This reminded me of something. The US military doing judge, sentence, and well, not execute, but incarcerate, people they catch.
What’s the deal with the people still being held at Gitmo? It’d been like, 3 years. Surely someone must have made some progress in doing something… or is the “indefinite” hold going to turn “permanent”?
Do you ever read newspapers or watch the news?
Start with this. Google is your friend.
The Supreme Court ruled a few months ago that the prisoners must have some access to the US legal system if they wish to contest their being held as enemy combatants. The US gov’t then released some of the prisoners, especially those with foreign, non-Afgani, citizenship. As for the rest, the US gov’t is arguing with the courts over what sort of trials the detainees should be entitled to.
(Don’t know where that one came from, there’re half a dozen threads on this topic all over SDMB and search don’t work)
I call Rashak’s ironic and raise him one:
I find it ironic that Rahak finds it ironic that American soldiers judged Iraqis insurgents since Rashak himself obviously have no problems with judging American soldiers on woefully inadequate material and under drastically less stressful conditions.
The Danish guy at Gitmo was released a few months back, and flown back to Denmark at great expense to the taxpayers where-after he promptly declared his intention to go back to Chechnya and kill Russians, Moslems had an obligation to kill Danish soldiers in Iraq and Danish political leaders were legitimate targets. Someone made a poll which resulted in the little surprising result that most Danes wished the bloody Americans had kept his lousy ass on Gitmo.
He said it in this thread Rune.
Zag, are you going for a new record for most threads started in a week or something??
This is a GQ question and looks like its already been answered. The plight of the prisoners is already being addressed, many have been released (to appearently mixed results according to friend Rune anyway), and the rest are still under investigation.
Anything else?
-XT
So. There are a lot of people who say or wish to do harm against the something. Are you saying that we should incarcerate them for their thoughts. If you are going to incarcerate someone, shouldn’t you deem by trial that their past actions warrant such actions by the state?
Hell, the Danish guy ain’t even the star of the show. The effect of releasing our enemies in the war on terror while it is still going on is exactly what anyone would predict and is exactly as dumb as if we had emptied out the POW camps during WWII and sent those guys back to Germany. Or even dumber.
Thanks for the cite on that. I agree btw that its pretty silly to do this, but I don’t see what choice the US has…we are getting so much flak both internally and externally about these guys I don’t think the government has many options but to release at least SOME of the prisoners and hope for the best.
I had heard of a few cases, but hadn’t realized there were so many confirmed. The funny thing is, the US will be blamed for putting these folks back on the street…while being blamed for holding them in the first place. I can see this being spun to hurt the US…‘how could they be so stupid in letting this guy back on the street when its SO appearent that he was a terrorist…’.
-XT
It’s exactly what anybody who knew about Northern Ireland in the 70s would expect. Lock up a huge number of young men, some guilty and some not. Every one of them is release intent on revenge. If a previously-innocent Afghani goat-herder was locked in Gitmo for two years, then dumped back home with neither apology nor explanation, can’t you understand that he’d feel justified in now deciding to treat America as the enemy?
Of course, if the US military had made any effort to properly investigate and question these people in the first place instead of just shipping them halfway across the world and dumping them in a concentration camp then they may actually have some evidence to justify continuing to hold those amongst them who might pose some danger.
And, no it’s not really suprising that when a country has been holding people for several years in small metal cages, then releases them, that some of those people will be motivated to seek revenge.
xtisme gets a block… evades a tackle… he only has to beat the kicker… and HE! COULD! GO! ALL! THE! WAY!
Didn’t read the article, didja Avenger? “I managed to keep my Pakistani identity hidden all these years… We would fight America and its allies until the very end.” The oath they took is "“toilet paper.”
No, these guys’ release and their subsequent all-too-predictable terrorism is sqarely on the political pressure brought about by the pro-terror left.
As personified in this case by the SCOTUS, or as I like to call them “Jyhadists of the Gavel”.
I have no problem holding people in Cuba as prisoners of war, but if you have no evidence that they were involved in fighting us, then you have to let them go. Even if some of them end up actually being Jyhadists. After all, if we rounded up all the men of fighting age from certain areas, we would almost certainly get most of the Afgan fighters, but the “Jyhadists of the Gavel” won’t let us capture people who we can’t show are fighting against us.
Baloney. On rye - hold the mustard.
[http://slate.msn.com/id/2108634/](Guantanomo Detainees/ Slate Article)
It’s more than a little disingenuous to blame the Supreme Court for these problems, though, especially since most of these detainees were released before the June decisions were handed down. The real problem is that the Defense Department and U.S. intelligence community developed inadequate and unreliable systems for screening detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
To start with, if the US had simply agreed to application of the Geneva Conventions, it would have been entitled, under those Conventions, to hold the detainees until the “cessation of active hostilities” and to interrogate, etc.
Next, during the lengthy period of time that the detainees were held - with access to interrogation techniques that went beyond those available under the Conventioons and with access to the best of our military intelligence capabiliites – everyone was fooled by a fake Afghani ID? (In the case of Mehsud). Let’s see - how long did it take the administration to verify the faked Bush service record memos? After a couple of years no one 'cracks" a fake id? :rolleyes:
Ummmmmm, how much faith should we place in any of the intelligence obtained when, despite 2 years left to their own devices, they have such overwhelming failures as Mehsud?
