http://www.newsweek.com/id/168294

BUT I THOUGHT THE PRESIDENT DOESN'T MATTER!!!!!!!

11/10/2008 9:34:32 AM

McCain wanted to close it, too.

Is your beef with the trials?

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 9:40 AM. Reason : +]

11/10/2008 9:39:33 AM

Yea the article says they both wanted it closed. The main difference is that Obama is going to do away with the military trials that have next to no rules regarding evidence presentation, etc. and put in something that actually resembles a criminal trial.

11/10/2008 9:42:22 AM

The Bush administration has even made motions toward closing the prison, but the problem has been one of what to do with the prisoners (which the article hasn't addressed). Many of these folks can't go back to their home countries, either because their home country won't take them back or that they'll be further tortured upon return. No third nation has expressed much serious willingness to take the folks in as well. I don't think that it would be publicly acceptable to release them into the United States either. This, combined with the issues of the trials as mentioned in the article show demonstrate how complex a mess Bush created. So while everyone wants to close Guantanamo, no one knows how to do it.

11/10/2008 9:45:01 AM

I'm sure George Bush and Co. will be held liable for destroying these people's lives as well.

11/10/2008 9:46:14 AM

Guantanamo Bay is more than just an illegal prision

you need to be more exact with your thread titles

11/10/2008 9:50:31 AM

Guantanamo Bay: come for the beaches, stay for the waterboarding.

11/10/2008 9:56:05 AM

Bush, it seems to me, has painted us into a corner. We have no choice but to move them to Canada, charge those we can, and release the others as stateless individuals.

11/10/2008 9:59:20 AM

so where do "stateless individuals" go? We just drop them off in the middle of the ocean!?

11/10/2008 10:01:50 AM

Quote :

"McCain wanted to close it, too."

Indeed, but don't you think having a president with a background in constitutional law will be helpful here?

11/10/2008 10:03:52 AM

^^ Sure. We can call it "surfboarding."

11/10/2008 10:05:29 AM

No, because the Constitution does not address the treatment of foreigners in foreign lands by a dictatorial U.S. President.

11/10/2008 10:05:46 AM

No, but the Geneva Convention that we signed does.

11/10/2008 10:11:39 AM

^^That's bullshit. Not directly perhaps, but even the supreme court ruled that the detainees should be granted some constitutional rights. That's the whole problem here, that we're holding these people in what amounts to judicial limbo with no justification what so ever. On top of that, the prison itself is essentially an American gulag and it's existence means that we can no longer claim the moral high ground on issues of POW treatment.

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 10:14 AM. Reason : :]

11/10/2008 10:14:17 AM

^^ and ^ 1. "Enemy combatants"--not POWS.

2. Are they parties to or are their countries parties to the Geneva Conventions?

Just asking.

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 10:15 AM. Reason : .]

11/10/2008 10:15:07 AM

Same difference, and you know it. If we're truly fighting a 'war on terror' then they are our prisoners during a time of war. Ergo, POW's.

11/10/2008 10:28:58 AM

Quote :

"Not directly perhaps, but even the supreme court ruled that the detainees should be granted some constitutional rights."

It did so based upon a basic sense of morality, not the constitution. Such behavior goes by another name also, judicial activism. It is undemocratic, but in these rare instances it does some good.

11/10/2008 10:36:11 AM

Quote :

" It did so based upon a basic sense of morality, not the constitution."

Actually, didn't they come to this decision because US bases are considered US soil (thus children born on military bases can become presidents, etc.) thus are afforded constitutional protections?

11/10/2008 10:38:47 AM

^^^

Quote :

"The Geneva Conventions apply in wars between two or more states."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

It's certainly debatable. The Supreme Court has held, however, that the GC applies concerning humane treatment, at least--and it may have been a basis for the access to the U.S. justice system holding.

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 10:45 AM. Reason : .]

11/10/2008 10:44:55 AM

Quote :

"^^ Sure. We can call it "surfboarding." "

oh shit, hooksaw made me laff!
i'm going to go kill myself now....

11/10/2008 11:17:53 AM

Quote :

"An unlawful combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a civilian who directly engages in armed conflict under the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action."

And this is where the geneva conventions come into play. Any treaty signed by the US becomes domestic law, by law! (I know, it sounds redundant, but it makes sense.)

Anyway, we need to get rid of these people one way or another, they're wasting our money just rotting in jail. Put them on trial, set them free or, if they're actual 'kill people praise muhammed' terrorists, put them to work for Uncle Sam for the rest of their lives in the judicial system.

