AMERICAblog: Obama considering indefinite detention of some Gitmo detainees
devlzadvocate
· 5 months ago
I looked up the definition of "inertia" in the dictionary and there was a picture of Barack Obama.
mf_roe
· 5 months ago
Fostering fear of an all powerfully bogeyman is a central feature of intimidation based systems, religion being a prime example. Christianity is founded on fear of the Devil with Jesus running a protection racket. The current rulers of our once free country need a super naturally powerful adversary to justify their treasonous destruction of our Liberties. Fear is a necessary part of our coping mechanism, but when it overpowers our moral duty to uphold our values it becomes self-destructive. The brave face their fears, cowards run and hide from their's.
Of all the disappointments I have with Obama, the embracing of Big Brother ism is the most telling. Read your Orwell, see what he has to say about the use of false options and false friends.
ComradeRutherford
· 5 months ago
Many Guantanamo prisoners can not be tried in the US court system because they were tortured by the Bush Administration which results in there being no reliable evidence against them.
And since the GOP leadership has made it clear that these non-prosecutable prisoners will never be released, thier henchmen, the Democratic Party, will dutifully follow their orders.
Therefore Obama will never release the tortured prisoners in Guantanamo - because he is under strict orders from his Republican masters.
Human rights has nothing on the Republican Leadership.
TheOriginalLiz
· 5 months ago
More and more I feel that this is not the person I thought I voted for. What happened? Is it that he sold out after being elected and seeing the political climate or was he playing us for fools the whole campaign?
rashanradar
· 5 months ago
Of course he's not who you voted for. He's a slick hustler. When he ran for President, I told myself and my friends -- "now there's an absolutely perfect leader -- he's got everything right and everything going for him."
So I voted against him -- because he was so perfect I knew it was a fake.
Valentinefrey
· 5 months ago
So you voted for McCain who really is what he appears to be - General Turgidson.
rashanradar
· 5 months ago
The US could use a few more men like Buck Turgidson.
Valentinefrey
· 5 months ago
Ah yes and then we could be so much more like, I don't know, Albania?
BeccaMorn
· 5 months ago
I call it "thinking with your sphincter"...although it could equally be considered "...your adrenal gland."
The argument for perpetual imprisonment seems to originate from a whole series of assumptions that pretend to logic, but in fact are purely emotional and fear-driven. It's like they all immediately assume that a 'suspected terrorist' found not-guilty (but actually 100% guilty of being totally evil) would be released right in their neighborhood and handed a crate of C4 to play with.
No presumption of innocence. No rational realization that prisoners who were hoovered up in Asia would, in fact, most likely be returned home or some other 3rd-party country.
And most of all, an outight refusal to see these men, women, and children in our prisons (or those of our proxies) as actual human beings.
Instead, they would have us all become just like the monsters we purport to hate.
Busboy
· 5 months ago
John, you're a good thinker; but, I think your brain is on "hold" on this one. There's an ongoing security operation. You blow operatives cover if you have a trial. The guy in gitmo would sever your head if he had 10 minutes alone with you and a butcher knife. Your solution is to let him go and put him up in a condo next to yours? He can't be prosecuted because of the security risk. So, they put him in your backyard? There's a whole lot of this equation that Obama sees that is invisible to you and me.
AdmNaismith
· 5 months ago
Almost to a man, those detainees were not dangerous when they were imprisoned. The reason they can't be put on trial is because they didn't do anything. Nothing would make the US look worse that trying a bunch of goatherd who were fingered by corrupt local warlords for 30 pieces of Bush/Cheney bounty.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
The guy in gitmo would sever your head if he had 10 minutes alone with you and a butcher knife. Your solution is to let him go and put him up in a condo next to yours?
Lots more dangerous, violent crackpots living next door to us already. For example, that crackpot minister who is asking his congregation to bring their guns to church. They scare me a hell of a lot more than the Guantanamo detainees as I know the extreme right wingers are and have always been violently off their rockers.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
Lets not forget that Cheney is someone's neighbor.
John Aravosis
· 5 months ago
Really? How does does the FBI prosecute the mafia? Wait until we catch them "all"? How do we prosecute US spies?
As for how "dangerous" the guy in Gitmo is, I'm sorry, but that sounds like me in the days after September 11, during the time I was dealing with, what I later found out to be, PTSD induced by fearing the entire city was going to be nuked. They're so much more dangerous than, what? The gang members down the street who wont' let me walk in my neighborhood after dark? The 11 year olds with knives who would sooner slit your throat to move up the ranks?
This 'ooh they're so much more dangerous" stuff sounds like some 17th century woman talking about getting vapors (perhaps I'm mixing my metaphors). My point is, really wimpy characters in stereotypical movies talk like that. From grown me and women in America, it's embarrassing.
