I voted, 'yes,' but I have reconsidered. Guantanamo (as with Changi, Acre, Dachau, Abashiri and the Sakharov in Russia) should be maintained as a museum to remind how far-adrift from principle humans can stray.
I wonder if any of the pragmatists in Congress have considered giving Guantanamo back to Cuba on the condition- THEY put the prisoners on trial? ...Could make for interesting television, especially if TruTV did gavel-to-gavel.
An incredible win/win concept: Cuba would get the spotlight, prisoners would get their day in court, a U.S. corporation would profit, no prisoner would set foot on U.S. soil; somebody should call Ted Turner to get this off the ground!
Why have so many of you voted to keep this place open? Didn't Obama propose to shut it down posthaste? Yet he hasn't. Why is it still open and the majority of those polled are in favor of that?
Billie, for me it accomplishes two things. It first provides a secure holding place for people who have done bad things. Second, it keeps a military presence in a country that in the past has hosted hostile intentions towards ours and sits 90 miles off our mainland.
Jeff, through what due process have the detainees been through to back up your statement that "they've done bad things."
In our system of justice, we can' say somebody has done bad things until convicted by a jury, judge or tribunal -- due process.
These people are being held without the evidence against them being tested in court.
Call them terrorists, but without a conviction, the label has no teeth.
I have no doubt that some of the remaining detainees are bad people who have done bad things and would do bad things if given the chance, but our ideals as a country mean nothing, and we're hypocrites, if we don't stand by the rule of law.
Also, Gitmo was there long, long before 9/11. It was just a military base before we invaded Afghanistan. It will still be there after the last detainee is dead (because that appears to be the only way they're leaving).
Billie,I agree. The long term costs can be prohibitive, so if we can maintain the advantage of a Cuban presence by keeping Gitmo open while streamlining the judicial process it may allow us to repurpose some other military prison for cost savings.
Howard, I personally don't believe that any detainess at Gitmo are innocent, I think we are being fed untruths by liberal advocacy groups. If our already overburdened legal system has to prioritize and get actual American citizens their due process before moving on to some foreigner who was apprehended in a compromising situation involving the threat of harm to our country, I'm ok with that.
Billie, for me Guantanamo Bay is an enigma. In addition to the reasons Jeff listed, I believe that there are things about Gitmo that only the President and a select few people are privy to.
Maybe I've watched too many espionage movies, but I envision a scenario where each newly elected President is led into a room and handed the "Top Secret" Gitmo file.
As crazy as that sounds, it is the reason I support whatever the current President feels is the appropriate course of action regarding Gitmo.
I'm never OK with denying anybody due process of the law. It makes a perversion of everything this country should stand for and is a threat to my rights as well as yours. If the government can glibly deny one man his rights, it can deny me mine as well.
It shocks me when anybody who self-identifies as a conservative holds any other position.
Where did I say deny due process? I said American citizens get due process first. Our resources are limited, unless we can start pulling judges, laywers, and other legal personnel out of the air, then these foreign detainess will have to wait. I am ok with that. I really wish you would read all of my posts before recasting them as something they're not in your responses. You did the same thing to me on the UMMC posts.
Jeff, saying "American citizens get due process first" is an statement that denies due process to all others. No U.S. citizen will be denied due process by granting it to others. That is illogical. I read all of your post as as I just explained, I believe I read it correctly. Providing due process is not a matter of resources. It is a matter of being civilized.
So my question is, what do you do when the other side uses your "being civilized" against you. Lets be honest here there are people in this world who expect the US to act a certain way, and in fact base strategy around it depending on us to do exactly that.
At some point you have to put a foot down and say this will not go on. Yes we are denying them the rights we have a citizens... for now. No one has said this is a permanent state of condition. But to be honest they are getting far better treatment than the prisoner/hostages they have taken from us.
In things like this we cant blindly follow an ideal without some measure of thought of where it's leading. Makes us almost as fanatical as them.
