• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Who Are The Gitmo Detainees?

Ahem. I have a bad cold, and I have taken a healthy slug or two of Ny-Quil this evening. Just sayin'.

BPSCG said:
So now we've gone from complaining that there are innocent people being held, to complaining that they weren't released fast enough to suit you.
Click to expand...

Both can't be true?

How were they treated in the mean time? Well, I guess we can agree they weren't tortured, right? Because under your scenario, if they'd been tortured, they would have confessed to crimes they hadn't committed and our delighted inquisitioners would have said, "See? They've confessed!" and they'd still be in there. After all, Guantanamo is an American gulag.
Click to expand...

Here, you're having a snide-fest against someone who is anti-torture, right? Okay. Carry on.

Or do you think that innocent people with no combat training stood up to months or years of torture, without confessing?
Click to expand...

I think innocent (or just ignorant) people could endure some forms of torture for some uncertain amount of time and not be able to "confess" to what they're being asked, yes. If you don't know, you don't know. Do we know that they know? Really?
 
slingblade said:
Ahem. I have a bad cold, and I have taken a healthy slug or two of Ny-Quil this evening. Just sayin'.
Click to expand...

As far as I'm concerned, the main active ingredient in Nyquil is alcohol, which helps you sleep. A couple of drams of brandy would be just as effective, taste better, and cost less.

Just sayin'
So now we've gone from complaining that there are innocent people being held, to complaining that they weren't released fast enough to suit you.
Click to expand...
Both can't be true?
Click to expand...
Note my use of the present tense in the first phrase. The Guantanamo PICOs (Perpetually Indignant, Chronically Outraged) are no longer claiming - at least Daredelvis isn't - that people are being held without "probable cause" (in scare quotes because that's a criminal term, and these people are not subject to criminal jurisprudence), because there's no credible evidence to back that claim up. So now they (or he) are complaining that they weren't processed fast enough. There's no pleasing some people.

I think innocent (or just ignorant) people could endure some forms of torture for some uncertain amount of time and not be able to "confess" to what they're being asked, yes. If you don't know, you don't know. Do we know that they know? Really?
Click to expand...
Okay, there are two possibilities.
  1. The people who were released were tortured, or;
  2. They were not.
If number 2, then what's the complaint?

If number 1, why didn't they confess? Again, two possibilities:
  1. They were trained to withstand torture as part of their al Qaeda training, in which case, they were released improperly, or;
  2. They had nothing to confess and for some reason didn't make things up in an attempt to stop the torture.
If they were tortured, how come we don't have 200 people running to the New York Times with stories of how they were tortured by their evil American captors? You think the Times wouldn't jump on that story like a wino on a bottle of Ripple?

I submit that Mr. Occam would say the most likely possibility is the simplest - that they weren't tortured, period. No, they didn't enjoy a day at Disney World, but they weren't pushed beyond the limits of human endurance.

Take care of your cold.
 
daredelvis said:
You might want to wash your hands after stuffing all of those words in my mouth.

Look. I have a problem with holding people for years without trial, or charges. You don't.

Daredelvis
Click to expand...
Persons captured on a battlefield in war are typically not tried, nor charged with a crime. They are held until hostilities end, typically, or until a prisoner exchange is made between combatants.

What is your problem with that?

DR
 
BPSCG said:
Mycroft's question was a request to put up or shut up, as is any request here for evidence to support an assertion. You choose to do neither.
Click to expand...
It's funny you say that: the basis of Habeus Corpus is to put up (your charges) against the person you are holding, or shut up. And let them go. Your opinion, or the military's opinion, or in fact anyone's opinion about how bad these guys might be is irrelelvant. They have not been tried, no evidence has been presented for or against them, therefore we do not know if they belong in prison or not. But in prison they remain.

Habeus Corpus dates so far back into legal history that the Founders thought they only had to reference it in legalese, rather than explicitly state that people should not be held without trial. It's funny how necessary it is now becoming to state what is is.

