Given that the Inteernational Red Cross has said it appears proper why don't we just keep it open? The idea of 30 year detentions of those who would kill our women and children is appealing to many of us.
Do you have any concept of the fact that the detainees at Guantanomo ARE NOT citizens or even Illegal Alien residents of the U.S.A.? How do you then conclude that they have a right to trial by jury? That right is granted by the Constitution to citizens and LEGAL residents in our country, not to everyone in the world. Have you made, or will you make, the same demands on the governments of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Syria just to name a few?
If we decide to close Guantanomo can we relocate the detainees to a holding facility near your residence while they await trial?
Gitmo, like the CIA's not-so-secret prisons, allegedly provide an intelligence advantage to prevent further attacks on US soil. On the one hand, closing Guantanomo's prison would likely halt information gathering from Afgani POW's. On the other, I don't want torture carried out in my name.
I believe that torture begets torture. Ergo, schools and hospitals is what we should build... not more secret prisons.
reality check, how do we know who's in there? only one person has been convicted in 6 years, and that was by plea agreement. yes, they may not be citizens, but that fact alone should not be enough to sentence you to life imprisonment. what kind of nation are we, that we import people without rights to detain for our amusement?
sure, they can await trial by my house. why does it matter if that day in court never comes? let me be clearer... we should let those people go if we have nothing to charge them with. because we are not syria, saudi arabia or egypt, and we have forgotten that we used to have high standards. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/12/04/usint17469.htm
Congratulations Uncle Osbert. You have been totally dhimmified. ISLAM/MUSLIMS GOOD! America evil bad.
The detainees at Guantanomo and their handlers are little more than modernized beduion tribesmen expanding their tribal warfare to the rest of the world.
Isn't political correctness nice. It prevents the people that need to know from knowing the truth about Islam and Muslim theocracy and the goals of its leading practitioners. Hard to believe none of these ideals existed prior to January 20, 2001.
Events in Mecca and Medina 1500 years ago have nothing to do with anything today do they? Any little nut case can go hide in a cave, have a dream/vision, come home and start a vicious gang of street thugs, then blame it on everybody else.
If George W. Bush had not been elected none of this would have happened; right?
Does it really matter if you are an American Citizen or not? Does the Declaration of Independence not clearly dictate our nations human rights policy.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
There's even a mention of God in there for you to hang your hat on if you need. It's as clear as the Cuban waters. For our nation to act as though these unalienable rights should only be extended to those of us fortunate enough to be born on U.S. Soil is arrogant, ignorant and embarasingly narrow minded.
The United States must be a beacon to all of the world. We must practice what we preach and remember the ideals of the founding fathers of our great nation.
Close Guantanamo and as a nation lets send a message to the world that we will not tolerate inhumane acts by any nation at anytime for any reason.
uneducated (Unverified) at 2/8/2008 4:50PM
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
I agree fully... until these people try to kill me because I don't agree with their fundamentalist views. Then all bets are off.
As far as I'm concerned, the Gitmo detainees are fortunate that we just locked them up. Otherwise, they might continue to fight and end up on the wrong end of a Marine rifle.
many prisoners were just citizens captured and sold for the bounty paid by US military. Without trials, we can't know who they are. We should close all foreign military bases and maintain first class mobile units when and where they are needed.
