It’s probably too late to run proper court trials to determine guilt. You might as well eject the prisoners.
Probably a lot of them are guilty and will go and do bad things. But in the same vein, when a cop uses extra-legal means to secure evidence and all that evidence is thrown out, the bad person gets to go free. This is the price of Rule of Law. Bush should have followed proper protocol in dealing with these people, or at least made sure that their capture was never made public. Either way he was thoroughly incompetent and the blame falls squarely on his shoulders.
I suspect that they simply made the 11% percent figure up. How would they even know if some guy that sniped an American somewhere or set off a bomb and was never caught was a former prisoner ?
At a guess they don’t just release these guys with no follow up. If they follow up with them and they have disappeared they probably automatically assume they have decided to go back off the reservation. Though I agree in spirit…the 11% is probably mostly just a BS estimate.
Prisoners of war are required to be treated a certain way, and that is NOT the way the detainees at Gitmo are being treated. The administration made VERY certain to make the distinction between POWs and unlawful combatants. The people detained at Gitmo are not POWs, or we’d have already had at least half this administration facing charges at The Hague.
Not that I don’t think they should already be charged for the things they HAVE done, but abusing POWs is not among them, by their own very careful definition.
In at least a civilian court in the USA, they wouldn’t have to prove their innocence. Their innocence would be presumed. The government would have to prove their guilt. Is it different for “enemy combatants”? That’s a very guilty label.
I feel certain that President-Elect Obama will order it closed as soon as it is possible. But ordering it closed he can do immediately. Getting the job done the right way may take some time. I have confidence in his ability to do what needs to be done. I have no confidence in Cheney who was out there trying to advise him on Gitmo today.
On one broadcast I heard that Obama’s approval rating is at 82%.
Here’s another great reason why Gitmo should be closed:
It seems that it’s been acknowledged that the reason Mohammed al-Qahtani, (alleged Saudi “20th” highjacker) had charges dismissed was…
He had his confession drawn out of him by torture. What a surprise!
This means that it was inadmissible.
Col. Crawford (Judge and convening authority of military commissions) said: “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that is why I did not refer the case for prosecution.
Underneath the BS, there is a concern over what to do/how to climb down from the tiger. There was a thread not too long ago about this that was a bit less of a partisan screed, but I can’t find it at the moment.
ETA
Not the Dope, but required viewing to be familiar with both sides of the issue: Formidable Opponent
definitely POWs are not fair game, even if they are unlawful combatants. I only wanted to point out that there are differences between the rules for criminal and POWs.
It is true that there is no formal declaration of war (teenage mockery aside) but then, it means that GITMO guys are in a deeper limbo.
There is a “declaration of war on terror” (whatever it means). International humanitarian Law does not specifically cover action in combat between a country and an organization that doesn not, even by defult or tradition, follows Geneva
In my country, Peru, terrorists were prosecuted as crminals and not POWs even if there was armed conflict because they never met the requirements of a bona fide armed group.
I wouldn’t close GITMO per se. I would quickly go through Article 5 hearings and quickly let all but the most cler cases go. There are, I assume, honest-to-god POWs and war criminal in GITMO so simply putting them in a plane and sending them back to wherever they were captured would not work.
As to torture, it would be interesting to know why the Democrats in Congress who were briefed about all procedures, including wateboarding, did not complain.
Believe me, you’re not the only one who wonders about that. In my darker moments, I begin to think that’s why nothing has been done as far as actual oversight and investigation by Congress into violations of the Geneva Conventions. It’s entirely possible quite a few Democrats will be caught up in that net as well.
Let’s not kid ourselves, people - the primary attraction of Guantanamo is its remove from the reach of US law, and its “quaint” and “obsolete” notions of legality.
Sayings aren’t always accurate. That saying reflects a particular philosophy, that the guilty must be punished even at great cost to the innocent. Not everybody agrees with that.
I think you were whooshed there; I believe that was a joke about the saying that it’s better to release a thousand guilty men than punish one innocent man.
Agreed. They used its odd legalistic location to be a POW camp AND prison holding cell AND interrogation center.
They should declare war on AQ officially, and then treat everyone captured as a POW - who gets held until the war is over. Then at least there could be a real debate on what is going on.
I may be wrong, but I think the reasoning behind denying that the prisoners at Gitmo were POW’s was that if they were, they would then have certain rights, like visits from the Red Cross (Red Crescent), and the freedom from torture, er I mean “enhanced interrogation”
From my perspective you are either a criminal or an enemy soldier. We need to pick one and follow-up on it. I also have no problem with war crimes trials for some of the POWs. This questionable classification is nonsense, and hurts us.
To clarify my stance - when I say “close Gitmo” - I mean the prison camp. The base can stay as far as I am concerned (and that can be the fodder for a different thread).