Top 10 things you did not know about Gitmo

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: ntdz

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
of course the government has yet to prove in a court of law that any of these people actually belong there, and the fact that an open place of legal limbo exists openly is very disconcerting. The acknowledgement a few eeks ago of secret prisons was much more frightening, however.

Did we have to prove in a court of law that German soldiers we captured during WW2 were in fact German soldiers before we put them in POW camps/jails?

How do you put people in POW camps if you don't have the war?

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
His Report
My fav lines
"There is now zero physical or mental abuse of prisoners in this facility by either guard personnel or military intelligence interrogators."
"Environmental conditions clearly exceed those provied to U.S. Military personnel on garrison active duty."

Let the Leftwing carping begin

And why would you believe that? Because McCaffrey says so? Because Bush says so? :shocked:

I'll give anything you say on this a lot more credence AFTER you've spent a year or two imprisoned at Guantanamo being "interrogated" under Bush's idea of humane treatement.

WHAT??? YOU're not worried about it because you've never done anything that would give the Bushwhackos a reason to hold and interrogate YOU???

Now, isn't that something special? You may want to recall that most of those currently held there havent been charged with any crime, either.

The list of those who really need this treatment start with George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolisa Rice, Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Fief, Carl Rove, Richard Perleman and the rest of the Bushwhackos who would even consider trading our humanity in their personal power games.

 

[feralkid]

There's a new Citi Bank Mastercard that earns 5 gitmo points for each dollar spent, and no annual fee. I'm tempted, but I hear that it's a little crowded this time of year, Maybe I'll stick with Hilton Hhonors instead.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: feralkid
There's a new Citi Bank Mastercard that earns 5 gitmo points for each dollar spent, and no annual fee. I'm tempted, but I hear that it's a little crowded this time of year, Maybe I'll stick with Hilton Hhonors instead.

hehe

 

[jackschmittusa]

In 1970, I was in Gitmo during the summer months. Well over 100° on many days. The heat and the sun just beat you down if you were not in an air conditioned space. I thought the place sucked big time, and I was one of the good guys.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
What a freakin shill.

Every few months someone comes along and manages to set a new low-bar for being a completely retarded party-line fluffer.

PJ here is definitely the current champ.

These Freepers/GOP Team Leaders have to do their whoring for the party. They're getting their Rovian lead from Meelyman et al in a very thinly-veiled attempt to garner support to save the Propagandist's ass which is firmly entrenched in a sling.

 

[Mo0o]

Any one seem the movie Road to Gitmo?

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: ntdz

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
of course the government has yet to prove in a court of law that any of these people actually belong there, and the fact that an open place of legal limbo exists openly is very disconcerting. The acknowledgement a few eeks ago of secret prisons was much more frightening, however.

Did we have to prove in a court of law that German soldiers we captured during WW2 were in fact German soldiers before we put them in POW camps/jails?

How do you put people in POW camps if you don't have the war?

Ask John McCain that question.
We never declared war in Vietnam.

BTW: not one country/orginization we have fought since 1918 has followed the Geneva conventions when it comes to the treatment of POWs. And yet a bunch of people on here seem to believe that enacting tougher interogation rules will endanger our soliders, let me give you a hint they are already endanger. Or do you not remember the bodies of dead Americans being draged through the streets of Somalia with wrist cuffs on them... why would you wrist cuff someone who is dead... could it be they weren't dead at that time? hmmm maybe. Or even more recent, how about the bodies of Blackwater Security employees hanging from a bridge in Iraq??

BTW: Check out our tough interrogation techniques.

According to a front-page article in the Times on Sept. 10, Pakistani authorities captured Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaida?s personnel director, a few months after the terror attack five years ago. Zubaydah, wounded in the confrontation, was turned over to American authorities and whisked away to Bangkok, Thailand, where FBI interrogators began questioning him.
According to unnamed sources in the Times article, the FBI and CIA clashed over whether to use soft or tough questioning methods on the captured terrorist. Because it had jurisdiction, the CIA took over and the inquisition began. Agency interrogators stripped Zubaydah, put him in a freezing room and subjected him to Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Not the vegetables, the rock group.
Apparently, the CIA sadists cranked up the volume on some Red Hot Chili Pepper recordings and Zubaydah broke.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

ProfJohn, your post is yet another non sequitur (though I'll point out that even the "gentle treatment" your post describes sounds awful - sitting in a freezing room, having foreign music blasted in your ears (imagine if it were the kind of music they play in Indian restaurants, for example) could be pretty nightmarish) since, as I've pointed out, we have killed more than 100 detainees since 9/11, dozens of whom have died by homicide, including the Iraqi Air Force Chief of Staff. The article I posted on Specialist Sean Baker is also illustrative of the fact that life at Guantanamo isn't all room service and mints on your pillow.