It's often said you can judge a society by how their weakest members are treated. By extension we may judge our committment to the rule of law by how our legal system treats those in the legal system who are at the maximum disadvantage: those who are caught in its web. Our treatment of prisoners defines our moral compass, and right now it's wobbling all over hell, and so is yours.
 
Darth Rotor said:
Persons captured on a battlefield in war are typically not tried, nor charged with a crime. They are held until hostilities end, typically, or until a prisoner exchange is made between combatants.

What is your problem with that?

DR
Click to expand...
This isn't a war. There is no clearly defined enemy. There is no opposing state empowered to surrender, and thereby end the conflict. The logic under which we are treating these people as enemy combatants is therefore disastrously at fault. We are instead dealing with a group of people who come into our country at random intervals and commit disruptive criminal acts. We cannot fight a traditional war against them. Our attempts to do so thus far have been a failure.
 
daredelvis said:
It was a rhetorical question. A chance for some to ponder on the consequences of Gitmo. The answer is that many were held for YEARS without charges and then released. I am not OK with this. It seems many here are fine with that.


Daredelvis
Click to expand...

The problem is those are not the sort of questions that should be rhetorical. Those are questions that have actual answers that can be found. If you’re concerned they may reveal something about the United States that needs to be changed, then you should find the answers and then make them known to everyone.

But you don’t do that. Instead you prefer to consider the questions to be “rhetorical” which means that you prefer to imagine answers that confirm an opinion you’ve already formed without evidence.
 
SlippyToad said:
It's funny you say that: the basis of Habeus Corpus is to put up (your charges) against the person you are holding, or shut up. And let them go. Your opinion, or the military's opinion, or in fact anyone's opinion about how bad these guys might be is irrelelvant. They have not been tried, no evidence has been presented for or against them, therefore we do not know if they belong in prison or not. But in prison they remain.

Habeus Corpus dates so far back into legal history that the Founders thought they only had to reference it in legalese, rather than explicitly state that people should not be held without trial. It's funny how necessary it is now becoming to state what is is.

It's often said you can judge a society by how their weakest members are treated. By extension we may judge our committment to the rule of law by how our legal system treats those in the legal system who are at the maximum disadvantage: those who are caught in its web. Our treatment of prisoners defines our moral compass, and right now it's wobbling all over hell, and so is yours.
Click to expand...

Has Habeus Corpus ever applied to military prisoners?
 
There have been plenty cases since the wars have started where:

People have been imprisoned for wearing the wrong kind of wrist watch,
Children have been imprisoned,
Other people have been termed 'material witnesses' and thus imprisoned, but actually these people are suspects where the evidence is not strong enough to convince a judge to keep them in jail,
At least dozens of people have been rendered to foreign countries where they face further imprisonment, torture, and even execution based on incorrect data.
And even the USA itself has wrongly imprisoned thousands, tortured at least dozens, and has killed several of its prisoners.
 
SlippyToad said:
This isn't a war. There is no clearly defined enemy. There is no opposing state empowered to surrender, and thereby end the conflict. The logic under which we are treating these people as enemy combatants is therefore disastrously at fault. We are instead dealing with a group of people who come into our country at random intervals and commit disruptive criminal acts. We cannot fight a traditional war against them. Our attempts to do so thus far have been a failure.
Click to expand...
You make the mistake in perception that war is an activity confined to disputes between nations states, and that it must be "declared." That is an artificial subset of what War is in total.

War is a political act of armed force. Al Qaeda is a political entity, and it uses force to achieve its aims, as well as other means.

If you choose to ignore that simple reality, and the reality that Osama made a declaration for his part of waging a war against America, a state of belligerancy has been in place since the late 1990's. That it doesn't look or feel like a war a la WW II does not make it any less a war.

A significant problem, however, is that establishing which detainees are indeed part of the Al Qaeda network would be a necessary step to treat them as prisoners of the war which Al Q's leader declared against the US (IIRC 1998 or 1996, I provided a link in another thread a few days ago.)

A further difficulty in applying more conventional war rules is that Al Qaeda doesn't typically negotiate or work officially through third parties, due to its nature, which more conventional warring factions to establish, for example, who their 'soldiers' are.

DR
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom