What should happen with the Gitmo detainees

[Steve James]

I say that if you've got the balls to arrest them for a crime against your country, you should have the balls to keep 'em there or execute them if they're guilty. There's no reason for them to be in Cuba. But, there are so many people who seem to want these guys detained --without really knowing who they are or what they did. Yet, in those same states, there are mass-murderers, serial killers and wackos that are kept in isolation 24/7. Imo, splitting them up among our own max-security prisons would make it look like we can take care of our own problems.

Personally, I think Gitmo is the best recruiting tool for those potential terrorists who were not sure that America was the world criminal. If a gov't from another country comes, snatches one of my loved-ones, tortures him and then releases him, I'd probably hold a big grudge for the rest of my life.

[Michael]

Stop torturing them. The military tribunal/kangaroo courts are a joke with JAG lawyers protesting their very validity. Prosecute the ones for whom you have any non-torture evidence. Return/deport the other goat herders that were bounty-sold to the US.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

They should be returned to the government's and countries they belong to and tried for their crimes under rule of law.

also, Cheney should just shut the fuck up and go live his life.

[Steve James]

They should be returned to the government's and countries they belong to and tried for their crimes under rule of law.

The problem is, they were taken in order to prevent crimes, not to punish them. Some of the detainees have been released, never having committed any crimes, yet still having had to undergo "enhanced interrogation." That, imho, is THE problem. And, if being part of a terrorist conspiracy is a crime, and they use techniques until I confess, then what if the country they took me from (say Yemen) gives them a few years. Some of these guys have already been detained for 6 years.

[Methods]

Yeh, they should not be sent there until they are convicted of a war or world crime. After that I believe they should not have any rights, the act of terror is beyond any law or world laws and the human acting out should not have any rights.
Even though I am against the place the military has found out all kinds of stuff from the detainees. Guilty or not, the people that are there are there for a reason.
I seriously doubt that any one that is placed in Gitmo are not guilty of something.

[zenshiite]

First of all, Cheney should just shut up and go shoot another friend in the face while quail hunting.

On Gitmo. the place should be closed. Period. The detainees, if they are really so bad(though many of them are being "preemptively detained" for what are essentially thought crimes, which is alarming in and of itself) they should be locked up in SuperMax and then try them... in a real court of law. Not a fucking tribunal subject to suspect information and testimony.

Also, that motherfucker that raped the 14 year old girl and then killed her and her family should've been sentenced to death and it's an immense farce that he wasn't subjected to Iraqi law for a crime in Iraq and was given life in prison in the US. The Iraqis rightly see that as an affront to justice.

[Dmitri]

Personally, I think Gitmo is the best recruiting tool for those potential terrorists who were not sure that America was the world criminal. If a gov't from another country comes, snatches one of my loved-ones, tortures him and then releases him, I'd probably hold a big grudge for the rest of my life.

Exactly.

The only thing they can do to help at least dissolve some of that hatred is to publicly and properly (i.e. severely enough) prosecute Bush, Cheney, creators of Patriot Act and/or whoever the fuck came up with that horrible idea in the first place. (I'm not holding my breath of course.)

[shawnsegler]

[yusuf]

Personally, I think Gitmo is the best recruiting tool for those potential terrorists who were not sure that America was the world criminal. If a gov't from another country comes, snatches one of my loved-ones, tortures him and then releases him, I'd probably hold a big grudge for the rest of my life.

Exactly.

The only thing they can do to help at least dissolve some of that hatred is to publicly and properly (i.e. severely enough) prosecute Bush, Cheney, creators of Patriot Act and/or whoever the fuck came up with that horrible idea in the first place. (I'm not holding my breath of course.)

yup, and that is the problem. A lot of these detainees are there because of crap not even related to terrorism. On the afghan pakistan border tribes would snatch one of there enemies, then give them to the authorities saying 'we found this guy trainign to be a errorist, pay us $5000"...

it happened in a lot of these cases...

[Steve James]

Guilty or not, the people that are there are there for a reason.
I seriously doubt that any one that is placed in Gitmo are not guilty of something.

Well, that could be said for every single person in every American jail, too. That's why there is "due process", and why some people see the US turning into a police state --where the rule of law is the whim of the State (or king, tsar or commisar).

But, here's an article from 2005 that is interesting as a history piece.

The CIA’s inspector general, John Helgerson, is looking into fewer than 10 cases of potentially “erroneous renditions,” according to a current intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are classified. Others in the agency believe it to be much fewer, the official added.

Some see judicial evasion
For instance, someone may be grabbed wrongly or, after further investigation, may not be as directly linked to terrorism as initially believed.