You can talk until you're blue in the face about how wonderfully we treat detainees, but facts are facts, and you're a coward for starting this topic, then refusing to confront reality. You can't possibly be a professor and be this obtuse, can you? Have you yourself ever put on a uniform (other than on Oct 31, and a Hardee's uniform doesn't count)?

 

[DealMonkey]

Even thought the treatment of prisoners has probably improved recently - my guess is the CIA and military handlers down there have already beat and tortured all the information they're going to get out of the prisoners - Gitmo is a stain on our country's moral justification for the war on terror.

 

[sandorski]

Remember the outrage early in the Iraq invasion when a room was found with car batteries(from France even!) and the story US POWs were being tortured there?

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: DonVito
...
Have you yourself ever put on a uniform (other than on Oct 31, and a Hardee's uniform doesn't count)?

While I don't agree with the theory (and I'm not suggesting you do either) that only people who have served in the military have valid opinions on certain topics, I WILL say that my observation has been that people who actually HAVE served in the military tend to have a lot more of a lukewarm opinion of the more extreme measures of fighting terrorism, especially our methods of detention. Of course this isn't universal, but I find it interesting that the people in government most reluctant to support what we're doing with our prisoners seem to be the people who should know the most about it, ie, military JAGs and leaders who have actually served in the military (not showing up for national guard duty doesn't count).

I don't like the phrase chickenhawk for a variety of reasons, but there is something to be said for listening to people who probably know what they are talking about...something that seems to fly right over the heads of Bush and his supporters. Listening to Bush administration officials lecture John McCain about torture is a pretty surreal experience, it reminds me of the time I saw some punk halfway through his BS in Computer Science start lecturing Ron Rivest (the 'R' in RSA) about cryptography.

 

[yllus]

While there's always that fairly absurd hypothetical situation in which Jack Bauer tortures critical information out of a detainee in the nick of time, it would seem that countless people in the military and civilian agencies that oversee national security agree that torture is not conducive to useful information. You just end up getting the prisoner saying whatever he thinks you want to hear.

As a general principle, the idea of using torture seems illogical. Our criminal system (I'm from Canada but we share the same fundamentals with the U.S.) believes in letting 99 guilty men go if it spares 1 innocent man from being wrongfully imprisoned, should our morals in war be any less just? (Keep in mind I support the Iraq war.) But in Gitmo in particular there seems to be a high amount of prisoners who are either just dumbasses given rifles, or completely innocent men handed over to the U.S. by Pakistan's security agency to fulfill some odd quota. There's simply no reward to the practice.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: DonVito
ProfJohn, your post is yet another non sequitur (though I'll point out that even the "gentle treatment" your post describes sounds awful - sitting in a freezing room, having foreign music blasted in your ears (imagine if it were the kind of music they play in Indian restaurants, for example) could be pretty nightmarish) since, as I've pointed out, we have killed more than 100 detainees since 9/11, dozens of whom have died by homicide, including the Iraqi Air Force Chief of Staff. The article I posted on Specialist Sean Baker is also illustrative of the fact that life at Guantanamo isn't all room service and mints on your pillow.

You can talk until you're blue in the face about how wonderfully we treat detainees, but facts are facts, and you're a coward for starting this topic, then refusing to confront reality. You can't possibly be a professor and be this obtuse, can you? Have you yourself ever put on a uniform (other than on Oct 31, and a Hardee's uniform doesn't count)?