Valentinefrey
· 5 months ago
Busboy –
Leave your straw man arguments. This isn’t the sixties: No one thinks that that there aren’t lots of nasty religious fanatics who would happily kill you if given the chance. The naivete we face today is on the part of the people who really seem to think that the authorities should be given all the power they need to maintain security because after all if you're innocent, you have nothing to hide.
The main point is that there's a tradeoff between security and freedom. The number of Americans who have died since 2000 in terrorism related deaths (I’m counting the U.S.S. Cole and September 11 attacks as well as all the US combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan) is less than the number of Americans who have died in domestic violence (about 1500 a year according to the ABA). A lot of those domestic violence deaths could have been prevented if every time someone threatened to kill their lover or spouse the police took them at their word and incarcerated them as if they had actually carried out their threat. But there's a reason we don't do that - because a society where the intention (an intention that is left to be assessed not by some sort of omniscient infallible being but by other people with fallible knowledge and mixed motives) is taken for the deed would not be a free society.
The potential for mistakes and abuse is already high when innocence or guilt of people’s deeds are in question, when we start to judge potential deeds the difficulties are insurmountable. No one can sanely advocate giving the government the power of indefinite detention without trial for people based on crimes that they are thinking about committing. A government that has that power will abuse that power. That's just the nature of power.
In our system, if they can prove you committed a crime then they can put you in jail. If they can't they let you go. That's a good thing.
So we don’t live in perfect safety because of what we would have to give up to get it.
That's the price of living in a free society. Freedom (as they say) isn't free.
JustAGuy
· 5 months ago
What I find so disappointing is that these assertions of extra-constitutional power are coming from a former constitutional law professor - someone who, presumably, cared so much about the Law and the Constitution that he wanted to teach it to others.
Of all the people in the Obama adminstration, Barak Obama himself Knows Better.
So much for the Audacity of Hope. We seem to be left with nothing but audacity itself.
-Sean
Kevin Hernandez
· 5 months ago
No Civil liberties group would say that. That's like the Quakers calling for war. Either They are repeating the same lies of the last administration or THEY are just saying what THEY already said.
postdamnit
· 5 months ago
Is this some of the change that Obama was talking about when he was campaigning for the Presidency? Sounds like the same ol' Bush and Cheney crap to me.
Are we sure that Bush has in fact left the WH? I am beginning to wonder about that.
offspring
· 5 months ago
what the hell kind of "change" is this, it is like he is continuing all of bush's programs
Butch1
· 5 months ago
Yes, wimpy. Cowards who bluster and pretend how tough they are to only put their tail inbetween their knees and whimper. ====================================== "a senior Defense official said some detainees who were picked up as enemy combatants cannot be charged with war crimes or terrorism even though they are believed to pose a threat." ======================================= This is utter bull sh*t! Why did we try all the serial killers and what of Timothy McVeigh? Why did we try him? Obama has turned into such a disappointment. Constitutional Law professor, my arse.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
Constitutional Law professor, my arse.
Sheeze! Hate to admit it and find it a bitter pill but those are my thoughts too. The vile argument that they aren't citizens and don't deserve the protection of Constitution is crap. It says all men.
As for too dangerous, yeah, like they can tear down steel bars and smash through cement walls, impervious to bullets, barbed and razor wire. What rediculous bullshit. It's like those absurd stories of how Charlie Manson and Richarad Ramierz had dangerous hypnotic powers that could take over a jury and order them to start killing each other.
Sometimes so deeply embarrassing to be an American. I was hoping the shame would end when Obama took office. Aaauuuuggghhh!
Butch1
· 5 months ago
I, as well, but it appears to be more of the same, just repackaged in a democratic ribbon.
Indigo
· 5 months ago
I continue to believe that someone / something owns Obama. What it is I don't know but he's not his own man.
Zorba
· 5 months ago
Perhaps the Chicago political machine? This may or may not be true, but having grown up in the St. Louis and Southern Illinois area, and having spent a lot of time in Chicago because I have close relatives there, I have always been more than aware of the "machine" in Chicago, and consequently had a lot of misgivings about Obama from the first because he came up in Chicago politics. Damned few Democrats come up through Illinois politics without being tainted by, and owing something to, the Chicago political machine. (It's even true for more than a few of the Republicans in Illinois.) Maybe Paul Simon and Adlai Stevenson were "clean," but that's about it. I don't know- it's just a theory. (And don't think that Rahm Emanuel is untainted by typical Illinois politics, either- he may be worse.)
Indigo
· 5 months ago
Yes, that could be it. I grew up in near-by northern Indiana. I never feared Chicago politics nor did I think they were all that corrupt since "things got done." My grandfather, for example, died and was buried on the south side in 1927 but that didn't stop him from voting for FDR! On the national scale it looks a little more scary than it did growing up inside the Chicago-influence bubble.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
he's not his own man.
