Due to pressure from those countries, and I’ve never heard of any of them being convicted of anything. Not to mention the occasional fellow we dump by the side of a road or something. Or the ones who die under the torture.
Sure, but in general, the Mafia doesn’t blow up a school bus.
Very few cases of foriegn terrorism prosecuted in the USA, AFAIK.
Have terrorists blown up school buses in the US? Or in any other country?
And the US is not the only country with trial by jury – have there been problems with prosecuting foreign or domestic political terrorists in a jury-based system? (Prosecution of terrorist activities in Northern Ireland comes to my mind – any problems there? Or are Catholics and Protestants all right, but Muslims must be kept out of the regular system?)
But how do you know that hypothetical guy is “an honest to God terrorist” without a legit trial?
I can see the need to use the military court system, but surely that system has ways of dealing with classified information. This ain’t that court system’s first BBQ.
http://www.schoolterrorism.com/timeline.html
"March 18, 1968 - Fatah terrorists in Israel set a land mine which later blew up a school bus, killing two children and injuring 28 others.
May 8, 1970 - Palestinian terrorists attacked an Israeli School bus killing nine children and three adults. Nineteen others were also crippled for life. The terrorists apparently knew the bus schedule and planned their attack based on this knowledge.
May, 1974 - Three Arab terrorists dressed as Israeli Defense Forces soldiers attacked a school in Ma’alot, Israel . They took hostages and killed twenty one school children along with several adults. Many of the casualties occurred when an elite unit of the Golani Brigade attempted a tactical response to rescue the hostages. This incident resulted in the formation of special tactical units within the Israel National Police.
1976 – French Foreign Legion troops and the French counterterrorism police unit GIGN executed a tactical assault to free twenty nine French children being held hostage in a school bus at the border of Djibouti and Somalia . One child and five terrorists were killed during the rescue operation.
May, 1977 – A group of four Moluccan terrorists took more than 100 students and school employees hostage in an elementary school in Bovendsmille, Holland . After fourteen days of patient negotiations, Dutch Royal Marines performed a successful tactical rescue and captured all four terrorists.
May, 1986 – In a bizarre incident, a man and his wife who both held extremist views and wished to create a “Brave New World” took students and teachers hostage at an elementary school in Cokeville , Wyoming using firearms and explosives. They shot a teacher in the back and accidentally detonated the device killing the wife and injuring some of the hostages.
February, 1993 – Terrorists detonate a vehicle bomb in the parking deck of the World Trade Center in an attempt to collapse both towers. Six people were killed and more than a thousand injured in the attack. Schools in the immediate area were affected by the event, but no students or staff were injured.
May, 1994 – four Chechens armed with grenades and firearms hijacked a bus filled with teachers, parents and children in Southern Russia . The hostages were released after a multi-million dollar ransom was paid.
*April, 1995 – Shortly after parents had dropped their children off at a day care center located in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City , a large car bomb detonated and destroyed half of the structure. Among the 168 people who were killed were children at the day care center. Area schools also suffered structural damage. * March, 1997 – Seven Israeli school girls were shot to death by a Jordanian soldier while on a field trip in Bakura , Jordan .
January, 1998 – A bombing in Algiers on a crowded street packed with students returning home from school killed one person and wounded several others.
March, 1998 – The American School in Amman , Jordan was rocked by an explosion believed to be the work of terrorists upset by the U.S. conflict with Iraq over U.N. arms inspections.
October 29, 1998 - An Israeli soldier was killed after a terrorist drove a car bomb into an army jeep the soldier was driving. The jeep was escorting a bus of 40 elementary school children from Kfar Darom, a settlement in the Gaza strip.
*August, 1999 – An individual with extremist views opened fire in a childcare area of a Jewish community center in Los Angeles and killed several children. Police officers pursued the suspect who then shot and killed a Hispanic postal employee. The killings stem from the suspect’s anti-Semitic and racist views. *
November, 2000 – A bomb targeting a school bus exploded in the Gaza Strip settlement of Kfar Darom killing two passengers and wounding twelve others, including five school children.
April, 2001 – A car bomb targeting a school bus exploded near the town of Nablus in the West Bank . One Palestinian was killed and another injured.
May 30, 2001 – A car bomb exploded outside a school where students were studying for exams. Injuries were lessened by the time of the incident, which was after most people had gone home. Eight people were injured in the attack .
September, 2001 – Two people died and three more were injured in a terrorist attack on a minibus loaded with school and kindergarten teachers near the Adam Junction in Israel .
September, 2001 – A terrorist bomber’s head rolled into a French-language school in Jerusalem as children were arriving to start their school day. The bomber, who was disguised as an Orthodox Jew, blew himself up and injured eleven people next to the school.
September, 2001 – A bomb thrown at Catholic school girls walking to class through a Protestant neighborhood in Ireland exploded. Four police officers who were escorting the children were injured.
November, 2001 – A Palestinian gunman killed two students and wounded more than forty other passengers when he attacked their bus with an M-16 rifle at a bus stop in Jerusalem . An armed bystander and members of the Israel Border Police stopped the attack when they killed the gunman.
March, 2002 – A terrorist homicide bomber killed seven and wounded dozens more when he blew himself up on a bus frequently used by Arab and Jewish school children, many of whom were injured.
March, 2002 – Five students were shot to death and twenty - three other people wounded in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on a pre-military high school in Atzmona , Israel .
May, 2002 – Twelve school children were among the victims killed in Dagestan when a large remote-controlled explosive device detonated as they passed it. Russian President Vladimir Putin compared the terrorists who carried out the attack to the Nazis.
June, 2002 – Two students were murdered and fifteen wounded by a gunman believed to be from an ethnic minority Karen rebel group in an attack on a school bus in Thailand .
June 18, 2002 – A homicide bomber detonated himself on a bus headed towards Jersusalem. The bus, which was carrying many students on their way to school, was destroyed, leaving nineteen dead and seventy-four others wounded.
August, 2002 – Three school employees and two school security personnel were killed by gunman in an attack on the Murree Christian School in Pakistan .
September 5, 2002 – Fatah terrorists fired shots from a crowded school towards a patrol of Israeli soldiers. One soldier was killed and another wounded.
October, 2002- During a series of sniper attacks in the Washington , D.C. area, the Beltway snipers killed ten people and wounded three others, causing significant panic in the region. On October, seventh, 2002, a thirteen year old boy was shot and wounded as he arrived at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland. The shooting rampage ended when John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested and charged with some of the attacks. In March, 2004, Muhammad was sentenced to death after his conviction on terrorism statutes. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.
November, 21, 2002 – A terrorist bomber killed eleven people and injured almost fifty others in Israel when he blew himself up on a bus crowded with school children. The terrorist group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
April, 2003 – An explosion at a high school in Jennin, West Bank injured nearly thirty students. A radical Jewish group - Nikmat Olelim or “Revenge of the Infants” claimed responsibility for the incident saying the bomb was placed to avenge the murders of Jewish children by Palestinian terrorists.
February 22, 2004 - A Fatah attack on a bus in Jerusalem killed eight and wounded sixty more. Eleven of those wounded were school children.
June 28, 2004 – One adult and one child were killed when a rocket fired by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza strip detonated in a nursery school in Sderot.
September, 2004 – An attack by Chechen terrorists on a school in Belsan , Russia leaves hundreds dead and appears to be the largest terrorist attack on a school related target to date. "
You really didn’t know that scoolkids were common terrorist targets? :dubious:
Other nations have different rules for jury questionaires and selection than the USA does, as they don’t have the US Constitition, and so forth.
Uh, the fact that the Mid-east prisoners don’t want to go back to their countries of origin. It has nothing to do with our laws. They would be tried for crimes under Sharia law.
You of course have some evidence to back this up, right? Some informed speculation? A blog? Something?
I assert (with no proof…my post is my cite, and all that) that less than 10% of the people who haven’t been released are completely innocent and held unlawfully. Where do I get that figure? Out of my ass of course…same place you did. I picked 10% because its a nice round number and I always liked the number 10 for some odd reasn. Which one of us is closer to the truth? Flip a coin. At a guess though my 10% WAG is going to be closer to your 90%…
-XT
You’re going to have to start hiring a translator because I literally don’t understand half your posts.
It’s certainly possible, though at this point - as they have quietly released a number of prisoners - it’s probably just a large minority.
You haven’t any idea what you’re talking about. I do not share his paranoia over, well, much of anything.
What you seem to be missing is that the Bush administration DOESN’T WANT normal court martials held. I’d be fine with that, with some caveats, but that’s not the plan, is it? He’s trying to get around even the military’s usual manner of handing criminal cases.
Go fight your straw man somewhere else.
I hadn’t realised the schoolbus bombing was such a problem.
Right, that doesn’t sound like the Mafia: they’d be far more efficient.
Does this sound like a schoolbus bombing? No actual school buses were injured during this incident.
Yes, and Timothy McVeigh got his trial by jury. Did the fact that he wasn’t Muslim help?
The usual definition of terrorism does not include shooting by the military.
Are the rules for jury questionaires and selection actually required by the Constitution? Would it be possible for, for example, the questionaire information to be limited to the lawyers, and not to be made available to the accused, if there is a reason to believe that the accused or their friends might want to intomidate the jury?
And, by the way:
The US is not the only country with trial by jury guaranteed by its constitution.
You need to read the news a little more then.
No, they are required by the Courts under their interpretation of the Constitution. Barring a SCOTUS ruling, it’d take an Admendment, AFAIK. IANAL. But do you really think that Lawyers might not feed info to their clients? :dubious:
Yes, I know that. But only the USA follows US Common Law. Thus, only American Courts are effected by American judicial rulings on interpretations of said Right.
Putting aside the digression about exactly what percentage of the detainees were innocent (and because 1/3 of the prisoners were held and released uncharged the percentage is large but probably undeterminable at this point), on consideration of some of the prior answers, I think I my original question is actually a two-parter.
Part 1 of the question is whether the accused terrorists should have a full range of Constitutional criminal protections in the forum in which they would be tried?
Part 2 is whether it is appropriate for that forum to be the civilian courts, courts martial under the UCMJ or specially constituted military tribunals? The procedures in both the civilian courts and UCMJ court martials have been generally held to be Constitutional, though of course there are always specific instances where the appellate court structure finds they cross the line.
Like several others above, I think that the real problem is with abandoning the Constitutional criminal protections. If the military tribunals adequately protect the rights of the accused, I don’t have a real problem with them, though I still wonder if there is any substantial reason the terrorists shouldn’t be dealt with by the regular civil criminal court system or by USMJ courts martial. It seems to present a much better picture to outsiders to have the terrorists were convicted by a regular court system, rather than face accusations that they were tried in “kangaroo courts” (whether or not that accusation is accurate).
However, I have a substantial problem with the current Bush adminstration proposal. The adminstration’s own summary of its proposed legislation acknowledges that it will permit the introduction of secret evidence unavailable to the accused, that it will broadly permit the use of hearsay evidence (including coerced evidence) beyond established hearsay exceptions, and that it will almost entirely abrogate the accused right to avoid pre-trial self-incrimination.
To me, the biggest risk of adopting the administration’s proposal is that the Constitutional shortcuts it authorizes will be overturned on in the appeal process, invalidating all of the convictions by the tribunals. Even Senator Linsey Graham (R-SC), a former military judge, has said (NYT link, reg required) “I do not think we can afford to again cut legal corners that will result in federal court rejection of our work.” Indeed the top JAG officers have testified this morning that accused terrorists should be provided with all evidence against them, and if security considerations make that impossible, the case should be dropped.
I think the adminstration thinks that if it gets Congressional approval of the military tribunals, it will be home free. However, if you read Justice Scalia’s dissent in Hamdan, which was joined by the other two dissenting Justices, the reason that he voted against overturning the adminsitration-imposed tribunals was that he thought that the tribunals should be judged only after a person was convicted and had appealed the conviction up the appellate ladder. I think that if the tribunals depart too far from established criminal law standards, they will be likely overturned.
To me, the better course of action would to be use existing procedures to the extent possible.
Well, I didn’t THINK that you agreed with Der on such things. But by your own admission:
So, it wasn’t REALLY a strawman on my part Rick. You are saying that Der is 100% spot on, by which I take it you agree with him on this. He has said that, no, its not just 50% that are completely innocent, its 90%. As for my statement about military trials, it doesn’t seem a strawman to me.
What Bush MAY want to do has little bearing…as I don’t see how he is going to get his way on this unless he gets the full backing of Congress. Do YOU think this is likely…especially in an election year? I mean, certainly Der thinks that Bush is something like a King and can do whatever the hell he wants…but do you? Really?
As I said up thread, I think the military should handle this as they currently handle ALL their trials. With full due process. Speculating on what Bush MAY want to do in his wet dreams at night is all well and good…but lets try and stick to the reality of the actual situation. I’m sure Bush would LIKE to simply wave away all the problems in Iraq, to quell the insurrection and replace it by screaming mobs of pro-American demonstrators holding up’ We Love Bush!’ signs. I’m sure Bush would LIKE to have ObL’s head on a platter and the adulation of American’s multitudes. He’s not very likely to get any of that stuff however…and without full Congressional backing he’s not likely to get military trials without due process and results completely hidden from the public. Is he?