I just love to read all these "Close the prison camp and no water boarding and pull all the troops out of other country" postings. It amazes me how shortsighted some people can be. First of all I was a Paramedic for 20 years and am the parent of three grown children. I turned 50 years old this January and I remember being a very young adult and having all these "pie in the sky" ideas. I grew up during the late 60's and did my time as a 'flower child' so I have been where a great many of you are right now. I just want to bring a little reality into your worlds. As much as I would love to live in the world that you espouse, people, it just isn't the real one. When I was a young girl, the "Cold War" was in full swing. Every week at school we had 'duck and cover' exercises in the hall, in the event of a nuclear attack by the Russians. Americans were afraid that Russia was going to drop a bomb on us because our political beliefs were different. Of course, as you well know, that didn't happen. What happened instead was in 2001 a group of terrorists decided to murder innocent men, women and children by commandeering commercial airliners and flying them into buildings...not because of politics but because we aren't the same religion as they are. As if that was going to change our religious beliefs. On that day, folks, the entire landscape of warfare and American life changed forever. The terrorists had brought their death and destruction onto American soil. So let's start with the prison camp in Cuba. Say we close it...what then? Where are we going to put all these people who have sworn to murder ordinary American citizens? Release them?...Suicide. Move them to prisons in the USA where they have access to our existing criminal populations (a group of people without many scruples to begin with)? That would provide them with potential new recruits who KNOW all about America and who FIT INTO OUR SOCIETY. These recruits wouldn't have to learn our language or customs. They would be perfect recruits, no morals, familiar with the territory, greedy for the unlimited funding these terrorists can offer them and with a grudge against America. Not to mention that once these terrorists become prisoners on American soil, they will receive the same Constitutional protections as a burglar or check kiter and thus have access to a jury trial, lawyers paid for at taxpayer's expense and every source and bit of evidence against them stated in open court. Do you really want our national security resources splashed across the front page every night for all to see? Talk about a bloodbath! Then there would be all the appeals they would be entitled to, not to mention Parole. Do you want these people riding next to you on the subway? Or having access to your children? I could go on but I am sure you get the idea about the can of worms closing this prison camp down would cause. Yes it is controversial now, but it is not down the street from an elementary school. Now on to FISA and water boarding. The Constitution does not protect the privacy rights of foreigners...period. Read it for yourself. While the CIA is waiting for the incredibly slow beaucracy to move so it can obtain a warrant, they have managed to plan their next attack. Without the ability to wiretap terrorists we have lost one of the most valuable resources we have to find out about planned attacks. Right now, while Ms. Pelosi is sitting and sipping coffee the terrorists are planning their next attack on America and we have no way to know about it. If there is an attack on America that was planned during our Senate's vacation, everyone should send her and the rest of the Senate a great big "Thank you" card because they will have been as guilty as the person planning that attack. It is horrible, but exactly what you can expect from this group of politicians. Ordinary Americans have NOTHING to worry about from wiretaps on terrorists. If you aren't planning an attack on America, the government just isn't paying attention. Has there been one, ONE criminal charge brought from wiretapping terrorists that heard something unrelated to terrorism? It was a rhetorical question...there hasn't. But for the sake of this discourse let's move on to another scenario. Now let's say the CIA gets a RELIABLE tip from a RELIABLE informant that there are bombs with biologic agents planted in seventy schools and ten malls in five states. They know that the bombs will be going off in TWO HOURS. They also know that a particular man, who they have in custody, was the mastermind of this plan and knows both the locations of the bombs and the ways to disarm them. Now remember, this man is a hardened terrorist, trained to resist the coercive techniques in the Army Field Manual. He thinks nothing of cutting off the heads of men, women and children in front of cameras for 'publicity' for his 'cause'. He has been responsible for bombing and killing hundreds of people in other countries. You know that, because he brags about it. That is how contemptible this creature is and how ruthless. OK, you know the bombs are going to go off. You know when. You know that when they go off they are going to contaminate and kill not just the children and people in the immediate vicinity, but they are going to unleash a virulent strain of disease that is untreatable upon thousands of other innocent people. What do you do? Invite him to tea? Ask him nicely? Ask him harshly? Threaten him?...with what? You only have two hours to get the information, disseminate it so the bombs can be disarmed and no idea where the bombs are planted. Even if you wanted to you can't evacuate every school and mall in every state and besides it wouldn't do much good because of the contaminants in the bombs. Maybe you don't care about strangers so let's add that people you love work in malls and you have children who are in school. The general population doesn't know about the danger, there is no time to inform them and even if there were you still have that pesky contaminant to deal with. So, folks...do you water board that piece of human detritus? Now remember, that water boarding, while admittedly terrifying (but then so is having one's head chopped off or being blown up...but nobody ever thinks about what the terrorist is responsible for, do they?), water boarding is neither fatal nor does it cause any long-lasting disability. Well, what do you do? Are you willing to be the one who goes and notifies all those family members that even though you could have gotten the information to save their loved ones, you didn't because you didn't want to cause a TERRORIST any discomfort? Having been the one to notify family members that their loved ones had been shot or stabbed or raped and murdered, I can tell you from bitter experience it is not something you would ever choose to do. How about you? That is the REAL world that our new President will have to deal with. People, I would love, LOVE to live in a world where there were no terrorists, no hatred, no wars. But as long as those things exist, I am selfish. I don't want to be fighting those wars on American soil. I don't want terrorists recruiting criminals in American prisons to help do their dirty work, or getting lawyers at my expense, or becoming eligible for parole and living in the house next door to me. If there must be a war, I want to take to war to the enemy, not invite the enemy into my country. Americans are soft hearted in many ways. Often that is good but in the case of dealing with terrorists, it is foolish and dangerous. Do you truly believe that if we pulled out of Iraq and removed our troops from every overseas operation, that all the violence would stop? Everyone would love us? No, folks. All it would do is give those people the opportunity to organize, buy arms, plan their attacks and pull off an attack on American soil that makes September 11th look like a back-alley brawl. Do you remember the last time your power was out due to a storm or downed power lines? Remember how you called the power company and complained and grumbled until the power came back on? What a hardship you thought that was? It was nothing, compared to life in a war zone. Talk to someone who lived in England during WWII. Ask them what it was like, living there, being bombed, having no food, no lights, no transportation. Remember that America 'sat-out' that war for a pretty long time before we came to England's aid. It was 'over there' and 'not our problem'. We tried the isolationist role and had to fight a much longer and harder war because we did. Sometimes it is just better to get into the fight early or just be in the area and be a deterrent to fighting. We cannot hide our heads and pretend that the terrorists are going to leave us alone if we just don't bother them. They have made their intentions quite clear and they did it long before we went into Iraq. They want to kill us..period. The question is...are we going to let them?
Unbelievable! Supporting operating a concentration camp on the soil of a nation the U.S. government constantly accuses of human rights abuses is the height of hypocrisy! The arrogant swine George Bush and his henchmen sully our nation's reputation and stains what remains of our honor. Close this travesty, comply with the rule of law and impeach the criminals responsible for this moral outrage. Reinhold Heydrich must be laughing from HELL!
It is not a concentration camp. Have you studied your history at all? The people there are not starving, they are not tortured, and they are not there because of their religion. They are there because they are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children. If anyone is laughing, it is Osama laughing at the foolishness of those 'pie in the sky' liberals, who would turn these murderers loose in their own community. Millions of Jews and other nationalities were murdered because they were a specific religion. They didn't fly airplanes into buildings in Germany, they didn't strap bombs on pregnant women or children and have them walk into marketplaces where they could maim and murder innocent civilians. They were just regular people, going about their daily lives who were snatched up out of their homes and put on cattle cars and shipped off to REAL concentration camps, not places with 3 Kosher (or the equivalent) meals a day, televisions, the Koran (Bible), reading material, recreation activities, heating and air conditioning, bathroom facilities, beds etc. For you to equate those innocent Jews and others with the murdering terrorists in Cuba is unforgivable and just demonstrates either your total ignorance about both subjects or your refusal to see the facts that are staring you in the face. Those men, women and children who were locked up in those real concentration camps would have stood in line for days to enter that "concentration camp" (as you call it) in Cuba rather than the hell they were forced to endure before being shoved into ovens ALIVE. Wake up!! Pull your head off those liberal web sites and do some research before forming an opinion...certainly before voting. You (like almost every single liberal I have ever asked) never answered my original question....WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THOSE TERRORISTS? READ MY LETTER AGAIN, LOOK AT THE SCENARIO I POSTED AND ANSWER THE QUESTION...WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN THE real WORLD? If it were YOUR family or friends who were under threat?? Not in some idealistic theoretical world in which we all would like to live, friend, but the world that has been forced upon us by those terrorists you seem to feel such compassion for! What would you do if the clock were ticking and YOU were responsible for American lives? It isn't quite so easy when you are the one on whom the final responsibility rests.