Yeah, get that feeling too. Want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the reality is, does it matter? The results are the same. And if he isn't his own man, isn't that his own fault, too weak and sold out, or let himself be co-opted.
Indigo
· 5 months ago
I'm pixilated about it. Is he his own man? I dont think so. Maybe he was but he acts now like he's been pre-empted by somebody/something. Is it the Oval Office etheric presences? Or is it more like an unusually impressive Influence Peddler that we little people don't know about. Rockefellers? DuPonts? The Mellon Foundation? I don't know but I really suspect that something/somebody got to him. The darkest thought in my heart is that "friendly advice" went along the lines of "You won't join the roster that includes Lincoln and Kenndy if . . . " Maybe I shouldn't blog that fear that but that's what I fear.
Valentinefrey
· 5 months ago
Too late. We're watching you.
Indigo
· 5 months ago
Well, you're not doing a very good job of it. Just this morning, I fell and there was no one to help pick me up. If you're going to watch, at least be helpful!
Valentinefrey
· 5 months ago
Must have been some sort of software malfunction.
We're looking into it.
Please stand by.
Indigo
· 5 months ago
LOL!
Walt Kelly
· 5 months ago
we have met the enemy and he is us.
GoBlue
· 5 months ago
It's gall, John, not gaul, unless you're talking about the land that Julius Caesar divided into three parts.
psychodrew
· 5 months ago
I'm with the White House on this. If we have people that we know will go back into battle against us and if there is a legitimate reason for keeping them out of the criminal justice system, we should hold them. Has Al Qaeda admitted defeat? Technically, we are still at war with them.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
Technically, we are still at war with them.
Bullshit! War can only exist between states. This war rhetoric is bullshit whether it is the war on drugs, war on poverty or war on terror. We are at war with the states of Iraq and Afghanistan and those are illegal, criminal and unnecessary wars. 1.3 million Iraqis killed. several hundred thousand more Afghanis butchered by our side. Of what? Why? So that Bush/Cheney could gratify their bigotry and hatred of Arabs and Muslims who don't deserve ownership of the oil in the nations. If we aren't at war with Iraq and Afghanistan, why have we slaughtered their innocent civilians indescriminately and with impunity.
The big bullshitters, Bush/Cheney told us we are fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here on American soil. Yeah right like Saddam was going to send a million man army to invade America from the Atlantic, Pacific and up the Mississippi. Such an absurd parcel of lies. Or that they intended to turn our cities into smoking radioactive ruins. Even if Saddam or bin Laden had the nuclear bombs, they have no means of delivery.
9/11 was a fluke and the very worst they could possibly achieve; if Bush/Cheney had been alert it would not have happened and if we stay alert it cannot be repeated. Maybe Obama likes his naps too with instructions not to disturb him regardless.
HelenRainier
· 5 months ago
What legitimate reason/s can there be for keeping them out of the criminal justice system?
The criminal justice system has worked in the past for other war criminals, such as after World War II (the biggest armed conflict in the history of the world), and for others such as Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Why can't these people be tried in the American criminal justice system and if found guilty imprisoned at a federal supermax prison?
mf_roe
· 5 months ago
Exposure of the methods used by the treasonous Bush administration would cause a world wide demand for prosecution of the war criminals responsible, with so many Democrats complicit there would be a meltdown of our current government. Obama has become bush's "sin eater". Validating the actions of the past 8 years has marked Obama as a charlatan. At least Bush could plead not guilty due to mental defect, Obama is well on the way to the perfection of a strategy of being above the law due to the jurisdiction of the constitution not covering the special nature of terrorism.
NealB
· 5 months ago
Look at the heirarchy prescribed by the Constitution:
Senate (approves the Supreme Court) Supreme Court (approves/creates/obstructs legislation) President (loose cannon) House of Representatives (the "lower house")
The Constitution was written by frustrated men who wanted power. They created the Senate. Roman goodness, a source of power syrupy and eternal. They approve the Supreme Court. They can filibuster at will or convict the president and remove him from office. And at only two per state they're easily bought by wealthy corporations.
The Constitution not only foresaw the "special nature of terrorism," it created a pretty good system to capitalize on its 21st century manifestation.
mf_roe
· 5 months ago
When Bush called the Constitution "Just a piece of paper" he was right. The only thing that gives it power is the willingness of the citizens to demand that it be followed. I'm still looking for any indication of that, so far I've seen almost none. A blueprint is useless unless it is implemented.
psychodrew
· 5 months ago
I hardly think that the trials of the World War II war criminals could be anything akin to our justice system. Those trials were more like victor's justice.