-XT
The fact that they haven’t been convicted, or tried, or anything except imprisoned. Where’s the evidence ?! I have no reason to believe them guilty of anything, beyond this Administrations word, and given Bush’s record, my 90% guess is being generous. You fail to explain why offering money for accusations will produce guilty suspects, instead of of people with greedy or hostile neighbors. I rather suspect that we’ve funded the terrorists, by paying bounties for them to accuse their enemies; it’s the obvious thing for them to do.
I got it because there is no evidence that they are guilty at all; I expect Bush got lucky and grabbed a few who are guilty of something. You on the other hand are just trying to make excuses for our barbaric behavior.
:rolleyes: We released people because of pressure from their native countries, not because they were innocent; we don’t care about innocent. I’ve never heard of the people we released being convicted, because no one but my fellow Americans is stupid enough to believe us, and we have no evidence in the first place. Plus, we occasionally just dump people by the side of the road in some random country after we give up on them, and sometimes we just torture them to death.
Although I agree we have taken far too long to bring these dudes to trial, note that generally Evidence is presented at trial. :rolleyes:
Which either won’t happen, or the evidence will be kept secret - which makes it rather implausible that the evidence even exists. I have no more reason to believe that they are guilty of terrorism than to believe you are, or any other random person.
Well, its a strawman on your part…I never claimed that offering money will produce guilty suspects. The fact that there have been no trials doesn’t tell us really anything more than that there have not been any trials. You are ASSUMING that this somehow shows that 90% of those captured are innocent…IOW, you are guessing based on your own prejudice.
I’m not saying that what Bush is doing is right…in fact, I’ve said repeatedly that its not. Its also stupid IMHO, not that they asked me. But none of this shows that the vast majority of the folks locked up are or are not guilty…it simply shows that they have not had due process as yet. And of course, getting back to my own point, none of this shows that there is some flaw in military justice, or why it shouldn’t be used in these cases.
The converse is also true…there is no evidence that you have produced that 90% of them are innocent.
Also, its a strawman again to say that I’m am making excuses for our barbaric behavior, since I have (again) repeatedly said that the way Bush is doing things is wrong and that those folks should be given due process via military tribunal. Look it up sometime Der…I’ve said it quite a number of times. If you would like to show me where I’m making excuses for the administration on this, feel free.
-XT
Innocent until proven guilty.
I’ll agree that you’ve identified part of the problem. Another problem is that most of the “evidence” against these defendants is simply not admissable in a regular court. Don’t want to show it to the Defendant prior to trial? Fine, but you can’t use it either. Don’t want to reveal the methods for obtaining “classified evidence”, fine…but again, you don’t get to use it against the defendant. Hearsay? Not unless you can fit it under one of the listed exceptions to the hearsay rule. Don’t want your witness to be cross-examined? Fine, but he can’t take the stand at all.
And then there’s that little bit about compulsory process to obtain witnesses for the Defense, self incrimination, warrantless searches, effective assistance of counsel, basic questions of jurisdiction, having an actual crime to charge a defendant with committing, and other techinicalities.
I think they should be tried in the criminal justice system, a la organized crime, because (a) that’s exactly what they are, and (b) it sends a powerful message.
That message: you’re just another roach with whom we deal in due course.
I see these Islamofascist types (to borrow the Bushism) as sitting around in their tents and caves absolutely ecstatic that with barely better than third-world technology they’re able to so strongly jerk the leash of the world’s unquestioned greatest power. That they are able to have so tremendous an effect is probably their greatest recruiting tool: Want to fight the Great Satan? Look at us, we’re the ones who really managed to get their attention.
Let’s take that away. The British response after the transit bombinbs was, I think, ideal (minus the whole Brazilian headshot thing): dust off, tighten up, and move on. That we Americans are squealing in panic and overreacting both overseas and at home is not so much infuriating as it is frankly embarrassing.
The United States is the most powerful nation on the planet. It will, unsurprisingly, attract the hatred of all manner of wackos. This is to be expected. It is not something that should cause our current level of total freakout. And the possibility of suffering another attack here or there does not rise to the level of endangering the existence of the nation. Only compromising our core values will accomplish that destruction.
So let’s find 'em, arrest 'em, and throw 'em into the system like the lowlifes they are. Take away the glamour, run 'em through the wringer, and if they’re found guilty stick 'em in a hole for the rest of their lives. Business as usual.
Otherwise, we make our enemies much more powerful than they really are. Why would we want to do that? As far as I’m concerned, the elevation of the issue to the status of War on Terror is, practically speaking, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, because it’s exactly what they want.
We’re fighting them on their terms. We can only win if we fight them on ours.