Sorry, totally disagree, I do not Quantanamo closed and that scum jailed in the US, there is enough scum here already, in the form of our own and in the form of illegals.
Suzee (Unverified) at 4/9/2008 4:09PM
hello again reality check. i see you did not address what i said, in favor of misquoting me:
"Congratulations Uncle Osbert. You have been totally dhimmified. ISLAM/MUSLIMS GOOD! America evil bad."
where did i say that? i only said that our nation must uphold its own laws.
"The detainees at Guantanomo and their handlers are little more than modernized beduion tribesmen expanding their tribal warfare to the rest of the world."
what proof do you have that this is true?
if for example you lived in nazi germany in the 40s, would you have believed their propaganda? or would you have thought, hmmm, most of the jews i know are not evil monsters?
i mean, that's all your average german was working with. now we see how they all believed it. the government told me this, therefore it must be believed. is that about the size of it?
given our conversation elsewhere, might there be something we could look at together, instead just shouting LIAR at each other?
"I agree fully... until these people try to kill me because I don't agree with their fundamentalist views. Then all bets are off."
well, let's see if the people we're arresting are fundamentalist murderers...
"Cheney’s shadows saw a moment of sunlight recently, as Alex Gibney won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary Feature for his film “Taxi to the Dark Side.” The film traces the final days of a young Afghan man, Dilawar (many Afghans use just one name), who was arrested in 2001 by the U.S. military and brought to the hellish prison at Bagram Air Base. Five days later, Dilawar was dead, beaten and tortured to death by the United States military. Gibney obtained remarkable eyewitness accounts of Dilawar’s demise from the very low-level soldiers who beat him to death. We see the simple village that was his lifelong home and hear from people there how Dilawar had volunteered to drive the taxi, which was an important source of income for the village.
Dilawar had never spent the night away from home. His first sleepover was spent with arms shackled overhead, subjected to sleep and water deprivation, receiving regular beatings, including harsh knee kicks to the legs that would render his legs “pulpified.” He had been fingered as a participant in a rocket attack on the Americans, by some Afghans who were later proved to be the attackers themselves. Gibney uses the tragic story of Dilawar to open up a searing and compelling indictment of U.S. torture policy from Bush and Cheney, through Donald Rumsfeld and the author of the infamous “torture memo,” now-University of California Berkeley law professor John Yoo." http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/28/7362/
well, it appears at least one of the men we arrested and tortured to death without trial, was a taxi driver.
this is why we have a bill of rights. what i still don't get, is how you think it can be waived for anyone, and still mean anything. here you are, defending our government as it imprisons, tortures and murders innocent people.
here's what you're defending:
"Mubanga arrived in Guantánamo at the beginning of May. For the first two months he was held with other English-speaking prisoners, including one of the three men from Tipton in the west Midlands released last March. 'He was planning to write a letter to Tony Blair complaining about our plight, and I suggested he put in a bit saying that Blair had said he would never talk to terrorists yet had negotiated with the IRA. Of course they [the Americans] read it. It seemed to make them mad, because for the next 18 months I was kept in cell blocks where the only people around me apart from the guards spoke only Arabic. I always thought one of the main things they were trying to do was break you mentally, make you go crazy. So I thought, either I sink or I swim. I decided to swim and that meant learning Arabic.'"
great! we're kidnapping brits to make them learn arabic. WTF!
truly, how can any of you defend this? do you just not ever read the news?
this is for celestejak. way way after you tell us your life story, you finally say something about guantanamo:
"Say we close it...what then? Where are we going to put all these people who have sworn to murder ordinary American citizens? Release them?...Suicide."
how do you know the people we have captured have done anything? we haven't even charged them with anything. instead, you skip all that in favor of fantasizing about how dangerous they must be. you know what's dangerous though?
"...I am selfish. I don't want to be fighting those wars on American soil. I don't want terrorists recruiting criminals in American prisons to help do their dirty work, or getting lawyers at my expense, or becoming eligible for parole and living in the house next door to me."
you are. you're right. you are selfish. you have shut off your rational mind in favor of paranoia, and it doesn't bother you in the slightest that other people might be injured or die because of it.
you require not a single shred of evidence in order to convict these people, only the knowledge that they are foreign and the government said they are terrorists. and that is the most dangerous thing to happen to a country, that values truth and liberty. if we value truth, we must seek it, even when it is unpleasant. if we value liberty, we must protect it even when we fear what it will be used for. it is our burden, but it is not light or easy to bear. but that is no reason to reject it.