Human rights groups consider the practice of rendition an end run around the judicial processes that the United States has long championed. Experts with those groups and congressional committees familiar with intelligence programs say errors should be extremely rare because one vivid anecdote can do significant damage.

“I am glad the CIA is investigating the cases that they are aware of,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington office director of Human Rights Watch. “But by definition, you are not going to be aware of all such cases, when you have a process designed to avoid judicial safeguards.”

He said there is no guarantee that Egypt, Uzbekistan or Syria will release people handed over to them if they turn out to be innocent, and he distrusts promises the U.S. receives that the individuals will not be tortured.

Bush: ‘We don’t believe in torture’
Bush and his aides have said the United States seeks those assurances — and follows up on them. “We do believe in protecting ourselves. We don’t believe in torture,” he said.

In the last 18 months, his administration has come under fire for its policies and regulations governing detentions and interrogations in the war on terrorism. At facilities run by the CIA and the U.S. military, graphic images of abuse and at least 26 deaths investigated as criminal homicides have raised questions about how authorities handle foreign fighters and terrorist suspects in U.S. custody.

[Steve James]

I just watched the video, and got to the part where they said Muller had drowned as a child. Funny thing, that happened to me, too, when I was about 11. It took me a long time to learn to swim because of it. But, it makes it easy to understand the feelings he must have had.

Anyway, I just wanted to add that one of the water-boarded lasted 2 and 1/2 minutes before he confessed. Needless to say, what would happen if an inexperienced or overzealous interrogator accidentally drowned the interrogee. Yeah, he''d be fired, but what then? Would we ever know it happened? Who would we ever tell?

[shawnsegler]

We've been told our whole lives that sinking to the level of those who do evil is still evil....and it's true. It's never ok to treat someone like that. No matter what they've done. Ever.

For real.

S

[count]

Isn't there a wing in the W library they could move in? It's kind of funny the ones who don't want them in our prison system are Bushies. Dick Cheney, I sentence you to kiss my ass. If we can't put them on trial, I'm sure their own countries can

[Michael]

Even though I am against the place the military has found out all kinds of stuff from the detainees.

Such as? I have heard this line of propaganda from the people responsible for the detention and torture, but I have never seen anything remotely resembling evidence. They always say they've gotten important info, but they can't tell us what it is because, then we'd know. And they'd know that we knew and then the information would be worthless. You understand, of course. It's the kind of thing that makes perfect sense when you're balls are being electrocuted.

As I mentioned however, they did torture Kalid Sheikh Mohammed long enough to get him to confess to crimes that occurred after he was captured. I think he even confessed to blowing up a building that hadn't been built at the time of his capture, IIRC.

[Steve James]

Such as? I have heard this line of propaganda from the people responsible for the detention and torture, but I have never seen anything remotely resembling evidence. They always say they've gotten important info, but they can't tell us what it is because, then we'd know.

Actually, the first agent responsible for interrogating the Sheik did get information, only not from "enhanced interrogation." That's the thing. Information was gleaned, but, according to the interrogators, almost none from water-boarding.

FBI interrogators suspected CIA's aim was to 'belittle' detainee with harsh treatment

Contradicting the assertions of President Bush and waterboarding advocates at the CIA, federal investigators say a suspected al Qaeda operative who was subjected to the simulated drowning technique produced increasingly unreliable information after his interrogators began treating him harshly.

Abu Zubaida was captured in 2002 and moved through the CIA's secret prison system for much of that year. Although the FBI says Zubaida was a fairly low-level associate of some al Qaeda players, the CIA was convinced that he actually was a high-level terrorist who simply was holding out on them.

They turned to waterboarding and other unknown harsh interrogation techniques in an attempt to break the suspect, but ended up producing little more than a stream of specious claims delivered under duress from a suspect who was having water forced into his lungs, according to a former investigator who reviewed his case file.

"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman told the Washington Post, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."

Zubaida's interrogation and harsh treatment were recorded by the CIA, but the evidence of what, if any, actionable intelligence he delivered under conditions critics liken to torture disappeared in 2005, when the agency destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes depicting similar interrogations.

Captured at a suspected al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan on Mar. 28, 2002, Zubaida was soon identified and whisked off to the CIA's network of secret prisons. He had been named as a fellow plotter in a failed 1999 attempt to bomb the Los Angeles airport, and the 9/11 Commission said he was a "longtime ally of bin Laden" who helped run a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.

In his first month of captivity, report the Post's Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, Zubaida handed over information that led to the capture of Jose Padilla and identified Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a 9/11 plotter.

That was all before the CIA turned to harsh techniques. Instead of continuing what appeared to be working, though, the CIA was convinced Zubaida was holding out on them, and they decided to begin "not torturing" him by keeping him naked in his cell, subjecting him to extreme cold and playing loud rock music at all hours.