Our continued holding of "enemy combatants" at Gitmo is in violation of the the Geneva convetion, if not the letter certainly the spirit. It is a denial of due process not just for those prisoners but it is a denial of due process for America. We can not claim to uphold the law while selectively enforcing the law, picking and choosing what laws to enforce and who to prosecute for violations of law.
We Americans proudly point out the post war Nurmberg trials of Nazis for crimes against humanity and still today go after those responsible for the war crimes committed over 65 years ago as a testement of our commitment to the rule of law. Our continued imprisonment without trial of those held at Gitmo makes a mockery of or claims and will be a stain on the reputation of our country for generations and the worst part is that it now gives license to our enemies to treat our troops in like manner.
Yet we continue to hold no one responsible for the unprovoked war against Iraq and the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of a country based on lies. A war that has elevated Iran to a regional power and upset the balance of power in the region for generations to come, emptied the American treasury while making millionaires and billionaires of Bush/Cheney administrations cronies, cost the lives of five thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, filled our VA hospitals with those injured and requiring long term care, and allowed Osama Bin Laden and those actually responsible for the 9/11 attack to continue to function.
Edmund, your comments are very thought-provoking. It sickens me that bin laden is still sitting on a fine carpet in a cave someplace.
If we want to uphold what has always been our rule of law and due process, then what's holding up the trials of the gitmo prisoners. Let's get crackin'!
I'm disappointed in Obama for his stance thus far in Libya. I think it should be the Europeans who pony up the resources to help the masses struggling for democracy there.
The prisoners in Gitmo serve as a prime example to the world at large a country unwilling to hold itself to the standards we demand from others.If Bush and Cheney had been held to the standard set by the Nurmberg trials post Iraq invasion/occupation revalation that there was no legitimate cause for war there might be some plausible reason to hold the captives take priamraly from Afghanistan as enemy combatants after 9/11. Obama has failed to uphold the rule of law choosing political expediency over justice in both the issue of Gitmo and refusing to hold Bush, Cheney and the cabal that lied to sell the Iraq war to America.
Kyle- simply put- there are some things one cannot vacillate over. A country born of a Declaration of Independence that cites specific examples of tyranny including:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
...Cannot hold itself up to its own measure after practicing the very tyranny it acceded to part from.
Basically, it's like the guy who loudly proclaims, 'hitting a girl is wrong,' then turns to his buddy and confides that his girlfriend deserved last-night's punch in the nose.
Jeff- I echo Howard, how does one know these 'bad guys' are indeed bad if no judge or jury has determined so?
Syed Fahad Hashmi, an American citizen, is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. He is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida.
Zakirjan Hassam, detained at Guantanamo for four years, was released after an outside interest filed a habeas petition on his behalf. It was asserted that Mr. Hassam was abducted by Afghans in April 2002 who collected a $5,000 bounty the United States promised in exchange for each (alleged) al Qaeda and Taliban member.
(Mohammed Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst.")
Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.
"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
Thousands of detainess have gone through Gitmo over the years and you have come up with 3 falsly accused. Seems like a pretty good record. Judges and juries are no guarantee of justice either, by virtue of overturned sentences everyday among our own citizens. The system is imperfect and a few American citizens get unfair justice everyday, does that mean we close all US prisons because it sends a negative message to our own people?
Howard, you say due process is not a matter of resources, then how do you propose we handle the backlog? Where do we get the money? Do we raise taxes? Do we deny services to American citizens in order to pay for speedier trials for foreigners on the off chance a few might be found to falsely detained. We are tapped out and if Gitmo detainees are put at the bottom of the spending priority list, then somebody has to be. These are people who were for the most part apprehended in situations that reasonably place them in a great chance of being culpable. The United State is not indiscriminantly yanking these people off the streets for jaywalking. And I'm the one who is accused of having my head in the sand.