11/10/2008 11:27:29 AM

fuck it lets close Guantanamo Bay; we do want to cut back spending don't we.

the cold war is over.

11/10/2008 11:34:39 AM

Yeah, it doesn't add any strategic advantage. Maybe if it was in some other part of the world. But it's a afternoon cruise away from Florida. Though it pisses off the Cubans, which kinda makes it worth it, just for old times sake.

11/10/2008 11:55:11 AM

Quote :

"oh shit, hooksaw made me laff! i'm going to go kill myself now.... "

agentlion

Don't kill yourself--there's no shame in this. I'm not The Devil or The Bogeyman--we simply disagree about some things. Okay, probably a lot of things!

11/10/2008 12:08:15 PM

you called me agentlion instead of agentlyin
*sniff, sniff* i'm getting choke up over here

11/10/2008 12:17:40 PM

^ I'm sure an insult from you is just one post away if I return to the SNL thread.

I'd like to buy TSB a Coke!*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8H5263jCGg
















* Figuratively speaking, of course.

11/10/2008 12:22:37 PM

Pentagon: Ex-detainees returning to fight

Quote :

"'Our reports indicate that a number of former [Guantanamo Bay] detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention. Some have subsequently been killed in combat,' said Cmdr. Jeff Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. Documents provided by the Pentagon show other former detainees returning to the battlefield, including Abdullah Mahsud, who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. He returned to Afghanistan, where he became a militant leader in the Mahsud tribe in southern Waziristan, the documents said. 'We have since discovered that he had been associated with the Taliban since his teen years and has been described as an al Qaeda-linked facilitator. 'In mid-October 2004, Mahsud directed the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan. During rescue operations by Pakistani forces, a kidnapper shot one of the hostages. Five of the kidnappers were killed. Mahsud was not among them,' the documents provided by the Pentagon said. 'As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo,' Gordon said. Reports of former detainees returning to the battlefield show they are dedicated to their cause and have been trained to be deceptive, the Pentagon officials said, but such factors will not prevent the release of other detainees from Guantanamo Bay."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/07/gitmo.bomber/index.html

11/11/2008 8:10:09 AM

#1. These are not official soldiers of a recognized nation. #2. They dont wear uniforms or any other identification to separate them from civillians, so the probability of civillian casualties is much higher.

11/11/2008 8:22:14 AM

Quote :

"there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo"

Is this sort of intellectual laziness seriously coming from the Pentagon?

Every detainee?

11/11/2008 8:35:26 AM

they arent saying every detainee is going to return to the battlefield, they are saying there is a risk.

Gitmo is a fucked up mess. I think the military and the CIA should make a concerted effort to weed out the few unlucky bastards who have been wrongly put in Gitmo and set them free. then the remaining prisoners who were captured on the field of battle should be classified as POW's and held until their parent terrorist organizations are no longer threatening. the few ultra-bad guys who are known conspirators should be brought to proper trial, convicted and executed.

11/11/2008 8:44:52 AM

^ Correct concerning risk.

^^ And I guess you missed this part. . .

Quote :

"Reports of former detainees returning to the battlefield show they are dedicated to their cause and have been trained to be deceptive, the Pentagon officials said, but such factors will not prevent the release of other detainees from Guantanamo Bay."

11/11/2008 8:51:33 AM

My granddad is a retired marine. He was a prison chaser at Gauntanmo bay in the 60s. He has some stories...

11/11/2008 11:17:40 AM

A good case of several Chinese Uighurs who were sent to and then released from Guantanamo. It helps highlight the issue of the sorts of thorny issues that the Bush administration faced, and the Obama administration will face, in trying to close down the Guantanamo prison.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7816611.stm

Quote :