I'm not saying that we can't hold prisoners in the US at US prisons. I whole-heartedly believe that. But this conflict is unlike any other in that we aren't at war with a state. We are at war with a non-state actor. We can't fight these people under conventions created to regulate conflicts between states.
I don't believe that we should have a system where one man gets to imprison another indefinitely. I believe that the president called for a system with some checks and balances. I wholeheartedly oppose torture and extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay. But I don't think that we should fight an unconventional enemy with one hand tied behind our backs.
HelenRainier
· 5 months ago
Our justice system hasn't undergone any radical changes (we still have a system of laws based on the US Constitution) and in fact I believe it was the United States were "in charge" of the Nuremburg Trials. They were designed on the American system of justice. All of the primary Allied nations had representatives acting as prosecutors and judges.
We certainly can't DISMISS Nuremburg as being inadequate. The whole damned world was literally at war and there were well in excess of 9 million killed. Those killed included those who were "targeted" due to hate -- such as Gypsies, homosexuals, trade unionists, mentally and physically handicapped, and Jews for starters. Add to that all of the innocent civilians who happened to be in the way. It was organized terrorism. That's what ALL war is.
I follow how you are thinking, but I respectfully disagree with that approach. We are supposed to be a nation of laws and jurisprudence. We are NOT conducting ourselves in accordance with our laws.
Can we all just stop obeying the laws now because our government chooses not to? There are now foreign governments who are depriving of their human rights and using the US conduct of the past eight years as their justification for doing so.
I no longer respect my government. It saddens me immensely as a United States Army veteran to say that.
I will always believe in that country that I was taught about my parents -- the ones who helped people of many other countries stop the world from tyranny on a world-wide scale. I will always defend my country against all enemies -- foreign and domestic. Our greatest enemy now is the domestic enemy we face within.
psychodrew
· 5 months ago
I understand and respect your point of view as well. The problem is that this conflict is unlike anything we have ever faced before. We are dealing with non-state actors and laws governing warfare weren't written with this kind of conflict in mind.
In Obama's speech last month, he referred to a legislative process to create the institutions necessary to handle these types of prisoners. Unlike Bush, this won't be about the executive branch asserting some authority it doesn't have with no Congressional or judicial oversight. I'm going to give the president the chance to lay out exactly what he wants to do before I cast judgment.
psychodrew
· 5 months ago
And let me add one more thing. Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Timothy McVeigh, and Terry Nichols were on US soil when they committed their crimes. Their cases were not nearly as messy and complex as what we have to deal with now.
trinu
· 5 months ago
Technically we NEVER were at war with them. Congress hasn't issued any declaration of War since WWII.
NealB
· 5 months ago
Obama's a boy doing what he's told to do by the old men in the Senate. They saw his star potential, but he wouldn't have been elected if they objected. Hillary would have been the same. Do the math and you see the Senate destroys Democracy.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
I wouldn't go around in public calling Obama a boy if I were you.
NealB
· 5 months ago
I mean it, of course, relatively speaking. Obama's young and relatively inexperienced; the Senate has become an institution of so-called "elected" leaders who somehow manage to serve almost for life (e.g. Lieberman who lost his primary, created his own party out of thin air, and miraculously was "elected" anyway by voters in Connecticut). Whatever Obama's oratorical gift, it's not hard to believe he's a tool of the snakes that infest Senate.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
I figured you meant it differently, which is why I didn't scald you. I was just pointing out how it sounded incase you were talking politics at a Starbucks tomorrow or something.
NealB
· 5 months ago
He's a boy. The Starbucks folks understand.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
I think this is the best post I have ever read on this site.
bob
· 5 months ago
during the campaign didn't Obama say that electing McCain would be choosing a third Bush/Cheney term? Looks like that's what we're getting anyway. I'm starting to wish Hillary had been the nominee
caphillprof
· 5 months ago
We have only one party and no real choices. Elections don't bring change. It's not really a democracy.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
Under the proposal, detainees considered too dangerous to prosecute or release would be kept in confinement in the U.S. or possibly overseas, two administration officials said Friday.
Gods! What a parcel of crap! Too dangerous in that the US government is terrified it can't convict them and justify is criminal, bigoted, abusive treatment and torture of these people. Their only real crime is being Arab or Muslim and hated by the Bush/Cheney administration and now another bigot in the Oval Office, Obama. Everyone is entitled to a trial under the American system of justice and must be released if they can't be brought to trial. The Guantanamo detainees can't be brought to trial because the only crime they committed is that bigots in this country hate them for no good reasons. If they are so-called recidivists, they damn well are entitled to that given what this goddamn nation has done to them and in fact, the word recidivist is inapplicable as almost all of them were not terrorists in the first place. Any that were can easily be convicted. What terrorizes Obama and Bush/Cheney before him is that the US will again be shown up to be just another despotic nation.
