Gitmo detainee trials

[GarfieldtheCat]

Time article

The so-called "20th hijacker" has had all charges against him dropped by the military convening authority. The reason? Because he was tortured, and evidence obtained by torture cannot be used.

A 2005 military investigation concluded Qahtani had been subject to abuse ? which included sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, intimidation by dogs, prolonged isolation and extremes of cold that, at one point, caused his pulse to drop to 35 beats per minute, requiring immediate hospitalization. No one was ever punished for having ordered the abuse or carrying it out. "The dismissal of charges clearly indicates the government's awareness that any and all statements obtained from Mohammad Qahtani were extracted by torture or the threat of torture," Gitanjali Guitierrez, his lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told TIME.

Looks like the military JAG's have finally gotten it together and decided to do this right, according to our laws, and not make it into a kangaroo court that Bush and his admin wanted.

Also, another judge barred the top legal military advisor from getting involved. He was the one that one JAG described as insisting on trying the "sexy" cases first, and to make sure that there were no acquittals. The judge ruled

that Hartmann's statements had overstepped the bounds of neutrality required of his official role, a ruling that could limit Hartmann's oversight in other Guantanamo cases as well.

Hopefully this will continue going forward, and everything will be above-board and according to the law.

Now the question is, what do they do now? Since government has now tainted the case against this person (and probably others as well), they can't be tried. So what now? Hold them forever without a trial?

This is what happens when Bush/Cheney decide to take matters into their own hands, and break the law.

 

[fskimospy]

This reminds me of the head of the guantanamo trials resigning and things coming to light of him saying "we can't acquit these people after holding them for so long, we HAVE to have convictions."

They themselves know how screwed they are with these trials because they've spent the last 6 years or so torturing these people. Now we're in a position where we're probably going to have to let some people go who really deserve to be in jail because our government was so incompetent and so dismissive of the rule of law. I guess at least the upside is hopefully that our government will be taught a lesson from all this, and this will be another nail in the coffin of their torture policies.

 

[LtPage1]

Well, that's depressing. We broke the law, and now will have to continue to violate all kinds of laws in order to keep this guy from being released. Utterly indefensible bullshit. I bet we'll just render him to Syria or something and have him shot when the media isn't paying attention.

Shameful. The rule of law has become a running joke.

 

[Craig234]

Let them go, and arrest them if they do something wrong. Better yet, offer them the little treatment that can be done for the unfortunately incurable effects of the torture, too.

The best thing we could do for justice and our reputation would be to at least admit error (as much as Buh and Cheney deserve to go before the Hague as war criminals).

Unfortunately, the people who support them see a better solution, just keep pursuing power so that the wrongs can be covered up and continued and others' opinion is unimportant.

 

[Butterbean]

Looking at the "torture logs" the kids at U of Wisconsin had things much worse:

"One eye witness speaking on condition of anonymity, who is a member of the UW Greek community but not associated with Sigma Phi Epsilon, said the bucket contained a ?slurry of vomit (and) urine with large brown chunks that could have been feces? and was dumped on three members? heads. The source said he was standing across the street with an unobstructed view and could smell the contents of the bucket that made two of the students vomit."

http://badgerherald.com/news/2..._probes_frat_after.php

al-Kahtani got off quite light considering his actions with Ata.

The log, titled SECRET ORCON INTERROGATION LOG DETAINEE 063, offers a daily, detailed view of the interrogation techniques used to obtain confession from him from November 23, 2002, to January 11, 2003. These include the following:

Restraint on a swivel chair for long periods
Deprivation of sleep for long periods
Loud music and white noise played to prevent the detainee from sleeping
Various humiliations, such as training the detainee to act as a dog
Lowering the temperature in the room, then throwing water to the detainee's face
Forcing the detainee to pray to Osama Bin Laden
Various interrogation techniques described as "pride & ego down", "circumstantial evidence", "fear-up", or "Al Qaeda falling apart"

That's hardly "OMG" type torture. If you read the logs he was treated quite welll along the way.

Off course Time magazine hypes things up to sound worse than they are. They worked with a phony "human rights" group (workers had relatives who were insurgents in prison) to get Haditha story inflated (most charges been getting dropped so far).

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/interview-with-times-tim-mcguirk

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

@Butterbean- Nice strawman, and way to throw out something totally unrelated.