That's the point, Jeff; without trials, how do you know who's falsely accused and who's not? Half these people likely ran-afoul for not knowing English and being resentful when some scared-kid-soldier battered in the front door.
The "unprovoked war" with Iraq? How about the constant and willful violation of the UN resolutions? Kinda like when your kid stands there an continues to poke you with their finger saying "hey, hey, hey...."
The way we are treating the detainees at gitmo gives others license to mistreat our troops?
What you mean like the way Saddam treated pow's from desert shield/storm? Pulling finger nails out and other torture. Or the way our service members were treated by the north Vietnamese?
For all the people that think these guys are just sitting down their staring at the wall watching paint peel, they are not. There are trial, albeit military trials, constantly going on. There are constantly detainees being released as well. Obama suspended the trials for a period of time. It is my understanding they have resumed though.
and C.M., even at your wise old age with all your life experience you would react the same exact way these so called "scared-kid-soldiers" do. They react according to their training. They train to the point were reactions are a function of their subconscious.
Jeremiah, I wasn't demeaning those 'scared-kid-soldiers.' I was being literal. The soldiers conducting our wars are young people (in general) functioning in high-adrenaline situations.
I voted, 'yes,' but I have
I voted, 'yes,' but I have reconsidered. Guantanamo (as with Changi, Acre, Dachau, Abashiri and the Sakharov in Russia) should be maintained as a museum to remind how far-adrift from principle humans can stray.
CM, I never thought I would
CM,
I never thought I would see you compare Obama keeping it open to Hitler's Dachau.
...Always a pleasure to
...Always a pleasure to 'shatter your illusions of reality' John. (Apologies to Stevie Nicks for bending her lyric)
I wonder if any of the
I wonder if any of the pragmatists in Congress have considered giving Guantanamo back to Cuba on the condition- THEY put the prisoners on trial? ...Could make for interesting television, especially if TruTV did gavel-to-gavel.
An incredible win/win concept: Cuba would get the spotlight, prisoners would get their day in court, a U.S. corporation would profit, no prisoner would set foot on U.S. soil; somebody should call Ted Turner to get this off the ground!
Call Trump. He could be the
Call Trump. He could be the judge.
Fidel, "You're Fired".
Fidel, "You're Fired".
Why have so many of you voted
Why have so many of you voted to keep this place open? Didn't Obama propose to shut it down posthaste? Yet he hasn't. Why is it still open and the majority of those polled are in favor of that?
Billie, for me it
Billie, for me it accomplishes two things. It first provides a secure holding place for people who have done bad things. Second, it keeps a military presence in a country that in the past has hosted hostile intentions towards ours and sits 90 miles off our mainland.
Those points seem reasonable.
Those points seem reasonable. But how long do you let someone, however bad, sit there and get three squares? What should the process be?
Jeff, through what due
Jeff, through what due process have the detainees been through to back up your statement that "they've done bad things."
In our system of justice, we can' say somebody has done bad things until convicted by a jury, judge or tribunal -- due process.
These people are being held without the evidence against them being tested in court.
Call them terrorists, but without a conviction, the label has no teeth.
I have no doubt that some of the remaining detainees are bad people who have done bad things and would do bad things if given the chance, but our ideals as a country mean nothing, and we're hypocrites, if we don't stand by the rule of law.
Also, Gitmo was there long, long before 9/11. It was just a military base before we invaded Afghanistan. It will still be there after the last detainee is dead (because that appears to be the only way they're leaving).
Billie,I agree. The long
Billie,I agree. The long term costs can be prohibitive, so if we can maintain the advantage of a Cuban presence by keeping Gitmo open while streamlining the judicial process it may allow us to repurpose some other military prison for cost savings.
Howard, I personally don't believe that any detainess at Gitmo are innocent, I think we are being fed untruths by liberal advocacy groups. If our already overburdened legal system has to prioritize and get actual American citizens their due process before moving on to some foreigner who was apprehended in a compromising situation involving the threat of harm to our country, I'm ok with that.