"Free but homeless after Guantanamo On taking office, US President-elect Barack Obama is expected to quickly push for the closure of Guantanamo Bay - and the release of 60 detainees. But as the plight of ex-inmate Adel Hakimjan, a Chinese Uighur, shows it will not be an easy solution, writes the BBC's Michael Buchanan. He has been abused, persecuted, traded, and falsely imprisoned. Yet Adel Hakimjan is cheery, engaging and confident, talking easily about the past tumultuous decade which has seen him forcibly travel the world. Adel, 34, fled his home and family in north-west China in 1999, having been accused by the Chinese authorities of being part of the East Turkestan Independence Movement, a group fighting for an independent, self-governing homeland. He says he was harassed, tortured and imprisoned by the Chinese. He left Xinjiang province intending to travel to Turkey where he hoped to find work. In late 2001 he found himself in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, where, following the US-led invasion, he says he was sold to American forces by bounty hunters and ended up at a detention facility in Kandahar. "We were locked up in Kandahar for about six months. We were given two meals a day, one at midday and the other at midnight. We couldn't sleep at night, as we were 22 of us in the same room and many of us were often taken out for nighttime interrogation. "When they took one of us out for interrogation, they woke up everyone in the room and ordered us to stand in the corner with the hands held on the heads. "We were really exhausted during that six-month custody." Adel says his interrogations became easier once he convinced the Americans he was not involved in any terrorism or aiding the Taleban. He became hopeful he would be released, but "all of a sudden, we were all taken to Guantanamo". Chinese questioning There the interrogations continued until a Combatant Status Review Tribunal concluded he had not been an "illegal combatant" and he was moved to Camp Iguana, a far less severe regime. His worst experience at Guantanamo, he says, was when the US allowed Chinese interrogators to question him. "Compared to the American interrogators, the Chinese were more brutal. "The Chinese threatened us by saying: 'Don't think that you are untouchables because you are currently in American custody. We came here to take you back to China. You may not talk to us here, but you will be talking to us when we get you to Urumqi or Beijing. We will then try to settle the matter.' "On the whole, they treated us quite brutally." Therein lay Adel's problem. The Americans were happy to release him and the 22 other Uighurs they were holding captive. And the Chinese were willing to take them. But all the Uighurs refused to return to China, fearing persecution on their return. Dr Michael Dillon, a China expert, says they have every reason to be frightened: "The Chinese authorities would certainly want them back, would want to detain them, put them on trial and there is a very, very serious possibility that some of them - if not all of them - would be subject to the death penalty." Albanian offer So the quest began to find a country that would accept Adel. Eventually Albania - one of Europe's poorest nations but a mainly Muslim country - said that Adel and four other Uighurs could move there. "When I learned that I was going to be taken to Albania, I was worried and couldn't trust it," he says. "I thought that it could be a trick and we might be taken to China instead. "We arrived in the middle of the night, the plane landed and I looked around the airport and it was completely dark. Then three or four black cars approached and the back of the plane was opened. "It was a really frightening and panicking experience for me. "Then, we saw some people get out of the cars and noticed that they had yellow hair and looked European. We were really relieved to see them." Adel and his four friends were initially held at an immigration camp in Albania, where they were promised housing, travel documents, language courses and help finding a job. But the housing and documents took months to materialise and the language courses were abruptly stopped - after just three classes. Worst of all, Adel didn't feel safe in Albania. He says the Chinese government made repeated efforts to have the Albanians hand all the Uighurs over to China, and he feared the Chinese would simply "pay someone to harm us without being directly involved itself". So in November 2007 Adel's lawyers persuaded Sweden to give him a four-day visa to lecture about human rights. Waiting for him at Stockholm airport was his sister, Kauser, who hadn't seen him in almost a decade. "We couldn't get enough of each other, and had endless things to talk about," she recalls. Adel immediately applied for asylum. The Swedes rejected his claim and he's now appealing against their decision. His lawyer, Sten de Geer, says he has a good chance of being allowed to stay: "Albania should not be considered the first country of asylum because Adel has not chosen Albania as his country of asylum. He has been forced to apply for asylum there. "As his sister is living in Sweden, and she's the only relative he has outside China, there are very strong humanitarian reasons to give him a permit to live here." Adel has a wife and three children back in China, the youngest of whom he has never seen. Even if he is allowed to stay in Sweden he is not confident of ever seeing them as he does not think the Chinese authorities will let them leave. "

1/12/2009 5:22:54 PM

Quote :

"Same difference, and you know it. If we're truly fighting a 'war on terror' then they are our prisoners during a time of war. Ergo, POW's."

You don't really seem to understand what POW's are, especially as they relate to the Geneva Conventions and other instruments of international law.

From the GCIII:

Quote :

"Article 4 A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy: 1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces. 2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions: (a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) That of carrying arms openly; (d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. "

Neither al-Qaeda, nor the Taliban, nor to my knowledge any of the other organizations alleged to be represented in Gitmo meet those qualifications. As a result, they don't qualify in any meaningful sense as "prisoners of war."

Now, you might find their treatment abhorrent or illegal for any number of other reasons, but this one point needs to be abundantly clear: they are not POW's.

1/12/2009 6:20:00 PM

i hate Obama, thats all I have to say

1/13/2009 12:11:09 AM

what needs to happen is a similar prison needs to be set up with less publicity.

1/13/2009 9:38:23 AM

Releasing the prisoners is one thing, I hope they don't actually close the base though. If nothing else, we could use it as a tobacco farm and cigar factory.

