Obama's Gitmo Policy Coming Home To Roost

[Toontown]

Got evidence to support this BS?

Of course I have evidence. If I didn't have evidence, I wouldn't even know the Democrats were briefed in 2002. And of course, I've been here all along. I am aware that the Democrats did not begin to raise a hue and cry until much, much later, when it became expedient to grab the issue and use it for a political football. And then they got caught in their own web of lies and had to lie some more to pull the wool over some gullible eyes. After a while, the mini-tempest died down, but I remember. Too bad you had to go and drag the Democrats' stinky old skeleton out of the closet again.


This is the internet. The information superhighway. Just google "what did the democrats know about waterboarding and when did they know it", and you will become the beneficiary of numerous hits like this one:

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/20/pelosi-s-tortured-denials.html

 

[joobz]

And all this, because an approved, briefed, and quietly accepted interrogation technique was suddenly, belatedly declared to be torture by the formerly quiet Democrat leaders, when and only when the destructive political value of doing so was recognised. And now their treachery is about to bite Obama on the ass. Perhaps, in their zeal for POWAH, they forgot what happens when their political treachery works better than expected: they inherit the whirlwind they helped stir up.

This is an interesting point. Much hinges on two issues. Whether the techniques are torture, and what the retroactive legal issues are involved.

If we accept that Water boarding is torture, Do you believe the transient legal acceptance of a torture technique to trump the rights of the individual to not receive cruel and unusual punishment?

 

[BeAChooser]

If we accept that Water boarding is torture

IF

 

[joobz]

IF

I agree it is an If. But work with the hypothetical for a moment.
If the issue at hand IS torture, than what is the proper course of legal action?

 

[Toontown]

This is an interesting point. Much hinges on two issues. Whether the techniques are torture, and what the retroactive legal issues are involved.

If we accept that Water boarding is torture, Do you believe the transient legal acceptance of a torture technique to trump the rights of the individual to not receive cruel and unusual punishment?

I don't think the individual's right to not receive cruel and unusual punishment means you punish the legal system and, by extension, society in general, if cruel and unusual punishment occurred. I think the goal should be to determine guilt or innocence, irrespective of treatment.

However, having thought about it, I understand that the judge can find the confession to be unreliable, based on the manner in which it was obtained, irrespective of whether the interrogation methods were legal or not. The judge need not rule on whether the methods used to obtain the confession were legal or not, in order to rule on the reliability of the confession.

I would consider the interrogation methods to be legal and actionable as intelligence, since they were authorized and deemed acceptable at the time. But that doesn't mean a confession obtained by use of the methods is acceptable in court as incriminating evidence. The standard of reliability for actionable intelligence purposes is lower than the standard of reliability for incrimination purposes.

The judge was probably correct to throw the confession out, since the final decision of guilt or innocence will be made by an inexperienced jury. That's why I think a military tribunal would be a better venue for arriving at a correct decision of guilt or innocence. Judges can look at and weigh any and all evidence, and are better equipped to weigh the value of evidence than a jury.


However, the whole convoluted mess could be avoided by simply not trying captured jihadists or terrorists at all. What makes them special? They have declared themselves our enemies in righteous war. I believe we should oblige them, and treat them as captured enemy soldiers. I believe they should simply be held as POW's until the end of hostilities - which I understand is essentially a life sentence. That's unfortunate for them. When they decided they wanted to be big bad jihadis, they rolled the dice and they took their chances.

What about the innocents who will get caught in the dragnet? There is no way to prevent it. We live in an imperfect world where there is no perfect knowledge and no perfect justice. What about all the innocent draftees who were captured during WWII, when they would have much preferred never to have been on the battlefield at all? Those unfortunates undoubtedly numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. They were sent to war and incarcerated in POW camps through no decision or action of their own volition. Those are the breaks. Life is a bitch. But one thing seems certain. It's not going to get any better unless we stop sweating the small stuff and start kicking some terrorist ass. After all, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner the poor baby prisoners can all go home. If their homies will take them back. Ah. There's the rub.

 

[fishbob]

Perhaps, in time, you can all recover from that offhand remark I made.

If I had known you would all latch onto it like half-starved hyenas on a wildebeest femur bone, and chew on it for a week, I might have refrained from making the remark.

All? Little ole me?

I have not been around for a while. I actually only chewed on your wildebeest femur bone for about 3 minutes, failed to notice it was moldy.

 

[fishbob]

However, the whole convoluted mess could be avoided by simply not trying captured jihadists or terrorists at all. What makes them special? They have declared themselves our enemies in righteous war. I believe we should oblige them, and treat them as captured enemy soldiers. . . .

Agreed.
And treating them as captured enemy soldiers also entails not waterboarding them or abusing them in captivity. The point all along has been that there are only 2 legitimate classifications for these prisoners - POWs or criminals (and I support the 2nd - * see below).

The problem all along has been this new and ill-defined 3rd category where nobody quite knows what the rules are.

*Treating jihadists or terrorists as captured enemies forms an impression in some that these people have some kind of legitimacy - soldiers fighting for a cause. Dealing with them through law enforcement would, I think, make the jihadist / terrorist career path a bit less inviting - common criminals - and eventually reduce the number of jihadist terrorists.

 

[leftysergeant]

I don't think the individual's right to not receive cruel and unusual punishment means you punish the legal system and, by extension, society in general, if cruel and unusual punishment occurred. I think the goal should be to determine guilt or innocence, irrespective of treatment.

That's why people who use torture to extract evidence should be taken out and shot. It produces crap for evidence and it sometimes kills people, including a good many who did nothing wrong, but were the first persons a torture victim could think of to sell for his own relief.

I would expectr someone like you, had you lived in the 16th century, to aspire to the office of Witch Finder General.

I would consider the interrogation methods to be legal and actionable as intelligence, since they were authorized and deemed acceptable at the time. But that doesn't mean a confession obtained by use of the methods is acceptable in court as incriminating evidence. The standard of reliability for actionable intelligence purposes is lower than the standard of reliability for incrimination purposes.

What drooling moron told you that torture produces useful intelligence?

The judge was probably correct to throw the confession out, since the final decision of guilt or innocence will be made by an inexperienced jury. That's why I think a military tribunal would be a better venue for arriving at a correct decision of guilt or innocence. Judges can look at and weigh any and all evidence, and are better equipped to weigh the value of evidence than a jury.

And if a military judge accepted tortured confessions, I would be happy to see him in front of a firing squad, because he would have to know that he is accepting BS as the truth. I do not want our legal system or the honor of our military so prostituted to the ends of the merry morons who got us into this trick.

What about the innocents who will get caught in the dragnet? There is no way to prevent it.

All the more reason not to torture people. You would wind up killing innocent people. Maybe you are nasty enough to accept that. Maybe you have no fear that God will ever call you to acount for it, but I will not have that on my soul when I go before whatever judgement God or karma may impose, nor had the merry morons any right to commit that sin in our names.

Life is a bitch.

And God expects us not to be. We would show ourselves lower than the Nazis if we now treat prisoners worse than the Germans treated our soldiers. We're supposed to be better people than that. If we are not, we don't deserve to be safe from attack. THAT is something you have to earn.

 

[EvilSmurf]

Irrelevant.

Name the foreign enemy which has treated American soldiers as well as Bush treated the Gitmo detainees.

Go ahead. Name one.

Japan:

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

 

[Upchurch]

So, wait. I don't understand the argument here.

The Bush administration tortures enemy combatants for information in contradiction of pretty much every traditional American values held since, I don't know, at least World War I or maybe earlier. Obama starts the process of unraveling that mess knowing, I would guess, that we would have to pay for those mistakes.

And people are mad at Obama for paying for the mistakes that Bush made? Is that really what is going on here?

 

[Toontown]

That's why people who use torture to extract evidence should be taken out and shot. It produces crap for evidence and it sometimes kills people, including a good many who did nothing wrong, but were the first persons a torture victim could think of to sell for his own relief.

And if a military judge accepted tortured confessions, I would be happy to see him in front of a firing squad, because he would have to know that he is accepting BS as the truth. I do not want our legal system or the honor of our military so prostituted to the ends of the merry morons who got us into this trick.

You're real big on wanting to shoot and hang people, aren't you, preacher man.

 

[Toontown]

I would expectr someone like you, had you lived in the 16th century, to aspire to the office of Witch Finder General.

...You would wind up killing innocent people. Maybe you are nasty enough to accept that. Maybe you have no fear that God will ever call you to acount for it,...

And I would expect someone like you to demonize someone they disagree with politically and/or religiously, while simultaneously talking about wanting to shoot people they don't like. Kind of like a veiled threat posturing.

Political and religious persecution all in one forum. I just love it. Appropriate, too. Politics and religion is all cut from the same cloth.

 

[Toontown]

And another thing, lefty. I can't recall you ever talking about killing any of our enemies. It's always one of us you're always talking about shooting and hanging.

Why is that, lefty?

 

[Toontown]

So, wait. I don't understand the argument here.

The Bush administration tortures enemy combatants for information in contradiction of pretty much every traditional American values held since, I don't know, at least World War I or maybe earlier. Obama starts the process of unraveling that mess knowing, I would guess, that we would have to pay for those mistakes.

And people are mad at Obama for paying for the mistakes that Bush made? Is that really what is going on here?

Who asked him? The left? Who cares what that smug, self-righteous, bullying little minority wants?

Look. We know who is going to pay for "our" mistakes. It's not going to be the politikers. It's going to be us. The politikers will keep getting their fat salaries, pensions, book deals, speaking fees, and whatnot, and we'll be left holding the bag.

Well, thanks, Obama, but no thanks. Nevermind. You don't need to pay for Bush's mistakes. Just let it ride. We will somehow learn to live with the fact that there is a Gitmo, and a few terrorists got water poured up their noses.

And as soon as the rest of the monkeyball starts paying for their mistakes, we'll start thinking about paying for ours.

Until then, don't call us. We'll call you.

Yeah, it's a bitch being president, isn't it. You were all screaming in foam-flecked rage at Bush for 7 years, because we were attacked and Bush tried to fight the enemy. Now you can't handle it if we get a little piqued at Obama now and then? Aww. Poor babies...they inherited their own whirlwind.

You people don't stand a chance. These Islamo terrorists are going to eat your lunch. In fact, they already have. You're barely hanging on. And you're not even fighting the enemy. You're still fighting Bush.

Stick a fork in you. You're done.

 

[Upchurch]

Who asked him? The left?

No, that'd be the American people back on November 2, 2008. You might have seen it. It was in the papers.

Who cares what that smug, self-righteous, bullying little minority wants?

Are you not familiar with how the US system of government works?

{frothing at the mouth}

Oooookay. That was ...interesting.


...and it explains, to a degree, the kind of tortured logic (no pun intended*) that lead to the OP.


* It was totally intended.

 

[leftysergeant]

And I would expect someone like you to demonize someone they disagree with politically and/or religiously, while simultaneously talking about wanting to shoot people they don't like. Kind of like a veiled threat posturing.

Not people I don't like. Just terrorists (against whom we have valid evidence of murder) and war criminals.

Judges who condemn prisoners of war on evidence obtained by torture are war criminals. That freaking simple. We hanged a lot of them for that sort of crap back in 1946.

 

[leftysergeant]

Well, thanks, Obama, but no thanks. Nevermind. You don't need to pay for Bush's mistakes. Just let it ride. We will somehow learn to live with the fact that there is a Gitmo, and a few terrorists got water poured up their noses.

They were tortured into confessing to what the Shrub and his merry morons wanted them to confess. That is not proof of anytrhing other than that the merry morons are evil and that their legacy has to be wiped out of our government.

Yeah, it's a bitch being president, isn't it.

Yeah, especially if the idiot you follow has left the country in the sewer both morally and ecconomicly.

You were all screaming in foam-flecked rage at Bush for 7 years, because we were attacked and Bush tried to fight the enemy. Now you can't handle it if we get a little piqued at Obama now and then? Aww. Poor babies...they inherited their own whirlwind.

Bush fought back like a paranoid schizophrenic under the guidance of the worst Sec Def in my life time and a drooling nosferatu war profiteer with no bloody clue how the military is supposed to work. We deserve better in a president.

You people don't stand a chance. These Islamo terrorists are going to eat your lunch. In fact, they already have. You're barely hanging on. And you're not even fighting the enemy. You're still fighting Bush.

So? We are still suffering the shame of his war crimes. He screwed up any chance of successful prosecution when he and his merry morons adopted Nazi techniques.

 

[Toontown]

Tortured logic? Where? I love that stuff...

Who asked him? The left? Who cares what that smug, self-righteous, bullying little minority wants?

No tortured logic there. They are a self-righteous, bullying little minority. And they are the ones who want gitmo closed, civil trials for enemies, Bush hung for war crimes, etc, etc. Some of them even long lustily for defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, just to prove they were "right" all along.

Look. We know who is going to pay for "our" mistakes. It's not going to be the politikers. It's going to be us. The politikers will keep getting their fat salaries, pensions, book deals, speaking fees, and whatnot, and we'll be left holding the bag.

Nope. No tortured logic there. truer words have seldom been spoken. No politiker has ever paid for anything. They talk about how much it's going to cost "us" to pay for the boogy-man Bush's mistakes, as if they are included in the "us".

Well, thanks, Obama, but no thanks. Nevermind. You don't need to pay for Bush's mistakes. Just let it ride. We will somehow learn to live with the fact that there is a Gitmo, and a few terrorists got water poured up their noses..

Not tortured logic. Just a suggestion. And a good one. Let's not pay for mistakes we don't need to pay for. Nobody else does.

But those of you who want to volunteer to pay for Bush's mistakes, you have my blessing. Pay all you want. And when you think you're all paid up, monkeyworld will still be looking at you with those smug, beady little eyes.

And when you ask them "How much should we give?" they'll only answer, "MORE, MORE, MORE!"

It's a fool's errand, trying to keep monkeyworld happy.

And as soon as the rest of the monkeyball starts paying for their mistakes, we'll start thinking about paying for ours.

Nope. No tortured logic there either. That is the monkeyball in a nutshell. The monkeyball Obama has been apologising to. I mean, it was a nice try, Barack. But an exercise in futility.

Until then, don't call us. We'll call you.

Well, that might be a little tortured. We're really not going to call you. I just made that up. But not anywhere near the tortured logic I was led to expect.

Yeah, it's a bitch being president, isn't it. You were all screaming in foam-flecked rage at Bush for 7 years, because we were attacked and Bush tried to fight the enemy. Now you can't handle it if we get a little piqued at Obama now and then? Aww. Poor babies...they inherited their own whirlwind.

Tortured logic? That's just an encapsulation of the political climate on the left for the past decade. And a damn good one for the number of words expended.

You people don't stand a chance. These Islamo terrorists are going to eat your lunch. In fact, they already have. You're barely hanging on. And you're not even fighting the enemy. You're still fighting Bush.

Hmm. If anyone thinks that's tortured logic, then perhaps some explaining is in order:

Much of the West has been teetering on the brink of financial collapse. NATO is bogged down in Afghanistan by a measly 15,000 Taliban, for what appears to be a generation, unless they tuck tail. Nuclear Pakistan is playing a double game. It's costing umpteen million bucks for every terrorist or insurgent killed or incarcerated. Most of them are safely cuddled up in the double-dealing Pakistan. You're all sweating bullets over the ones that have been incarcerated, going spastic because a few of them got water poured up their noses. Trying to close the only logical place you've got to put them, solely for symbolic political purposes. Dilly-dallying while Iran slowly assembles a nuclear and conventional arsenal, with it's hand already poised on your Hormuz jugular, and in general just doing all kinds of yapping and posturing as the ship slowly sinks. The only potential bright spot is Iraq, and many of you are predicting failure and collapse there as well.

I'm not criticizing the military. They are the only ones who are not steady jacking up. But the US had 16 million of them in uniform in WWII, compared to 3 million now, mostly in logistics and support roles, not even enough to properly occupy a medium sized country. The WWII troops kicked ass, took names, and got that crap over with. But since then, the wars have just dragged on and on, with no resolution, because hardly anyone is fighting them.

And the few who are fighting risk being charged with war crimes. It's practically illegal to actually fight and win a war anymore, particularly with the enemy routinely hiding in the middle of the civilians. So you're not going to win. Winning would be a war crime of immense proportions.

Now, you mostly just fight and argue with each other, while your unencumbered enemies slowly undermine you, like boiling a frog.

Stick a fork in you. You're done.

See above.

It's not just the terrorists that are slowly wearing you down. It's overpopulation, carbon emmissions, approaching energy, food, and water shortages, political demagoguery and corruption, the threat of systemic collapse - and fat, lazy bitches.

The terrorists are not even trying to defeat you. They're just trying to be the straw that breaks your backs. And many of you are trying to be the other straw that breaks your backs.