Busboy
· 5 months ago
Wow,... "Their only crime is being Arab or Muslim'? You are truly a serious "koolaid" kid.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
Wow,... "Their only crime is being Arab or Muslim'? You are truly a serious "koolaid" kid.
Okay, name the crimes they have committed against our nation and why they should be indefinitely imprisoned without a trial. Come on! Name them, 1, 2, 3. Only thing you have against them is their race and religion, hate them because they aren't like you. Maybe they are a danger in a small way to take up arms against us. After what we did to them, I can't blame them. But that is minor given that a most they would be just foot soldiers in the war of terror, at worst, suicide bombers, and at that more likely to kill more Arabs and Muslims than Americans.
Too dangerous? Crap! We brought the danger upon ourselves with our hatred of them.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
If they were guilty of anything else, surely we would try them for their crimes.
vkobaya
· 5 months ago
Exactly! We could prosecute if they were actually guilty. But we have nothing against them but our own bigotry. As I admitted, they may very well be a danger now, but if that is so, it is our own fault. Even if they are a danger, they are only single men, or small gangs at most. The idea that these few men can turn our cities into radioactive ruins is absurd. Where would they get the bombs? How would the deliver them? Grow up!
Busboy
· 5 months ago
wrong, troglodyte brain function impairing your reaso...
Jophus
· 5 months ago
Too evil for justice? America or the terrorists?
Busboy
· 5 months ago
I didn't mention evil. Why did you?
bluebear
· 5 months ago
What the hell does "too dangerous to prosecute mean"?
Where in American law is that concept written down?
Francis
· 5 months ago
blue - those them are weasel words - designed to satisfy the corporate news media and empower the 20% of Americans that run this country.
emjayay
· 5 months ago
What exactly is the point of the repeated twitters or tweets or whatever the hell they are thay are now appearing at the end of comments on this site? They are always just bits the original post or possibly comments.
RainbowPhoenix
· 5 months ago
What the hell does "too dangerous to prosecute" even mean? I would think that if they're so dangerous, that would be even more reason to prosecute them while keeping them on remand and under heavy guard.
ezpz
· 5 months ago
It probably means they know too much - first hand, as in they were tortured and watched others being tortured. O doesn't want to release photos to inflame the Arab world. Releasing detainees that will talk about their experience would surely inflame not only the Arab world, but the world at large.
Well our criminal justice system did a fine job with OJ, didn't it?
Malcolm
· 5 months ago
Excellent post, John, thanks. Isn't one of the problems here acceptance of the label "terrorist" for anyone our government says is a terrorist? Once the label is attached and unchallenged, all the rest follows. Surely a "terrorist" who can't be proved to have done an act properly characterized as terrorism, which doesn't include serving dinner to a convicted terrorist before his conviction and the like, is not a properly labeled "terrorist." We don't detain indefinitely and don't torture those who may have mowed the lawns or cleaned the apartments or cared for the children of domestic terrorists; the same is true of those who hired or worked with or attended the same churches as domestic terrorists, and those who may have driven domestic terrorists in buses, taxis, or trains. Under the Bush/Obama theory, we should be detaining and torturing all of these Americans to keep our country safe.
Topher
· 5 months ago
I absolutely agree with the sentiment of this letter. Well done and I am glad that the writer has attached only those matters relevant to the issue to it.
Lately, I have been laying awake trying to decide how I truly feel about all of this. In 1992, I worked for a political polling and research firm that helped to elect Bill Clinton and 26 of the democrats who rode his coattails. I believed in him and his policies and looked at him as the last great hope.
When he negotiated DADT, I was crushed. I, like so many others, interpreted the action to be the equivalent of "throwing us under the bus". I believed all the courting and wooing of us had had done during the campaign was a just political ploy to get in to office, and he would now forget about us.
Sixteen years later, and it feels as though the same thing is happening. Obama and his crowd plied us with promise and change, and we fell for the same old story.
There is a big difference, though, folks. As Clinton learned the first time; no matter what polling shows about public sentiment towards LGBT rights, it is difficult to push anything through a basically conservative (although professedly liberal) Congress, because they are all fearful of the backlash from the other side. Two years after Clinton was elected, he was faced with an uber-Conservative Republican majority who had used the "gay issue",among others, to win in their districts.
I believe Obama is afraid of that happening again. The President is as brilliant at politics, if not more so than the Clintons, and is trying to learn from ALL our past mistakes.
There is so much potential Change on his plate right now, that he realizes he will need some of the less dedicated and efficient Democrats on his side two years from now to implement most of his sweeping programs. If the deal has to be cut politically to make that happen in two years when he is not only in a position of power, but also a position in which the nation and ultimately Congress as a whole recognizes he is a player with STAYING power, then so be it.
