You realize, of course that “the public” also included Congress? who have (by law) “Congressional oversite” over expenditures? and that the expenditures for these facilities were hidden from the very folk who are, by law, paid to represent “the public” in these matters?
You realize that our system of government is based on representation? that the founding fathers decreed that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness were rights of all people? that those rights cannot be taken away except with due process? and the whole idea of a very small portion of officials sitting in back rooms making deals to kidnap folks, whisk them away secretly, and never ever let anyone know about it, including the folks footing the fucking bill, is about as opposite to the aims of the Constitution as you can find?
Tell that to those who are innocent among the 50, as well as all of their families. Oh, they’re all guilty? Take your word for it? :rolleyes:
This is the most mind-blowing of all the contradictions that the right slings about. “They already hate us so it doesn’t matter” vs. “They’ll greet us with flowers celebrating us as liberators”. So, which is it?
Incredibly, there are quite a number of Middle Easterners who don’t hate us. Some may love us, but quite a few are fence-sitters, appreciating some of our help but also questioning our motives, competency, and future ambitions with some (deserved) suspicion.
These are the people who are likely to fall on the other side of the fence when what we say and what we do (in secret, contrary to our “values”) are in harsh contrast.
Gosh, I thought they were there to serve and defend. A soldier’s death is a tragic reality but not a casual inevitability.
So acting like Stalin is OK if it might get you what you want ? I’ll bet you don’t expect to be one of the “49 innocents” who get sacrificed. One also wonders how they, their friends and their relatives will feel about them being kidnapped/tortured/killed just because we feel like it.
That’s exactly my point. These people don’t believe the Constitution applies to them. They believe that they are in the right to make these decisions and to hide their actions because to them the ends justify the means. To them, their actions are justified. Otherwise they wouldn’t do this kind of thing. They have to justify it somehow.
If it happens to be the cost of retaining a fair trial and the tradition of “innocent until proven guilty” in this country, I can abide the loss of one large office tower (or equivalent) here in Manhattan, and the death of everyone within, every now and then. Once every four years? OK. Gotta go sometime. I’ll keep on showing up for work until mine gets turned into a smoking hole in the ground.
Better to be at significant risk of death & dismemberment from terrorists and still part of a free society than safe from terrorists but at significant risk from my own @#^%!@ government.
That which we permit our government to do to others is highly likely to be turned on us, and sooner rather than later.
Once or twice a week? Two or three times per day? I might have a different answer if they were taking us out that that rate. They’re not.
And maybe, possibly, I might give the same answer even if they were.
I realized that just now. I was referring to the CIA.
You better be glad, because I was trying to portray the view of someone who believes that our soldiers dying in a war is a necessity in order to protect the people. The kind of person who labels people in the military as expendable. The kind of person who supports illegal secret jails where torture is carried out. Get it? Slapping me isn’t going to do a bit of good.
Look, what I’m saying is that if a person believes that they have a right to govern as they see fit, they aren’t going to pay attention to the law. They are going to do what they think is right. Unfortunately, in the US’s case, what they think is right involves the secret kidnapping, torture and detention of people they suspect might be terrorists. I’m just trying to get inside the head of a person who would justify this. Know thy enemy and all that. The lynch mob may disperse now.
How much time and effort do you think goes into investigating innocents? Lets look at Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost. They were arrested in 2002 in Afghanistan. We only have their word for why they were arrested: because, as you know, there were never any charges laid, and the government refuses to comment.
Badr and Dost were not arrested on the battlefield of Afghanistan or Iraq, they were taken from they homes on the word of political opposition. Badr and Dost’s crime?
The brothers were locked up for three years, with over 150 interrogation sessions to find out absolutely nothing. They were arrested because a political rival wanted them put away-and contacted Pakistan Intelligence. How much do you think that cost? And I’m not talking money…I’m talking resources. In your moronic example, you would be conducting 7350 interrogations. And out of those 7000 odd interrogations, I bet you’d generate several thousand false leads, because, like in the case of Maher Arar, when facing beatings, implied threats, waterboarding, etc, sometimes people make stuff up. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6 More Stuff…
So in the middle of these thousands of false leads, we have your **one **guilty party. Who may or may not give us true or false information. That information gets followed up. Which, along with all the “noise” from the false leads, generates more true/false leads and overlapping co-relations, which eventually leads to more innocent people rounded up.
