Guantanamo trials to be restarted

[garo]

I vaguely remember cheesehead saying in Jan 2010 that it wasn't Obama's fault that he was unable to keep his promise to close Guantanamo in a year. It was the damn Congress that refused him funding.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...-trials-resume

So now can we say that he has broken yet another election promise?

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by garo

I vaguely remember cheesehead saying in Jan 2010 that it wasn't Obama's fault that he was unable to keep his promise to close Guantanamo in a year. It was the damn Congress that refused him funding.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...-trials-resume

So now can we say that he has broken yet another election promise?

Congress has also refused funding to allow the prisoners to be brought
to the U.S. for trial. So it is either detain them indefinitely with no trial,

(which violates many principles on which the U.S. is founded)

or proceed with military trials. What alternative do you suggest?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by garo

I vaguely remember cheesehead saying in Jan 2010 that it wasn't Obama's fault that he was unable to keep his promise to close Guantanamo in a year. It was the damn Congress that refused him funding.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...-trials-resume

So now can we say that he has broken yet another election promise?

Do you mean that Congress has now approved the funding it refused earlier?

If not, then nothing's changed in that regard -- it's still Congress that's the roadblock -- and I'm disappointed that you'd try to falsely imply otherwise.

Since trials at Guantanamo will at least move the status of some detainees forward from indefinite detention to a verdict that either release them or sets a more definite term of imprisonment, that will improve some detainees' status. Can't you see that? It's not the preferred method, but Obama can't use his preferred method, so he's using the best of the sorry options available to him.

What would you rather see him do, given that Congress won't allow any detainee transfer? Continue indefinite detention? Do you consider that preferable to what a military trial could do? Or do you want Obama to disobey Congress and get impeached?

[garo]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

(which violates many principles on which the U.S. is founded)

or proceed with military trials. What alternative do you suggest?

[sarcasm]Oh? Since when did the US government start worrying about the principles on which the US was founded?[/sarcasm]

Don't you think that it is a sad sad statement about the state of the US and a telling commentary on its self-appointed role as the 'leader of the free world' that people (some innocent) are being kept in indefinite detention and there is no serious protest.

There is a simpler alternative. Ship some civilian judges over and have proper trials.
Yet another simple partial alternative is to release those prisoners that are demonstrably innocent.

[garo]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

What would you rather see him do, given that Congress won't allow any detainee transfer? Continue indefinite detention? Do you consider that preferable to what a military trial could do? Or do you want Obama to disobey Congress and get impeached?

Come now, it won't be for the first time that a US president disobeyed Congress if he brought them over to the US. BTW, did anyone impeach Bush when he had a war which is supposedly the sole prerogative of the Congress?

He never had a plan for closing Guantanamo, just a vague promise that he never intended fulfilling because he never came up with a concrete plan to do just kep talking about it till nitwits in the Congress got together and started making it more difficult for him.

More details here:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...amo/index.html

[garo]

On a related note, it seems that it is okay to torture people accused of crime but not okay to condemn it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...anning-remarks

A day later, Obama was asked about Crowley's remarks at a news conference. He replied that he had asked the Pentagon whether the confinement conditions were appropriate and whether they met basic standards. "They assure me that they are," the president said. He declined to elaborate when pressed on whether he disagreed with Crowley's assessment.

Pathetic! And this is a man who taught constitutional law. Next he will be saying he believes Gaddafi when he says he is treating opponents with respect.

Glenn Greenwald has a good writeup on this.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...ley/index.html

Matt Yglesias just put it: "Sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning."

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by garo

There is a simpler alternative. Ship some civilian judges over and have proper trials.

They don't have jurisdiction there. G'tmo is not part of the USA. It is a "no man's land". That is why they are there. No other base fulfills the unique spot that it does.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by garo

Come now, it won't be for the first time that a US president disobeyed Congress if he brought them over to the US.

... and each of them suffered for doing so.

Furthermore, your comments indicate that you miscategorize certain presidential actions as disobedience of Congress, when they're really not.

BTW, did anyone impeach Bush when he had a war which is supposedly the sole prerogative of the Congress?

"had a war which is supposedly the sole prerogative of the Congress" -- Each of the incursions, Afghanistan and Iraq, were approved by Congress in advance. They were _not_ instances of disobeying Congress.

Impeachment is conducted via votes in Congress, and it's practically impossible when the president's own party controls Congress. (Note that Republicans had control when Clinton was impeached.)

He never had a plan for closing Guantanamo,

What is your preferred plan, and how would you have implemented it if you were president?

Oh, wait. Here it is:

Originally Posted by garo

There is a simpler alternative. Ship some civilian judges over and have proper trials.