In that time, hopefully his economic and international programs will have borne out success, and Obama can sit back and focus on some of the serious civil rights issues we are facing domestically.
As a gay man, I wish this political game did not have to play out this way, but it does.
In the meantime, we can fight locally. We should take a chapter from our President's campaigning strategy book and "be on the ground in all fifty states". Even when there was no chance of victory, Obama had offices in the states were he knew he would lose, so the people who supported him there would feel included. If we do the same, and reach out to LGBT communities to encourage them to unite and fight on the local level in the most conservative and loneliest of strongholds, we may just give voice to a movement that will no longer be bound by the constraints of Washington politics.
For now, I too would suspend my DNC donations. Instead, donate that money to the local LGBT organizations. Consider again donating to the glorified rubber chicken dinner gala organizations, too. They are entrenched in the Washington game. Look to your local LGBT teen outreach centers, or LGBT Chambers of Commerce. These organizations all help people you know and see each day. Empowering them now will empower our future.
All Comments
Of all the disappointments I have with Obama, the embracing of Big Brother ism is the most telling. Read your Orwell, see what he has to say about the use of false options and false friends.
And since the GOP leadership has made it clear that these non-prosecutable prisoners will never be released, thier henchmen, the Democratic Party, will dutifully follow their orders.
Therefore Obama will never release the tortured prisoners in Guantanamo - because he is under strict orders from his Republican masters.
Human rights has nothing on the Republican Leadership.
So I voted against him -- because he was so perfect I knew it was a fake.
The argument for perpetual imprisonment seems to originate from a whole series of assumptions that pretend to logic, but in fact are purely emotional and fear-driven. It's like they all immediately assume that a 'suspected terrorist' found not-guilty (but actually 100% guilty of being totally evil) would be released right in their neighborhood and handed a crate of C4 to play with.
No presumption of innocence. No rational realization that prisoners who were hoovered up in Asia would, in fact, most likely be returned home or some other 3rd-party country.
And most of all, an outight refusal to see these men, women, and children in our prisons (or those of our proxies) as actual human beings.
Instead, they would have us all become just like the monsters we purport to hate.
The reason they can't be put on trial is because they didn't do anything.
Nothing would make the US look worse that trying a bunch of goatherd who were fingered by corrupt local warlords for 30 pieces of Bush/Cheney bounty.
Lots more dangerous, violent crackpots living next door to us already. For example, that crackpot minister who is asking his congregation to bring their guns to church. They scare me a hell of a lot more than the Guantanamo detainees as I know the extreme right wingers are and have always been violently off their rockers.
As for how "dangerous" the guy in Gitmo is, I'm sorry, but that sounds like me in the days after September 11, during the time I was dealing with, what I later found out to be, PTSD induced by fearing the entire city was going to be nuked. They're so much more dangerous than, what? The gang members down the street who wont' let me walk in my neighborhood after dark? The 11 year olds with knives who would sooner slit your throat to move up the ranks?
This 'ooh they're so much more dangerous" stuff sounds like some 17th century woman talking about getting vapors (perhaps I'm mixing my metaphors). My point is, really wimpy characters in stereotypical movies talk like that. From grown me and women in America, it's embarrassing.
Leave your straw man arguments. This isn’t the sixties: No one thinks that that there aren’t lots of nasty religious fanatics who would happily kill you if given the chance. The naivete we face today is on the part of the people who really seem to think that the authorities should be given all the power they need to maintain security because after all if you're innocent, you have nothing to hide.
The main point is that there's a tradeoff between security and freedom. The number of Americans who have died since 2000 in terrorism related deaths (I’m counting the U.S.S. Cole and September 11 attacks as well as all the US combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan) is less than the number of Americans who have died in domestic violence (about 1500 a year according to the ABA). A lot of those domestic violence deaths could have been prevented if every time someone threatened to kill their lover or spouse the police took them at their word and incarcerated them as if they had actually carried out their threat. But there's a reason we don't do that - because a society where the intention (an intention that is left to be assessed not by some sort of omniscient infallible being but by other people with fallible knowledge and mixed motives) is taken for the deed would not be a free society.
The potential for mistakes and abuse is already high when innocence or guilt of people’s deeds are in question, when we start to judge potential deeds the difficulties are insurmountable. No one can sanely advocate giving the government the power of indefinite detention without trial for people based on crimes that they are thinking about committing. A government that has that power will abuse that power. That's just the nature of power.
In our system, if they can prove you committed a crime then they can put you in jail. If they can't they let you go. That's a good thing.
So we don’t live in perfect safety because of what we would have to give up to get it.
That's the price of living in a free society. Freedom (as they say) isn't free.
Of all the people in the Obama adminstration, Barak Obama himself Knows Better.
So much for the Audacity of Hope. We seem to be left with nothing but audacity itself.