Billie, for me Guantanamo Bay
Billie, for me Guantanamo Bay is an enigma. In addition to the reasons Jeff listed, I believe that there are things about Gitmo that only the President and a select few people are privy to.
Maybe I've watched too many espionage movies, but I envision a scenario where each newly elected President is led into a room and handed the "Top Secret" Gitmo file.
As crazy as that sounds, it is the reason I support whatever the current President feels is the appropriate course of action regarding Gitmo.
I'm never OK with denying
I'm never OK with denying anybody due process of the law. It makes a perversion of everything this country should stand for and is a threat to my rights as well as yours. If the government can glibly deny one man his rights, it can deny me mine as well.
It shocks me when anybody who self-identifies as a conservative holds any other position.
Where did I say deny due
Where did I say deny due process? I said American citizens get due process first. Our resources are limited, unless we can start pulling judges, laywers, and other legal personnel out of the air, then these foreign detainess will have to wait. I am ok with that. I really wish you would read all of my posts before recasting them as something they're not in your responses. You did the same thing to me on the UMMC posts.
Jeff, saying "American
Jeff, saying "American citizens get due process first" is an statement that denies due process to all others. No U.S. citizen will be denied due process by granting it to others. That is illogical. I read all of your post as as I just explained, I believe I read it correctly. Providing due process is not a matter of resources. It is a matter of being civilized.
If you feel misinterpreted,
If you feel misinterpreted, sorry, but that's how I took it.
So my question is, what do
So my question is, what do you do when the other side uses your "being civilized" against you. Lets be honest here there are people in this world who expect the US to act a certain way, and in fact base strategy around it depending on us to do exactly that.
At some point you have to put a foot down and say this will not go on. Yes we are denying them the rights we have a citizens... for now. No one has said this is a permanent state of condition. But to be honest they are getting far better treatment than the prisoner/hostages they have taken from us.
In things like this we cant blindly follow an ideal without some measure of thought of where it's leading. Makes us almost as fanatical as them.
Our continued holding of
Our continued holding of "enemy combatants" at Gitmo is in violation of the the Geneva convetion, if not the letter certainly the spirit. It is a denial of due process not just for those prisoners but it is a denial of due process for America. We can not claim to uphold the law while selectively enforcing the law, picking and choosing what laws to enforce and who to prosecute for violations of law.
We Americans proudly point out the post war Nurmberg trials of Nazis for crimes against humanity and still today go after those responsible for the war crimes committed over 65 years ago as a testement of our commitment to the rule of law. Our continued imprisonment without trial of those held at Gitmo makes a mockery of or claims and will be a stain on the reputation of our country for generations and the worst part is that it now gives license to our enemies to treat our troops in like manner.
Yet we continue to hold no one responsible for the unprovoked war against Iraq and the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of a country based on lies. A war that has elevated Iran to a regional power and upset the balance of power in the region for generations to come, emptied the American treasury while making millionaires and billionaires of Bush/Cheney administrations cronies, cost the lives of five thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, filled our VA hospitals with those injured and requiring long term care, and allowed Osama Bin Laden and those actually responsible for the 9/11 attack to continue to function.
Edmund, If what you say about
Edmund,
If what you say about Bush is true, then Obama has to be guilty also for the bombing of Libya. A new war with no end in sight.
Edmund, your comments are
Edmund, your comments are very thought-provoking. It sickens me that bin laden is still sitting on a fine carpet in a cave someplace.
If we want to uphold what has always been our rule of law and due process, then what's holding up the trials of the gitmo prisoners. Let's get crackin'!
I'm disappointed in Obama for his stance thus far in Libya. I think it should be the Europeans who pony up the resources to help the masses struggling for democracy there.