The truth is, the problems of GITMO and many of the other problems we are having on the intelligence front are directly tied to incompetence. Take a look at the few things that have been said by Sibel Edmonds that have not been gagged. Including, for example, her whistleblowing on an interrogator sent to GITMO who failed proficiency tests for both English and the language he was being sent to translate. I guess only some wild left wing radical would see sending an incompetent translator to handle National Security Level interrogations as a recipe for disaster.
Aside and apart from the question of the Geneva Conventions, there is nothing in a requirement for a competent tribunal that somehow “jeopardizes” the Country. At least, not as long as someone has actually done their homework during the 2 years of detention. If you have some evidence – you’re ok. Is that such a dramatic wild “out there” concept?
I do believe, however, that despite all this “time alone together” Brig Gen Lucenti has said that they just don’t have much or any evidence to hold most of the remaining 500+ detainees. For some, that lack of evidence might just be bc it never existed to start with (while 10-25 released detainees may be acting with terrorist groups now, that is out of 150-200+ that have been released). For others, that lack might be bc after all this time, the best of our interrogation and intelligence efforts have generated a big fat zero.
Neither is something of which we can be proud.
I cross posted with Malodorous.
This is more than thoughts. I don’t want him punished for what he said after his release, but what he did before being captured. He was caught in Afghanistan or northern Pakistan after having been on a Taliban terror school in Kandahar with the intent to go on to Chechnya. It’s like stopping someone in a wan full of explosives on his way to the Empire State Building. Sure he hasn’t killed anyone yet. But, foiled attempt to kill is about as bad as the deed itself.
As a Dane you can’t just go around waging war on foreign nations, especially not those allied with Denmark. I think the Danish government should have tried him for treason.
. . . .
Toilet paper is actually the exact same words the Danish prisoner used when he described the oath he had given on his release.
If that’s true, then why isn’t he in Gitmo? Attending a terrorist training camp is surly a crime, for which he could be tried and convicted. I’m no bigger fan of the US gov’t releasing foriegn terrorists without trying them then I am of it holding people accused of terrorism without a trial.
As far as I can tell, the current startegy appears to be holding people for three years till they’re as pissed off at us as they can possibly be and the non-terrorists have had time to mingle with the terrorists, then shipping them back to Afganistan. I wonder if all of those recaptured/killed men from Gitmo were all really Taliban/terrorist folks before we took three years of thier life away.
Has anyone held at Gitmo actually been tried for anything?
He’s not there because you guys released him.
Probably as some kick-back to the Danish government for its participation in the invasion of Iraq. Not that the Danish government was overjoyed by having him back, but it used him to appease the opposition which was whining unbearable. Not that it stopped their whinery on other subject, but, after a brief love-affair, they have been remarkable mum on this prisoner in particular and most things Gitmo in general after he started to spew his obnoxious mix of anti-Semitism, misogyny and Jihad.
‘Pro-terror left’?
Do you have a cite for that?
I asume you are accusing (amongst many others) Amnesty International, the UK Attorney General and various UK national newspapers of being pro-terror.
And that calling for people imprisoned by the US to have legal representation, knowledge of charges, right to a trial and to see their family is now supporting terror?
Here’s an example of why decent people are protesting about Guantanamo Bay:
Three British prisoners released last week from Guantanamo Bay have revealed the full extent of British government involvement in the American detention camp condemned by law lords and the Court of Appeal as a ‘legal black hole’.
After more than 200 interrogation sessions each, with the CIA, FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency, MI5 and MI6, America has been forced to admit its claims that the three were terrorists who supported al-Qaeda had no foundation.
…the existence of a secret super-maximum security facility outside the main part of Guantanamo’s Camp Delta known as Camp Echo, where prisoners are held in tiny cells in solitary confinement 24-hours a day, with a military police officer permanently stationed outside each cell door…
…they endured three months of solitary confinement in Camp Delta’s isolation block last summer after they were wrongly identified by the Americans as having been pictured in a video tape of a meeting in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden and the leader of the 11 September hijackers Mohamed Atta. Ignoring their protests that they were in Britain at the time, the Americans interrogated them so relentlessly that eventually all three falsely confessed. They were finally saved - at least on this occasion - by MI5, which came up with documentary evidence to show they had not left the UK…
…Guns were held to their heads during their questioning in Afghanistan by American soldiers, and physical abuse and beatings were rife…
…Ahmed described an interrogation session which took place before he left Afghanistan by an officer of MI5 and another official who said he was from the Foreign Office: 'All the time I was kneeling with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head…
“Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone.”
You know what? I’m not telling. I was feeling all conciliatory and all after the election but until the left can at least get off their asses and get people to stop referring to the President of the United States as “chimp,” they can go find their own damn pro-terrorists and they can continue to risk being lumped in with them if they don’t.
Congratulations on avoiding the need for me to reply to your point by inserting a rabid and laughable insult at the end.
Can you even be ‘pro-terror’? I do like this new fad though - people who defend a right to abortion are ‘pro-abortion’, anyone who feels that normal democratic standards should be upheld are ‘pro-terror’. Presumably anyone who is against stem cell testing is ‘pro-disease’, anyone who objects to children being locked in their houses 24 hours a day is ‘pro-kidnap’ and anyone who objects to more military funding are ‘pro-invasion’.