-Sean
Either They are repeating the same lies of the last administration or THEY are just saying what THEY already said.
Are we sure that Bush has in fact left the WH? I am beginning to wonder about that.
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"a senior Defense official said some detainees who were picked up as enemy combatants cannot be charged with war crimes or terrorism even though they are believed to pose a threat."
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This is utter bull sh*t! Why did we try all the serial killers and what of Timothy McVeigh? Why did we try him? Obama has turned into such a disappointment. Constitutional Law professor, my arse.
Sheeze! Hate to admit it and find it a bitter pill but those are my thoughts too. The vile argument that they aren't citizens and don't deserve the protection of Constitution is crap. It says all men.
As for too dangerous, yeah, like they can tear down steel bars and smash through cement walls, impervious to bullets, barbed and razor wire. What rediculous bullshit. It's like those absurd stories of how Charlie Manson and Richarad Ramierz had dangerous hypnotic powers that could take over a jury and order them to start killing each other.
Sometimes so deeply embarrassing to be an American. I was hoping the shame would end when Obama took office. Aaauuuuggghhh!
Yeah, get that feeling too. Want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the reality is, does it matter? The results are the same. And if he isn't his own man, isn't that his own fault, too weak and sold out, or let himself be co-opted.
We're looking into it.
Please stand by.
Bullshit! War can only exist between states. This war rhetoric is bullshit whether it is the war on drugs, war on poverty or war on terror. We are at war with the states of Iraq and Afghanistan and those are illegal, criminal and unnecessary wars. 1.3 million Iraqis killed. several hundred thousand more Afghanis butchered by our side. Of what? Why? So that Bush/Cheney could gratify their bigotry and hatred of Arabs and Muslims who don't deserve ownership of the oil in the nations. If we aren't at war with Iraq and Afghanistan, why have we slaughtered their innocent civilians indescriminately and with impunity.
The big bullshitters, Bush/Cheney told us we are fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here on American soil. Yeah right like Saddam was going to send a million man army to invade America from the Atlantic, Pacific and up the Mississippi. Such an absurd parcel of lies. Or that they intended to turn our cities into smoking radioactive ruins. Even if Saddam or bin Laden had the nuclear bombs, they have no means of delivery.
9/11 was a fluke and the very worst they could possibly achieve; if Bush/Cheney had been alert it would not have happened and if we stay alert it cannot be repeated. Maybe Obama likes his naps too with instructions not to disturb him regardless.
The criminal justice system has worked in the past for other war criminals, such as after World War II (the biggest armed conflict in the history of the world), and for others such as Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Why can't these people be tried in the American criminal justice system and if found guilty imprisoned at a federal supermax prison?
Senate (approves the Supreme Court)
Supreme Court (approves/creates/obstructs legislation)
President (loose cannon)
House of Representatives (the "lower house")
The Constitution was written by frustrated men who wanted power. They created the Senate. Roman goodness, a source of power syrupy and eternal. They approve the Supreme Court. They can filibuster at will or convict the president and remove him from office. And at only two per state they're easily bought by wealthy corporations.
The Constitution not only foresaw the "special nature of terrorism," it created a pretty good system to capitalize on its 21st century manifestation.
looking for any indication of that, so far I've seen almost none. A blueprint is useless unless it is implemented.
I'm not saying that we can't hold prisoners in the US at US prisons. I whole-heartedly believe that. But this conflict is unlike any other in that we aren't at war with a state. We are at war with a non-state actor. We can't fight these people under conventions created to regulate conflicts between states.
I don't believe that we should have a system where one man gets to imprison another indefinitely. I believe that the president called for a system with some checks and balances. I wholeheartedly oppose torture and extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay. But I don't think that we should fight an unconventional enemy with one hand tied behind our backs.
We certainly can't DISMISS Nuremburg as being inadequate. The whole damned world was literally at war and there were well in excess of 9 million killed. Those killed included those who were "targeted" due to hate -- such as Gypsies, homosexuals, trade unionists, mentally and physically handicapped, and Jews for starters. Add to that all of the innocent civilians who happened to be in the way. It was organized terrorism. That's what ALL war is.
I follow how you are thinking, but I respectfully disagree with that approach. We are supposed to be a nation of laws and jurisprudence. We are NOT conducting ourselves in accordance with our laws.
Can we all just stop obeying the laws now because our government chooses not to? There are now foreign governments who are depriving of their human rights and using the US conduct of the past eight years as their justification for doing so.
I no longer respect my government. It saddens me immensely as a United States Army veteran to say that.
I will always believe in that country that I was taught about my parents -- the ones who helped people of many other countries stop the world from tyranny on a world-wide scale. I will always defend my country against all enemies -- foreign and domestic. Our greatest enemy now is the domestic enemy we face within.