Over in Iraq, where US troops specialize in random sweeps to collect fodder to go into the “intelligence grinder”, the civilian population is anything but safer. Iraqi civilians and security forces were killed or injured at a rate of 26 a day in early 2004, and at a rate of 40 a day by the end of the year. In 2005, that figure hit 51 a day, and by August, that figure hit 63. So the casaulty rate has gone from 280 people a week, to 440 a week in the space of a year…all that extra intelligence has done us real good hasn’t it!
( On preview it appears that Ghanima’s post appears to be a thought experiment, so I have removed the more inflammatory comments I had originally posted, if any remain, I apologise… )
Publically saying anything negative about the President or American foreign policy is actually a punishable crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. All servicemembers are made aware of this before enlisting in the military, and again 72 hours into basic training.
As a pinko liberal and a former serviceman, I must say that anyone who agrees to serve under the UCMJ and then directly violates it in public deserves what they get.
The one valid argument in this thread is that the prisons aren’t actually making us safer, that they only house innocent people and that due to sloppy and improper interrogations we don’t get any useful information at all. If this is true then the prisons should be shut down immediately, and any innocent prisoners should be given some sort of compensation. I don’t know if that’s true or not, no one here does. (I’d like people not to conflate these prisons with the ones in Iraq or even Guantanamo bay.) If, however, they do house Al Qaeda members and competent interrogators I don’t understand the problem with them.
One other thing. I regret posting in this thread and won’t do so any more. I have very personal and emotional views on this subject which are clearly at odds with most of the dope.
It’s very easy to utter that famous Ben Franklin quote and feel good about oneself. It’s more difficult to make decisions actually weighing liberty and safety. America only exists today because we fought wars of great savagery and engaged in very questionable deeds. For only one example, any poster from the southwest is living on land seized from Mexico in a war of dubious legality and justification.
I strongly oppose the war in Iraq. However I think it came from the same sentimentality and sanctimoniousness that so many Americans are addicted to, both on the right and the left, that seems to dominate any political discussion here. Saddam Hussein was contained and posed no threat to us. The neo-con fantasy of spreading democracy in the mid-east is as silly and dangerous as the fantasy that we should only fight Al Qaeda using dreamed up rules that no country in history has ever defended itself with.
…but you see, Guantanamo and Iraq shows a pattern, and without any other evidence to the contray, what else can we do but speculate? Over the last two years I have shown on this board and others I frequent the consistant pattern of indiscriminate detention followed by inadequate interrogation of thousands of people. Yet, the majority of Americans still support Guantanemo. Now, we find out that many more are kept in secret locations. How do we know they are guilty?
Lets look at Omar al-Farouq. If ever there was a candidate for secret detention, it would be him. He is (allegedly) one of Osama’s top lieutenants, overseeing operations in Southeast Asia. He was captured by Indonesian authorities in their country in 2002, and handed over to US authorities shortly after. So this top agent of Al Quaeda wasn’t shipped to a secret location, he was taken to the Bagram Detention Centre. And in July of 2005 he, along with three others, escaped.
So if Omar doesn’t qualify for “secret detention”, who does? Who have they got locked up in there? How does the US expect any international cooperation when after al-Farouq’s escape, they didn’t even inform the Indonesian government that he had escaped? The secret detention centres are really just the tip of the iceburg-of a poorly defined strategic mess of detentions and intelligence. It has the appearence of a strategy made up on the fly… http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/11/03/al_qaeda_suspects_escape_brings_afghan_security_boost/
Your link doesn’t say, but apparently the only reason anyone outside of the administration knows of the escape was that al-Farouq was called to testify at the trial of an American soldier accused of beating the crap out of him while he was in prison. (see post#9, this thread) .
So you continue to obliviously ignore the report that thanks to torture we got a piece of the case to the war in Iraq. Just imagine what we are getting from the innocent.
Hey information denier: It was from the guilty that we got false information to then go to Iraq.
Fine, neither does the damming New Yorker report.
I have to say that at this level you are only a willful ignorant.
Quick note: I don’t think anyone’s been saying that they ONLY house innocent people. I’m sure the CIA has managed to pick up at least a few actual terrorists at some point, since they seem to be popping up all over the place nowadays, and I bet they’ve even put a couple in the secret prisons. No idea how we’re ever going to figure out who’s who if we don’t actually try them, though.