled to any the protections the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war provide lawful, uniformed combatants who are taken prisoners of war. Even so, the U.S. graciously chose to extend them the same rights P.O.W.'s enjoy as to food, shelter, Red Cross inspections, medical care, etc.
You might to read Ex Parte Quirin, a 1942 Supreme Court decision dealing with six Nazi saboteurs who were landed here by U-boat but soon captured. It is still good law, and it goes into these subjects at length. For example, it contains a detailed discussion of the difference between lawful combatants--i.e. ordinary uniformed soldiers--and unlawful combatants like spies and saboteurs--and Islamist terrorists.
It might interest some people here to know just how lenient the U.S. has been with these bastards, compared to other times. One of the six Nazi saboteurs captured, Herbert Haupt, was an American citizen. Since he was charged by the federal government with capital crimes, surely he had the Fifth Amendment right you and I have to be indicted by a grand jury, right? And as a citizen, surely he had the right to a trial by a jury of his peers, right?
No to both. Once an American citizen sides with the enemy and commits war crimes against this country, said the Court, his citizenship will not help him. The six, despite the efforts of some of the best criminal defense lawyers in the U.S., were convicted of a number of war crimes by a military commission and sentenced to death. The Court only got the case by agreeing--against President Roosevelt's wishes--to hear the appeal of the men's habeas petition, which a lower federal court had denied. But it denied it too.
Only about two months after the six had landed here by U-boat, they reached the end of the line. Imagine things getting done so fast! In a building in New York City one summer day, one by one, on the hour, the six were executed in the electric chair, which had been brought there for that purpose. And U.S. citizen Haupt, without ever having seen the inside of a regular U.S. court, or having had a jury trial, went to his death just like the others. A couple members of his family in Florida who had briefly fed and sheltered him were convicted of treason and sent to prison for a long stretch.
It was not all that many years ago that most Americans had the courage of their convictions and were willing to act firmly and decisively against this country's enemies, instead of wringing their hands, gazing at their navels, and holding out the crying towel for them.