Rights of Detainees -- What do you think?

[I-mon]

...If proven, if I say, that he maliciously mistreated somebody, it is going to be a very long time before he sees what the outside of the brig looks like.

so basically you're saying that it's ok to lock up anyone without proof, without a trial, without being charged, and that's fine, but that any AMERICAN accused of mistreating these locked-up people has to be proven guilty in court?

[klonk]

...If proven, if I say, that he maliciously mistreated somebody, it is going to be a very long time before he sees what the outside of the brig looks like.

so basically you're saying that it's ok to lock up anyone without proof, without a trial, without being charged, and that's fine, but that any AMERICAN accused of mistreating these locked-up people has to be proven guilty in court?

War is hell. War, especially the asymmetric kind, is fluid and confusing. You don't know who is who half the time. I think you are trying to bring the morality of suburbia to the hills and hollows of Afganistan. Heck, the people picked up aren't even POW's, by any reading of the Law of Land Warfare.

I'm sure that just as soon the prisoner thinks up a really good reason why he just happened to be standing there where the noise came from, with a half empty Kalashnikov, everyone involved will be just as apologetic as can be.

But since you ask, no, that's not what I said. Nice try though. Read my sig.

P.S. Denazification probably wasn't in line with the recent SCOTUS ruling, either.

P.P.S. At its core the recent court decision was a question of jurisdiction, whether to let the military handle it or whether overview belonged to the civilian courts. It is, I think, largely a fabrication to suppose the military was being unjust under the circumstances; the question is oversight and verification. Anyway, here is a helpful link: http://supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-1195.pdf . A helpful quote from the decision: "Congress has enacted a statute, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), 119 Stat. 2739, that provides certain procedures for review of the detainees’ status. We hold that those procedures are not an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus." Read the dissents, though--they're good ones.

[I-mon]

But since you ask, no, that's not what I said. Nice try though. Read my sig.

not trolling man, just trying to work out if you are an idiot. it seems that you are not an idiot, and yet you seem to believe in the old scenario in which the americans are always the good guys and the other guys - whoever they might be - are the bad guys.


i don't know if you've been out of america recently, but in case you haven't heard it already a thousand times it looks BAD from out here. all over the world people who used to believe in the good guys america are shocked and sickened by what's happened to your country.

[klonk]

I would refer you again to the court decision. Nothing very nefarious was going on, except in the minds of America's enemies...foreign and domestic.

As it is, the court took the most generous code of treatment ever for illegal combatants and made it more generous.

[Steve James]

As it is, the court took the most generous code of treatment ever for illegal combatants and made it more generous.

Ironically, those who have admitted to participating in 9/11 want to be martyrs.
During WW2, when the Japanese captured some of the Dewey Raiders, they gave them a trial, provided them with defense lawyers, and found the flyers guilty of war crimes. They were tortured and shot.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was given a trial, defense attorney, allowed to confront his accusers and speak at his own trial in his own defense.
We tried Nazis at Nuremberg. The Israelis tried Eichmann.

Remember, we are only talking about DETAINEES, and people who are accused (somehow because no one knows) or under suspicion. Many were taken after 9/11 and haven't been home.

I'm not sure that one can call an American citizen an illegal combatant unless he has been shown to be a combatant in the first place. That is his/her right as a citizen.

I agree that the decision makes it problematic for the gov't to simply arrest someone, put them away "in cognito" for as long as the "War" is going on. (Think about that, though.) Then, if they die in custody or are injured, the gov't has created a law that says they can't be held responsible.

Some would say that the only thing separating that from a totalitarian state is the name.

[Michael]

Judges cite nonsense poem in Guantanamo case
The Associated Press
Published: Monday June 30, 2008

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court reviewing evidence at Guantanamo Bay compared a Bush administration legal argument to one made by a hapless, dimwitted character in a 19th century nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit cited the 1876 poem, "The Hunting of the Snark," in ruling that the military improperly labeled a Chinese Muslim as an enemy combatant. The ruling was issued last week but an unclassified version of the opinion was released only Monday.

It was the first time a court has reviewed the military's decision-making and considered whether a detainee should be held.

The court said military review panels were unable to assess much of the evidence against the detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, and at times treated accusations as evidence.

Parhat is one of a group of Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, being held at Guantanamo Bay. Their case has become a diplomatic and legal headache for the U.S., which has tried to find a country willing to accept the Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) even as it defended its decision to hold them as enemy combatants.

The Justice Department concedes that Parhat never fought against the U.S. and says it has no evidence he was planning to do so. The case hinges on Parhat's connection to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a militant group that demands separation from China. Parhat says he considers China, not the United States, the enemy.

The Justice Department says the U.S. has classified intelligence that ETIM is affiliated with al-Qaida, though officials did not identify the source of that intelligence either to the judges or to the military reviewers. The judges said there's credible evidence the source of that intelligence is the Chinese government, "which may be less than objective with respect to the Uighurs."

The three-member court, which was made up of two Republican judges and one Democrat, was particularly pointed in its criticism of the logic that evidence is reliable because it appears on multiple documents.

"The government insists that the statements made in the documents are reliable because the State and Defense Departments would not have put them in intelligence documents were that not the case," the court wrote. "This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true."

The judges compared the argument to the logic in Carroll's nonsense poem. The Bellman lead his crew across the ocean, guided by a map that was just a blank piece of paper. He rallied and reassured his crew simply by repeat himself.

"I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true," the Bellman says in the poem.

"Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has 'said it thrice' does not make an allegation true," the court wrote.

The court said Parhat deserved a new hearing or should be released - though it didn't say to where. The U.S. does not want to send him to China for fear he will be tortured.

[juz]

"The U.S. does not want to send him to China for fear he will be tortured"

yeah...and water-boarding's just hydrotherapy...

[Michael]

I would say that the US govt lawyers should be extremely embarrassed the judges compared their legal reasoning to a Lewis Carroll poem about idiocy, but experience has shown they probably don't even realize they are wrong. Just give it to John Yoo and let him rewrite it. Yoo-yoo, woo-woo-!!

[Michael]

I say there was never any real debate on this topic, but for those who did think there was a question about waterboarding, here ya' go:

The Debate Is Over: Waterboarding Is Torture

A neocon takes the challenge.