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

(You'd know that if you were president.)

Yet another simple partial alternative is to release those prisoners that are demonstrably innocent.

There are claims of such innocence, but their demonstration would be conducted where? In court (I know you think your sources are accurate, but they aren't courts, are they?). Now we're back where we were.

(You'd know that if you were president.)

So much for your plan and its superiority to Obama's.

- - -

One might reasonably ask what my preferred plan is/was.

1) Work to persuade other countries to accept some inmates.

2) Work to persuade Congress to allow transfers to the mainland.

I have never claimed to have a better plan -- and those who do make that claim have never shown how theirs could actually, realistically be implemented.

Lesson for future presidents: don't do what Bush did.

[garo]

Arguing with cheesehead is a waste of time. But I never learn.

So to sum up the situation is as follows:

1. 173 or so alleged terrorists are in Guantanamo and there is no hope of them getting a proper criminal trial in the foreseeable future. [Edit: And no military tribunals are not a proper criminal trial.]

2. There is a high probability that at least some of the prisoners are innocent of any crime. The majority of men who were detained in Guantanamo under conditions amounting to torture were subsequently released with no charges pressed. But they were kept in there for many years. So it seems likely that at least some of the remainder will also be innocent. Many of the others have not been told what their crime is.

3. At least one prisoner Mohammed Hassen, was cleared for release by Bush but Obama is opposing his release.

4. If the Congress is the obstacle then why is Obama vehemently opposing rights to habeus corpus for these prisoners? And why not just say to Congress, give the funding to try these people properly or I will have to release them?

5. Cheesehead, evidently did not read or read but chose to ignore my link to the Salon article which describes the legal issues far better than I could. The writer is a lawyer.

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.

It's a fucking disgrace!

References:
1. Lakhdar Boumediene http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl.../08/boumediene who was innocent and wrongfully imprisoned and tortured by the US government for over 6 years.

Does anyone object to the term "moral depravity" being applied to those in Congress who voted to keep completely innocent people in cages for life without any opportunity to have a court review the accusations against them? If these members of Congress had their way, these completely innocent individuals would still be encaged at Guantanamo.

Here is Boumediene's description of what was done to him by the U.S. at Guantanamo -- perfectly consistent with what other Guantanamo detainees (and those at Bagram and elsewhere) have described, as summarized by Tapper:

Boumediene said he endured harsh treatment for more than seven years. He said he was kept awake for 16 days straight, and physically abused repeatedly.
Asked if he thought he was tortured, Boumediene was unequivocal.
"I don't think. I'm sure," he said.
Boumediene described being pulled up from under his arms while sitting in a chair with his legs shackled, stretching him. He said that he was forced to run with the camp's guards and if he could not keep up, he was dragged, bloody and bruised.
He described what he called the "games" the guards would play after he began a hunger strike, putting his food IV up his nose and poking the hypodermic needle in the wrong part of his arm.
"You think that's not torture? What's this? What can you call this? Torture or what?" he said, indicating the scars he bears from tight shackles. "I'm an animal? I'm not a human?"

What kind of person would deny that this is torture? And what kind of person would argue that those who ordered that should be immune from investigation and prosecution?

2. Mohammed Hassen http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl.../28/guantanamo who Obama is refusing to release despite a court order.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by garo

Arguing with cheesehead is a waste of time.

Not when one presents sound arguments and evidence.

3. At least one prisoner Mohammed Hassen, was cleared for release by Bush but Obama is opposing his release.

Thank you for bringing this fact to my attention. I hadn't known this.

5. Cheesehead, evidently did not read or read but chose to ignore my link to the Salon article

... "evidently"? ... on the basis of what evidence?

Answer: none.

You demonstrate, in that post, little practical understanding of the distinction between evidence and not-evidence. E.g., you make the statement that "evidently" something-or-other, when in fact you have no evidence to support that statement that "evidently" something-or-other.

Do you understand the plain meaning of "evidently"? (Does "on the basis of presented evidence" ring any bell?)

You could have made the simpler, factually-correct statement, "Cheesehead did not comment on the Salon article." -- which is supported by evidence.

But instead you chose to make the false straw-man claim that I "evidently did not read or read but chose to ignore [your] link to the Salon article".

Was that because you were so irritated with my failure to agree with you that you wanted to smear me with a straw-man accusation?

- -

I did read the article. I didn't have time then to make any significant comment. Until you show understanding of the difference between evidence and not-evidence, and a willingness to forgo making straw-man accusations, I see no point in my taking that trouble now.

[garo]

Nice job throwing a hissy fit to avoid dealing with the substantive issues. Grow up and address the issues I raised in the post. It is NOT all about YOU.