I come from a military family. My dad spent 23 years in the navy and my brother is at 22+ years. I have spent about 9 years of my living in the Hampton Roads area, home of the largest naval base in the world. Last time I lived there everyone I knew was in the military, including my roommate who was in the navy. I myself never joined the military because I have scoliosis, a 38 degree curvature of the spine, and therefore can not pass the medical exam to gain entrance.

Now about Abu Zubaydah, the guy we threw into a cold room, it is from Abu that we learned the name of the mastermind of 9-11. I believe that before Abu told us we did not know who actually did the planning of the attack. Let that sink in for a second.

Here we have in our custody a guy who knows who planned the worst terror attack in our history. What do you think the CIA was wondering? What would you be wondering after learning that information from him? Hmmm How about this question ?how many other attacks does this guy know about??

Now an attack that just killed 3000 Americans just happened, and sitting in front of you is a guy who may know the details of other attacks aimed to kill that many or more.
At what point does it become ok for us to throw him into a cold room, make him listen to loud music for hours on end, deprive him of sleep and in general make his life miserable until he starts to talk more? (He had been talking and then stopped, which is when CIA got a little more forceful)

I personally don?t think what we did to this guy rises to the level of ?torture? but that is my personal opinion. I hope that in the future when we capture someone who may have operation information that could save the lives of thousands of people that we aren?t afraid of using these techniques in order to get that information out of them.

BTW: the terrorist do not care how we treat the people we catch. They are not being nice to Americans in hopes that we will be nice to their prisoners. They are taking Americans they capture and chopping their heads off, or hanging their burning bodies from bridges. So don?t give me this ?we should be nice to them so they will be nice to us? crap.

Also, since you brought it up, what is your military experience? Anything more meaningful than a boy scout uniform in your closet?

 

[Czar]

I'm seriously starting to think ProfJohn is a part of some PR campaign

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: DonVito
ProfJohn, your post is yet another non sequitur (though I'll point out that even the "gentle treatment" your post describes sounds awful - sitting in a freezing room, having foreign music blasted in your ears (imagine if it were the kind of music they play in Indian restaurants, for example) could be pretty nightmarish) since, as I've pointed out, we have killed more than 100 detainees since 9/11, dozens of whom have died by homicide, including the Iraqi Air Force Chief of Staff. The article I posted on Specialist Sean Baker is also illustrative of the fact that life at Guantanamo isn't all room service and mints on your pillow.

You can talk until you're blue in the face about how wonderfully we treat detainees, but facts are facts, and you're a coward for starting this topic, then refusing to confront reality. You can't possibly be a professor and be this obtuse, can you? Have you yourself ever put on a uniform (other than on Oct 31, and a Hardee's uniform doesn't count)?

<sob story snipped>

Also, since you brought it up, what is your military experience? Anything more meaningful than a boy scout uniform in your closet?

Oh, this should be interesting.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Czar
I'm seriously starting to think ProfJohn is a part of some PR campaign

He's probably part of paleface's Counterstrike or Halo clan.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: DonVito
ProfJohn, your post is yet another non sequitur (though I'll point out that even the "gentle treatment" your post describes sounds awful - sitting in a freezing room, having foreign music blasted in your ears (imagine if it were the kind of music they play in Indian restaurants, for example) could be pretty nightmarish) since, as I've pointed out, we have killed more than 100 detainees since 9/11, dozens of whom have died by homicide, including the Iraqi Air Force Chief of Staff. The article I posted on Specialist Sean Baker is also illustrative of the fact that life at Guantanamo isn't all room service and mints on your pillow.

You can talk until you're blue in the face about how wonderfully we treat detainees, but facts are facts, and you're a coward for starting this topic, then refusing to confront reality. You can't possibly be a professor and be this obtuse, can you? Have you yourself ever put on a uniform (other than on Oct 31, and a Hardee's uniform doesn't count)?

Also, since you brought it up, what is your military experience? Anything more meaningful than a boy scout uniform in your closet?

This will be fun. Can't wait for Don to arrive

 

[umbrella39]

Originally posted by: ProfJohnthat could save the lives of thousands of people

So would putting Bush down to sleep. Point? And I like how you Googled "Excuses for not serving the military" and came up with scoliosis. Should have gone with Kyphoscoliosis, would have been more believable.