Are you seriously comparing a voluntary hazing ritual, where those idiot kids could quit anytime they wanted, to being imprisoned and tortured for years without any hope for it ever stopping or being released?

Are you real? Did you even read the article?

From TFA:

extremes of cold that, at one point, caused his pulse to drop to 35 beats per minute, requiring immediate hospitalization

He was so hypothermic his pulse was 35bpm. Would you like to volunteer to go through this, to see what you think?

I am sorry that you live in a fantasy world, where everything that the US does is "right", and anything that goes wrong is blamed on "corrupt lawyers, media, and Democrats" as you say.

But in reality, torture (any torture, not just some types of torture) is illegal. And it is quite interesting that you bring up WWII, since even though the Japanese did torture our POW's, we didn't torture their POW's. And I seem to have read somewhere that we won that war, with a democratic president even.

So if was good enough not to stoop to illegal acts and drop ourselves to the level of our enemy then, why is OK now? Would you like to answer that please?

 

[CitizenKain]

Originally posted by: Butterbean
Looking at the "torture logs" the kids at U of Wisconsin had things much worse:

"One eye witness speaking on condition of anonymity, who is a member of the UW Greek community but not associated with Sigma Phi Epsilon, said the bucket contained a ?slurry of vomit (and) urine with large brown chunks that could have been feces? and was dumped on three members? heads. The source said he was standing across the street with an unobstructed view and could smell the contents of the bucket that made two of the students vomit."

http://badgerherald.com/news/2..._probes_frat_after.php

al-Kahtani got off quite light considering his actions with Ata.

The log, titled SECRET ORCON INTERROGATION LOG DETAINEE 063, offers a daily, detailed view of the interrogation techniques used to obtain confession from him from November 23, 2002, to January 11, 2003. These include the following:

Restraint on a swivel chair for long periods
Deprivation of sleep for long periods
Loud music and white noise played to prevent the detainee from sleeping
Various humiliations, such as training the detainee to act as a dog
Lowering the temperature in the room, then throwing water to the detainee's face
Forcing the detainee to pray to Osama Bin Laden
Various interrogation techniques described as "pride & ego down", "circumstantial evidence", "fear-up", or "Al Qaeda falling apart"

That's hardly "OMG" type torture. If you read the logs he was treated quite welll along the way.

Off course Time magazine hypes things up to sound worse than they are. They worked with a phony "human rights" group (workers had relatives who were insurgents in prison) to get Haditha story inflated (most charges been getting dropped so far).

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/interview-with-times-tim-mcguirk

If it is so minor, you should sign up for it.

Originally posted by: Butterbean
Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

If you believe that, then you are retarded.

 

[StageLeft]

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

Conjecture. When you use evil to fight evil, you're no better than what you fight.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Craig234
Let them go, and arrest them if they do something wrong. Better yet, offer them the little treatment that can be done for the unfortunately incurable effects of the torture, too.

The best thing we could do for justice and our reputation would be to at least admit error (as much as Buh and Cheney deserve to go before the Hague as war criminals).

Unfortunately, the people who support them see a better solution, just keep pursuing power so that the wrongs can be covered up and continued and others' opinion is unimportant.

We have already done that and killed them or recaptured them on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. Probably the best option at this point. Let them go and the truely bad seeds will end up dead to our military soon enough.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

Conjecture. When you use evil to fight evil, you're no better than what you fight.

We used evil to fight the Nazi's and Japanese. We bombed civilian targets daily and burned them out of house and home in an attempt to break their will to fight. It worked.

 

[senseamp]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

Conjecture. When you use evil to fight evil, you're no better than what you fight.

We used evil to fight the Nazi's and Japanese. We bombed civilian targets daily and burned them out of house and home in an attempt to break their will to fight. It worked.

And yet we managed to treat prisoners with dignity that reflected our values.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

Conjecture. When you use evil to fight evil, you're no better than what you fight.

We used evil to fight the Nazi's and Japanese. We bombed civilian targets daily and burned them out of house and home in an attempt to break their will to fight. It worked.

The Germans fought until so much of their country had been destroyed that effective communication between their army units had broken down. I am unaware of any other country in history that fought that long and that hard. So how did breaking their will to fight work again? Oh yeah, it didn't. All we got for our efforts was a black mark on our history. I guess nuking Japan a few times worked better, but that was more of a shock and awe thing. The firebombing of Tokyo and other things in no way impacted their desire to keep fighting.