In Obama's speech last month, he referred to a legislative process to create the institutions necessary to handle these types of prisoners. Unlike Bush, this won't be about the executive branch asserting some authority it doesn't have with no Congressional or judicial oversight. I'm going to give the president the chance to lay out exactly what he wants to do before I cast judgment.
Gods! What a parcel of crap! Too dangerous in that the US government is terrified it can't convict them and justify is criminal, bigoted, abusive treatment and torture of these people. Their only real crime is being Arab or Muslim and hated by the Bush/Cheney administration and now another bigot in the Oval Office, Obama. Everyone is entitled to a trial under the American system of justice and must be released if they can't be brought to trial. The Guantanamo detainees can't be brought to trial because the only crime they committed is that bigots in this country hate them for no good reasons. If they are so-called recidivists, they damn well are entitled to that given what this goddamn nation has done to them and in fact, the word recidivist is inapplicable as almost all of them were not terrorists in the first place. Any that were can easily be convicted. What terrorizes Obama and Bush/Cheney before him is that the US will again be shown up to be just another despotic nation.
Okay, name the crimes they have committed against our nation and why they should be indefinitely imprisoned without a trial. Come on! Name them, 1, 2, 3. Only thing you have against them is their race and religion, hate them because they aren't like you. Maybe they are a danger in a small way to take up arms against us. After what we did to them, I can't blame them. But that is minor given that a most they would be just foot soldiers in the war of terror, at worst, suicide bombers, and at that more likely to kill more Arabs and Muslims than Americans.
Too dangerous? Crap! We brought the danger upon ourselves with our hatred of them.
Where in American law is that concept written down?
O doesn't want to release photos to inflame the Arab world. Releasing detainees that will talk about their experience would surely inflame not only the Arab world, but the world at large.
Or maybe it means their skin is just too brown.
Truly sickening!
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22497
Lately, I have been laying awake trying to decide how I truly feel about all of this. In 1992, I worked for a political polling and research firm that helped to elect Bill Clinton and 26 of the democrats who rode his coattails. I believed in him and his policies and looked at him as the last great hope.
When he negotiated DADT, I was crushed. I, like so many others, interpreted the action to be the equivalent of "throwing us under the bus". I believed all the courting and wooing of us had had done during the campaign was a just political ploy to get in to office, and he would now forget about us.
Sixteen years later, and it feels as though the same thing is happening. Obama and his crowd plied us with promise and change, and we fell for the same old story.
There is a big difference, though, folks. As Clinton learned the first time; no matter what polling shows about public sentiment towards LGBT rights, it is difficult to push anything through a basically conservative (although professedly liberal) Congress, because they are all fearful of the backlash from the other side. Two years after Clinton was elected, he was faced with an uber-Conservative Republican majority who had used the "gay issue",among others, to win in their districts.
I believe Obama is afraid of that happening again. The President is as brilliant at politics, if not more so than the Clintons, and is trying to learn from ALL our past mistakes.
There is so much potential Change on his plate right now, that he realizes he will need some of the less dedicated and efficient Democrats on his side two years from now to implement most of his sweeping programs. If the deal has to be cut politically to make that happen in two years when he is not only in a position of power, but also a position in which the nation and ultimately Congress as a whole recognizes he is a player with STAYING power, then so be it.
In that time, hopefully his economic and international programs will have borne out success, and Obama can sit back and focus on some of the serious civil rights issues we are facing domestically.
As a gay man, I wish this political game did not have to play out this way, but it does.
In the meantime, we can fight locally. We should take a chapter from our President's campaigning strategy book and "be on the ground in all fifty states". Even when there was no chance of victory, Obama had offices in the states were he knew he would lose, so the people who supported him there would feel included. If we do the same, and reach out to LGBT communities to encourage them to unite and fight on the local level in the most conservative and loneliest of strongholds, we may just give voice to a movement that will no longer be bound by the constraints of Washington politics.
For now, I too would suspend my DNC donations. Instead, donate that money to the local LGBT organizations. Consider again donating to the glorified rubber chicken dinner gala organizations, too. They are entrenched in the Washington game. Look to your local LGBT teen outreach centers, or LGBT Chambers of Commerce. These organizations all help people you know and see each day. Empowering them now will empower our future.
Enough for now.
Find out at http://gitmotourism.blogspot.com
I know it would make me fight.
* the US currently holds some dangerous terrorists at Gitmo
* the primary reason they are held there is to avoid US legal jurisdiction
* but Obama has to close Gitmo to save face -- he promised the world he would (especially the Muslim world)
* therefore, he is going to have to transfer them to US soil
* as soon as he does that, the terrorists might acquire habeus corpus rights
* so, to head that off, he is trying to establish a legal framework to hold them in US prisons without charging them
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/obama_th...