Hide under your bed if they scare you, stop advocating throwing US lives at a problem that only ends when our tyrant president is ousted.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

I come from a military family. My dad spent 23 years in the navy and my brother is at 22+ years. I have spent about 9 years of my living in the Hampton Roads area, home of the largest naval base in the world. Last time I lived there everyone I knew was in the military, including my roommate who was in the navy. I myself never joined the military because I have scoliosis, a 38 degree curvature of the spine, and therefore can not pass the medical exam to gain entrance.

Now about Abu Zubaydah, the guy we threw into a cold room, it is from Abu that we learned the name of the mastermind of 9-11. I believe that before Abu told us we did not know who actually did the planning of the attack. Let that sink in for a second.

Here we have in our custody a guy who knows who planned the worst terror attack in our history. What do you think the CIA was wondering? What would you be wondering after learning that information from him? Hmmm How about this question ?how many other attacks does this guy know about??

Now an attack that just killed 3000 Americans just happened, and sitting in front of you is a guy who may know the details of other attacks aimed to kill that many or more.
At what point does it become ok for us to throw him into a cold room, make him listen to loud music for hours on end, deprive him of sleep and in general make his life miserable until he starts to talk more? (He had been talking and then stopped, which is when CIA got a little more forceful)

I personally don?t think what we did to this guy rises to the level of ?torture? but that is my personal opinion. I hope that in the future when we capture someone who may have operation information that could save the lives of thousands of people that we aren?t afraid of using these techniques in order to get that information out of them.

BTW: the terrorist do not care how we treat the people we catch. They are not being nice to Americans in hopes that we will be nice to their prisoners. They are taking Americans they capture and chopping their heads off, or hanging their burning bodies from bridges. So don?t give me this ?we should be nice to them so they will be nice to us? crap.

Also, since you brought it up, what is your military experience? Anything more meaningful than a boy scout uniform in your closet?

Hee hee - this sounds very much like someone saying "some of my best friends are black."

What you continue to ignore is the plain fact that US forces have murdered dozens of detainees through torture. The irony (okay, one of the ironies) is that the very reason Army Field Manual 34-52 doesn't allow torture (or, as the White House has euphemistically renamed it, "extended techniques") is that it has been shown consistently over the years that intel gathered through torture is unreliable.

To answer your question, I was an active-duty Air Force JAG for six years (I separated into the IRR about a year and a half ago). I joined after graduating law school and passing the CA bar. I am actually a partially-disabled veteran (only 10%, but hey . . .) and a veteran of a foreign war (I was deployed to a classified location in the Middle East on one day's notice a couple of weeks after 9/11). As it happens I have advanced training in the law of war, courtesy of the Army JAG School. One of my closest friends is an AFOSI agent who spent six months doing interrogation at Gitmo, and I have another good friend who's a prosecutor of detainees there.

 

[forfor]

Originally posted by: DonVito

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

I come from a military family. My dad spent 23 years in the navy and my brother is at 22+ years. I have spent about 9 years of my living in the Hampton Roads area, home of the largest naval base in the world. Last time I lived there everyone I knew was in the military, including my roommate who was in the navy. I myself never joined the military because I have scoliosis, a 38 degree curvature of the spine, and therefore can not pass the medical exam to gain entrance.

Now about Abu Zubaydah, the guy we threw into a cold room, it is from Abu that we learned the name of the mastermind of 9-11. I believe that before Abu told us we did not know who actually did the planning of the attack. Let that sink in for a second.

Here we have in our custody a guy who knows who planned the worst terror attack in our history. What do you think the CIA was wondering? What would you be wondering after learning that information from him? Hmmm How about this question ?how many other attacks does this guy know about??

Now an attack that just killed 3000 Americans just happened, and sitting in front of you is a guy who may know the details of other attacks aimed to kill that many or more.
At what point does it become ok for us to throw him into a cold room, make him listen to loud music for hours on end, deprive him of sleep and in general make his life miserable until he starts to talk more? (He had been talking and then stopped, which is when CIA got a little more forceful)

I personally don?t think what we did to this guy rises to the level of ?torture? but that is my personal opinion. I hope that in the future when we capture someone who may have operation information that could save the lives of thousands of people that we aren?t afraid of using these techniques in order to get that information out of them.