The prisoners in Gitmo serve
The prisoners in Gitmo serve as a prime example to the world at large a country unwilling to hold itself to the standards we demand from others.If Bush and Cheney had been held to the standard set by the Nurmberg trials post Iraq invasion/occupation revalation that there was no legitimate cause for war there might be some plausible reason to hold the captives take priamraly from Afghanistan as enemy combatants after 9/11. Obama has failed to uphold the rule of law choosing political expediency over justice in both the issue of Gitmo and refusing to hold Bush, Cheney and the cabal that lied to sell the Iraq war to America.
Edmund, Do you hold Obama
Edmund,
Do you hold Obama accountable for bombing Libya? That is an act of war.
Kyle- simply put- there are
Kyle- simply put- there are some things one cannot vacillate over. A country born of a Declaration of Independence that cites specific examples of tyranny including:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
...Cannot hold itself up to its own measure after practicing the very tyranny it acceded to part from.
Basically, it's like the guy who loudly proclaims, 'hitting a girl is wrong,' then turns to his buddy and confides that his girlfriend deserved last-night's punch in the nose.
Jeff- I echo Howard, how does
Jeff- I echo Howard, how does one know these 'bad guys' are indeed bad if no judge or jury has determined so?
Syed Fahad Hashmi, an American citizen, is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. He is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida.
Zakirjan Hassam, detained at Guantanamo for four years, was released after an outside interest filed a habeas petition on his behalf. It was asserted that Mr. Hassam was abducted by Afghans in April 2002 who collected a $5,000 bounty the United States promised in exchange for each (alleged) al Qaeda and Taliban member.
From
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/06/15/38773
(Mohammed Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst.")
Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.
"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
Thousands of detainess have
Thousands of detainess have gone through Gitmo over the years and you have come up with 3 falsly accused. Seems like a pretty good record. Judges and juries are no guarantee of justice either, by virtue of overturned sentences everyday among our own citizens. The system is imperfect and a few American citizens get unfair justice everyday, does that mean we close all US prisons because it sends a negative message to our own people?
Howard, you say due process is not a matter of resources, then how do you propose we handle the backlog? Where do we get the money? Do we raise taxes? Do we deny services to American citizens in order to pay for speedier trials for foreigners on the off chance a few might be found to falsely detained. We are tapped out and if Gitmo detainees are put at the bottom of the spending priority list, then somebody has to be. These are people who were for the most part apprehended in situations that reasonably place them in a great chance of being culpable. The United State is not indiscriminantly yanking these people off the streets for jaywalking. And I'm the one who is accused of having my head in the sand.
That's the point, Jeff;
That's the point, Jeff; without trials, how do you know who's falsely accused and who's not? Half these people likely ran-afoul for not knowing English and being resentful when some scared-kid-soldier battered in the front door.
The "unprovoked war" with
The "unprovoked war" with Iraq? How about the constant and willful violation of the UN resolutions? Kinda like when your kid stands there an continues to poke you with their finger saying "hey, hey, hey...."
The way we are treating the detainees at gitmo gives others license to mistreat our troops?
What you mean like the way Saddam treated pow's from desert shield/storm? Pulling finger nails out and other torture. Or the way our service members were treated by the north Vietnamese?
For all the people that think these guys are just sitting down their staring at the wall watching paint peel, they are not. There are trial, albeit military trials, constantly going on. There are constantly detainees being released as well. Obama suspended the trials for a period of time. It is my understanding they have resumed though.
and C.M., even at your wise old age with all your life experience you would react the same exact way these so called "scared-kid-soldiers" do. They react according to their training. They train to the point were reactions are a function of their subconscious.
Jeremiah, I wasn't demeaning
Jeremiah, I wasn't demeaning those 'scared-kid-soldiers.' I was being literal. The soldiers conducting our wars are young people (in general) functioning in high-adrenaline situations.
Young in comparison to those
Young in comparison to those running the wars yes. The average age of the total active duty force is 28.
http://www.slideshare.net/pastinson/us-military-active-duty-demographic…