1/13/2009 9:50:24 AM

Quote :

"Now, you might find their treatment abhorrent or illegal for any number of other reasons, but this one point needs to be abundantly clear: they are not POW's."

A perfect example of the devil being in the details. Shame on you, Christain...

1/13/2009 10:46:00 AM

I love how Obama has this "im Abe Lincoln" complex but is opposed to Gitmo.....I mean didnt Abe kind of break the constitution with the suspension of habeus corpus and the imprisonment of dissenters

1/13/2009 12:24:14 PM

and FDR shoved as many japanese-americans into internment camps as he could, and the supreme court backed up his actions

HOORAY

1/13/2009 12:48:38 PM

Quote :

"A perfect example of the devil being in the details. Shame on you, Christain..."

When the Geneva Convention is on your side, then it is the end-all, be-all of international law, to be respected always.

When it isn't on your side, then they're just "details" to be brushed away.

The writers of the convention made a clear definition of what could and could not qualify for Prisoner of War status, with good reason. If you disagree with their definition, that's fine. And like I said, there are plenty of other reasons to find the practices at Gitmo abhorrent or illegal. But if you're going to throw around a word when you clearly don't know its meaning, I'm gonna point it out. "POW" doesn't just mean "some dude with a gun we caught while we were fighting."

1/13/2009 2:56:48 PM

I don't see why anyone thinks it's a good idea to detain people indefinitely without trials. We make fun of Russia for doing things like that, we shouldn't be doing it ourself.

I really don't care if we give them American legal trials or not, but we should at least be able to provide valid reasons why a person is detained there.

1/13/2009 5:32:00 PM

bump

1/1/2010 11:13:05 AM

Terror Attempt May Hinder Plans to Close Guantánamo
December 31, 2009

Quote :

"KANEOHE, Hawaii — The attempted bombing of an American passenger plane on Christmas Day could greatly complicate President Obama's efforts to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as lawmakers in both parties call on the administration to rethink its approach. [LOL!] The task of determining what to do with the detainees held at Guantánamo has already proved so daunting that Mr. Obama is poised to miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for shuttering the prison by Jan. 22. But evidence that Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen was behind last week's failed plane attack will make closing the center even harder since nearly half the remaining detainees are from Yemen."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/politics/01terror.html

1/1/2010 12:12:26 PM

Honestly I think we have criminals that far more dangerous within our supermax then a lot of the "terrorists" locked up in Guantanamo who are nothing but pawns for their master orgainization.

1/1/2010 3:14:04 PM

^ there’s no rational reason to oppose keeping the prisoners in existing prisons.

It’s just about certain people being pussies, combined with partisan politics that can’t have the democrats getting any perceived victories.

1/1/2010 4:21:13 PM

Indisputable facts:

1. Obama's self-imposed deadline to close Guantanamo Bay will not be met? Check.

2. Lawmakers in both parties calling on the Obama administration to rethink its approach to Guantanamo detainees? Check.

3. Bitter partisan hacks here (and elsewhere) will continue to defend Obama no matter how many promises he breaks and how much flip-flopping he does--while ignoring the facts and continuing to attack me? Check.

1/2/2010 12:26:25 AM

haha, what is the point of pointing out the deadline wasn’t met, when the reason it wasn’t met was because people like you did everything to slow the process down?

that’s the most transparent trolling ever

[Edited on January 2, 2010 at 1:15 AM. Reason : ]

1/2/2010 1:15:35 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guant%C3%A1namo_Bay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban-American_Treaty

So, why exactly do we even have a detention camp there? There's a question of whether the treaty was legitimate in the first place, since it sounds like the United States said something like "Yeah, sign this treaty or else." But, even if it is legit, it just says we're allowed to have a naval base/coaling station there. I don't see why we couldn't just have a detention center in our own country.

1/2/2010 1:22:40 AM

^^ Except that has nothing to do with the facts. Obama campaigned on closing Guantanamo Bay and he signed an executive order in January 2009 ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay:

Quote :

"Sec. 3. Closure of Detention Facilities at Guantánamo. The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order. If any individuals covered by this order remain in detention at Guantánamo at the time of closure of those detention facilities, they shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-22-execorder-gitmo_N.htm

Furthermore, Obama reiterated in November 2009 that he would close Guantanamo Bay--yet he has failed to do so. To point this out is not "transparent trolling"--it is simply stating facts.

[Edited on January 2, 2010 at 1:28 AM. Reason : Obama was naive at best.]

1/2/2010 1:24:39 AM