BTW: the terrorist do not care how we treat the people we catch. They are not being nice to Americans in hopes that we will be nice to their prisoners. They are taking Americans they capture and chopping their heads off, or hanging their burning bodies from bridges. So don?t give me this ?we should be nice to them so they will be nice to us? crap.

Also, since you brought it up, what is your military experience? Anything more meaningful than a boy scout uniform in your closet?

Hee hee - this sounds very much like someone saying "some of my best friends are black."

What you continue to ignore is the plain fact that US forces have murdered dozens of detainees through torture. The irony (okay, one of the ironies) is that the very reason Army Field Manual 34-52 doesn't allow torture (or, as the White House has euphemistically renamed it, "extended techniques") is that it has been shown consistently over the years that intel gathered through torture is unreliable.

To answer your question, I was an active-duty Air Force JAG for six years (I separated into the IRR about a year and a half ago). I joined after graduating law school and passing the CA bar. I am actually a partially-disabled (only 10%, but hey . . .) veteran of a foreign war (I was deployed to a classified location in the Middle East on one day's notice a couple of weeks after 9/11. As it happens I have advanced training in the law of war, courtesy of the Army JAG School. One of my closest friends is an AFOSI agent who spent six months doing interrogation at Gitmo, and I have another good friend who's a prosecutor of detainees there.

Damn man, you kick ass

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

I personally don?t think what we did to this guy rises to the level of ?torture? but that is my personal opinion. I hope that in the future when we capture someone who may have operation information that could save the lives of thousands of people that we aren?t afraid of using these techniques in order to get that information out of them.

I personally hope someone gets the idea that YOU have some information about some vague terrorist plot and uses techniques YOU don't consider torture on YOU to make sure.

I also personally hope whoever does it is wrong, and you are innocent, but WTF will it matter once they've done it to you? At least, you'll be talking with more info than the total pile of sh8 you've been spewing all over the forums, so far. :thumbsdown: :frown: :thumbsdown:

 

[MonkeyK]

Originally posted by: Davan
If conditions at gitmo have prevented one attack on American soil, or saved one American life, then I fully condone the methods used. You kids just cannot appreciate the sacrifices made. When youre older and a little more mature, youll realize that theres a difference between the ideal world and the world you have to live in.

See conjurs post a few above your own. He quotes the story of a USMCR lance-corporal showing that at least some of the Iraqi army did not fight because they believed that they would be treated well as POWs. That is an amazing way to help win a war.

With the treatment of prisoners that we have shown in the WOT, we may not be able to win another war in such a way for a long time.

 

[judasmachine]

so even the innocent ones that we've let go after a year or more get a jean jacket and blue jeans for their trouble. hmmm, ok i'm cool with gitmo now..............:disgust:

 

[marincounty]

You may want to consider the source of this memo, Barry McCaffrey:

According to an article written by Seymour Hersh published in 2000 The New Yorker, General McCaffrey committed war crimes during the Gulf War by having troops under his command kill retreating Iraqis after a ceasefire had been declared. Hersh's article "quotes senior officers decrying the lack of discipline and proportionality in the McCaffrey-ordered attack." One colonel told Hersh that it "made no sense for a defeated army to invite their own death. ... It came across as shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone was incredulous." [2]

These charges had been made by Army personnel after the war and an Army investigation had cleared McCaffrey of any wrongdoing. Hersh dismissed the findings of the investigation, writing that "few soldiers report crimes, because they don't want to jeopardize their Army careers."

Hersh describes his interview with Private First Class Charles Sheehan-Miles:

When I asked Sheehan-Miles why he fired, he replied, "At that point, we were shooting everything. Guys in the company told me later that some were civilians. It wasn't like they came at us with a gun. It was that they were there -- 'in the wrong place at the wrong time.'" Although Sheehan-Miles is unsure whether he and his fellow-tankers were ever actually fired upon during the war, he is sure that there was no significant enemy fire. "We took some incoming once, but it was friendly fire," he said. "The folks we fought never had a chance." He came away from Iraq convinced that he and his fellow-soldiers were, as another tanker put it, part of "the biggest firing squad in history."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McCaffrey