 

[Toontown]

They were tortured into confessing to what the Shrub and his merry morons wanted them to confess. That is not proof of anytrhing other than that the merry morons are evil and that their legacy has to be wiped out of our government.

False. Waterboarding was used to find out what they knew about planned attacks. Any other information gained would be secondary.

Yeah, especially if the idiot you follow has left the country in the sewer both morally and ecconomicly.

Oh? And where were the democrats while super-Bush was singlehandedly destroying the superpower? Cowering in a corner like perfect little frightened angels?

Case in point: what male prostitute was Barney Frank diddling while Fanny and Freddy burned?

Yeah, that Bush, he's bad news. You don't want to try to stand up to him, even if you're the majority party in congress and he's destroying the country. He rides a bike, you know. Tough. If you had a pair of boots made out of that, they'd last the rest of your life.

Screw it. You want to play silly little blame games all day every day? There's plenty of blame to go around.

Bush fought back like a paranoid schizophrenic under the guidance of the worst Sec Def in my life time and a drooling nosferatu war profiteer with no bloody clue how the military is supposed to work. We deserve better in a president.

Maybe a president deserves better than you. Ever think of that?

So? We are still suffering the shame of his war crimes. He screwed up any chance of successful prosecution when he and his merry morons adopted Nazi techniques.

Oh, that's rich. We can't fight the enemy because we are still suffering the shame of Bush pouring water up Sheik Mohammad's nose. Oh, the shame...

Damn. You leftists are easier pickings than I thought. You become paralyzed in combat when you experience shame. And you feel shame whenever you think the president has done something immoral.

So. To paralyze leftists in combat and club them like baby seals, all us neocons have to do is get the president into a compromising situation with...oh, say a white house intern...but wait. No, that wouldn't work. Leftists weren't ashamed about that. They're only ashamed when it's a Republican president.

Shucks.

Oh well. At least I know now that shame paralyses you. I'll come up with something to shame you. Nekkid pitchers, maybe.

 

[joobz]

I don't think the individual's right to not receive cruel and unusual punishment means you punish the legal system and, by extension, society in general, if cruel and unusual punishment occurred. I think the goal should be to determine guilt or innocence, irrespective of treatment.

But then what is the recourse for collecting evidence illegally?

What protection does the individual have? It would seem that the bill of rights would become meaningless without that recourse.

However, having thought about it, I understand that the judge can find the confession to be unreliable, based on the manner in which it was obtained, irrespective of whether the interrogation methods were legal or not. The judge need not rule on whether the methods used to obtain the confession were legal or not, in order to rule on the reliability of the confession.

good point.

I would consider the interrogation methods to be legal and actionable as intelligence, since they were authorized and deemed acceptable at the time. But that doesn't mean a confession obtained by use of the methods is acceptable in court as incriminating evidence. The standard of reliability for actionable intelligence purposes is lower than the standard of reliability for incrimination purposes.

again, I agree. except that what does it mean about our freedoms to allow people to be treated outside the law?

However, the whole convoluted mess could be avoided by simply not trying captured jihadists or terrorists at all. What makes them special? They have declared themselves our enemies in righteous war. I believe we should oblige them, and treat them as captured enemy soldiers. I believe they should simply be held as POW's until the end of hostilities - which I understand is essentially a life sentence. That's unfortunate for them. When they decided they wanted to be big bad jihadis, they rolled the dice and they took their chances.

But here you assume that all captured are INDEED actually declared enemy combatants. Some held at gitmo weren't. Without the promise of due process, such errors can not be corrected in a timely manner.

What about the innocents who will get caught in the dragnet? There is no way to prevent it. We live in an imperfect world where there is no perfect knowledge and no perfect justice. What about all the innocent draftees who were captured during WWII, when they would have much preferred never to have been on the battlefield at all? Those unfortunates undoubtedly numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. They were sent to war and incarcerated in POW camps through no decision or action of their own volition. Those are the breaks. Life is a bitch.

I see we are are fundamentally going to disagree here.

But one thing seems certain. It's not going to get any better unless we stop sweating the small stuff and start kicking some terrorist ass. After all, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner the poor baby prisoners can all go home. If their homies will take them back. Ah. There's the rub.

The rub is in your cowboy generalization of the situation.

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.