Oh, and Butterbean it's good to see you're as much of a moron about torture as you are about gay rights.

 

[Lemon law]

I very much agree with senseamp when he said--And yet we managed to treat prisoners with dignity that reflected our values.

But that was in a conventional war in which combatant members of another State's armed forces, once captured, are afforded the rights of the Geneva convention, basically they will retain the status of prisoners without criminality, and will be released back to their own country after the war ends. But the sole justification for that indefinite detention, capture, and arrest lies in the uniform they wear.

Yet in a war on terror, the lines are admittedly not that clear cut. But still in quite a few areas, what GWB&co has done totally runs against the grain of " American Values" One of our most cherished constitution values lies in a speedy trial
with a requirement that a suspect must be charged in 24 hours. With an innocent and until proven guilty presumption with a right to legal council. Its right there in our bill of rights. And many of these Gitmo detainees were simply dragooned of the streets and there is now incontrovertible evidence many were totally innocent. When it takes five years or better to just establish simple basic facts like these, its totally monstrously inhumane to subject any human to that. At that same time we violate provisions of the Geneva convention while still maintaining these people are not fully covered. After all, it was GWB who declared there is a war on terrorism which in theory now makes every detainee fully covered. And then to really get dubious, we say these are not prisoners, but criminals. And they will be tried by the USA when the USA has no discernible jurisdiction because the alleged crimes did not occur on US soil in almost all cases. And lastly we must ask what if any actionable intelligence one of these detainees retains after even a month of detention.

In this whole process, we just become what we are fighting.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

Conjecture. When you use evil to fight evil, you're no better than what you fight.

We used evil to fight the Nazi's and Japanese. We bombed civilian targets daily and burned them out of house and home in an attempt to break their will to fight. It worked.

The Germans fought until so much of their country had been destroyed that effective communication between their army units had broken down. I am unaware of any other country in history that fought that long and that hard. So how did breaking their will to fight work again? Oh yeah, it didn't. All we got for our efforts was a black mark on our history. I guess nuking Japan a few times worked better, but that was more of a shock and awe thing. The firebombing of Tokyo and other things in no way impacted their desire to keep fighting.

Oh, and Butterbean it's good to see you're as much of a moron about torture as you are about gay rights.

How clever.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Its quite right to say WWII would have been lost if todays corrupt lawyers, media and Dems who identify with the terorists (and cheer their escapes) were present.

Conjecture. When you use evil to fight evil, you're no better than what you fight.

We used evil to fight the Nazi's and Japanese. We bombed civilian targets daily and burned them out of house and home in an attempt to break their will to fight. It worked.

The Germans fought until so much of their country had been destroyed that effective communication between their army units had broken down. I am unaware of any other country in history that fought that long and that hard. So how did breaking their will to fight work again? Oh yeah, it didn't. All we got for our efforts was a black mark on our history. I guess nuking Japan a few times worked better, but that was more of a shock and awe thing. The firebombing of Tokyo and other things in no way impacted their desire to keep fighting.

Oh, and Butterbean it's good to see you're as much of a moron about torture as you are about gay rights.

How clever.

Thanks! It's good to know that someone's reading what I write.

 

[Lemon law]

Now that we have identified the twin metrics of what amounts to the classic battle of economies waged in WW2, we can effective isolate them by calling them the will to win and preventing the enemy from keeping up their supply of war material.

While the fear of the damage seems effective in preventing any conflict, once a war is started, the populace never seems to surrender as long as hope remains. And in WW2, with both Germany and Japan, the conflict was basically only over when their economic ability to wage war was basically kaput.

So its basically a case, that the worse we treat prisoners, the more motivated our enemies become. And that makes these GWB&co moral depravities both counterproductive and costly.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Sure is funny that Butterbean comes in, spews some random BS lies, and then never defends his post after it's torn to shreds.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Oh, and Butterbean it's good to see you're as much of a moron about torture as you are about gay rights.

How clever.

Irony of the month was already awarded, but you get the weekly award.

Originally posted by: eskimospy
Thanks! It's good to know that someone's reading what I write.

I do, and am consistently of the opinion it's well said, but rarely respond saying so.