Guantanamo trials to be restarted

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by garo

Nice job throwing a hissy fit to avoid dealing with the substantive issues.

Another smear, instead of acknowledgment or apology.

I'm detecting a pattern.

Is this what other People Who Don't Say What Garo Wants Them To Say can expect?

[CRGreathouse]

I feel like the above two could be repeated, ad infinitum, in a sort of fractal posting pattern.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by garo

6. Uncwilly seems to be entirely comfortable with the fact that a "democratic" and "free" country maintains a gulag where it can send anyone it pleases for as long as it pleases.

Assumes facts not in evidence. I neither said that I support/endorse/like/etc. the situation, nor did i say that I don't like/etc.

I was clarifying a point of info.

[CRGreathouse]

Also it's disingenuous at best to compare Guantanamo to GULAG.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

Also it's disingenuous at best to compare Guantanamo to GULAG.

If by disingenuous you mean misleading or false then I'm very interested to know what important differences you see between Guantanamo Bay and the old Soviet Union's methods of dealing with what it defined as criminality. The only one I can come up with is scale: instead of the millions incarcerated without trial by the Soviet Union, the USA has done this to a few hundred who have been suspected of the extremely serious crime of (planned) terrorism. Beyond scale I cannot see any other difference which makes the comparison false, and for the smaller number of in some cases innocent people imprisoned at Guantanamo it might just as well be the Soviet Union of the first half of the 20th century as far as I can see.

[CRGreathouse]

Scale is a big one: 775 vs. 20 million. (See diagram.)

Death rate is another big one. About 17 times as many people died in the GULag as a proportion of the total as in Guantanamo. If the suicides are removed from both, it becomes more than 100 times as many in the GULag. And these totals are unfairly favorable to the GULag, since incomplete records mean that there were many more deaths than the numbers I'm using.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

If by disingenuous you mean misleading or false then I'm very interested to know what important differences you see between Guantanamo Bay and the old Soviet Union's methods of dealing with what it defined as criminality.

The quality of life at Guantanamo is better in many respects. See One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for a description of gulag life.

[CRGreathouse]

Obviously, the last two posts should not be seen as an endorsement of Guantanamo Bay, but merely bringing the discussion back to reality.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

Obviously, the last two posts should not be seen as an endorsement of Guantanamo Bay, but merely bringing the discussion back to reality.

Yes, the latter was my intent, too.

- - -

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Civilian judges would have no authority to preside over proper trials at Guantanamo.

I may have been wrong about that. Perhaps there is a provision for civilian trials after all (or perhaps I'm misinterpreting the following article):

"DOD: don't rule out civilian trials of detainees"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110317/...Rkb250cnVsZW8-

WASHINGTON – The Defense Department's general counsel on Thursday urged Congress to allow the Obama administration to use civilian courts as well as military commissions to prosecute detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Jeh Johnson said a Republican bill to virtually remove the civilian option would make it more likely that courts would step in when detainees challenge their detentions.

"Let's not take options away from the military and the national security apparatus. Let's not take away the Article 3 (civilian court) option," Johnson told the House Armed Services Committee.

. . .

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

The quality of life at Guantanamo is better in many respects. See One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for a description of gulag life.

Thanks for the reference. I'm reading it now -- enlightening, and (darkly) amusing. It's very well-written.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

Thanks for the reference. I'm reading it now -- enlightening, and (darkly) amusing. It's very well-written.

As someone wrote in Wikipedia,

"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was specifically mentioned in the Nobel Prize presentation speech when the Nobel Committee awarded Solzhenitsyn the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970."

- - -

Note: A different committee (in a different country) selects the laureate for the Peace Prize.