"If there must be a war, I want to take to war to the enemy, not invite the enemy into my country. Americans are soft hearted in many ways."
if there must be a war, then we must ensure it is waged intelligently. it must not be simply an excuse for vengeance. it must not ensnare those who mean us no harm and do not hate us.
in short, we the people must ensure our wars are just. if we do not, then we demonstrate how much our country is like everyone else's, and how little it really means to be an american. you go on to say...
"What would you do if the clock were ticking and YOU were responsible for American lives? It isn't quite so easy when you are the one on whom the final responsibility rests."
thank god you're not. i would make sure we weren't wasting time torturing the wrong guy. but here you are, defending it as a necessary part of the process.
why? apparently we can be just as selfish and hardhearted as any nazi. you have just stated it more clearly than i ever could.
The relationship between American law and International Law seems to be an interesting one. The powers-that-be seems to be fully prepared to enforce International Law in other countries when other people are breaking it (Saddam's forces masacaring the Kurds), but not when their own soldiers are (Inprisonment without trial in Guantanomo, Abu grab prison's change of management but not it's conditions).
You cannot prove (BRD) that a prisoner is a terrorist until you gather evidence against them and they have had a trial, until then they are 'suspected terrorists'... Or do American lawyers ignore that bit about innocent until proved otherwise. If the American military has evidence, let them go to trial.
I often hear people sprouting lines about how America should be a 'beacon of light' for the rest of the world, both on human rights, and Climate Change... Regretably, at the moment, America is so far behind that it is an embarasment, but one that is so powerful and influential, it can't be ignored.
Jin (Unverified) at 4/27/2008 8:30AM
I believe in the right for each terrorist to be convicted as such before taking away all their human rights. Until a charge and conviction is made, they are humans, not terrorists to be tortured and interrogated.
Bush should be water boarded until he admits that water boarding is torture, that he is secretly planing the next terror attack, and that interrogation techniques like this produce unreliable intelligence. With no rights as a terror suspect and no hope of ever being released... what is he going to do? Challenge his detention?
John Edwards HAS promised to close Guantanomo on Day one of his presidency!
What about other bases like Guantanomo?
Given that the Inteernational Red Cross has said it appears proper why don't we just keep it open? The idea of 30 year detentions of those who would kill our women and children is appealing to many of us.
the idea of 30 year detentions sounds great for people who don't support the right to trial by jury. i hereby nominate john425.
uncleosbert
Do you have any concept of the fact that the detainees at Guantanomo ARE NOT citizens or even Illegal Alien residents of the U.S.A.? How do you then conclude that they have a right to trial by jury? That right is granted by the Constitution to citizens and LEGAL residents in our country, not to everyone in the world. Have you made, or will you make, the same demands on the governments of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Syria just to name a few?
If we decide to close Guantanomo can we relocate the detainees to a holding facility near your residence while they await trial?
Gitmo, like the CIA's not-so-secret prisons, allegedly provide an intelligence advantage to prevent further attacks on US soil. On the one hand, closing Guantanomo's prison would likely halt information gathering from Afgani POW's. On the other, I don't want torture carried out in my name.
I believe that torture begets torture. Ergo, schools and hospitals is what we should build... not more secret prisons.
reality check, how do we know who's in there? only one person has been convicted in 6 years, and that was by plea agreement. yes, they may not be citizens, but that fact alone should not be enough to sentence you to life imprisonment. what kind of nation are we, that we import people without rights to detain for our amusement?
sure, they can await trial by my house. why does it matter if that day in court never comes? let me be clearer... we should let those people go if we have nothing to charge them with. because we are not syria, saudi arabia or egypt, and we have forgotten that we used to have high standards.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/12/04/usint17469.htm
Congratulations Uncle Osbert. You have been totally dhimmified. ISLAM/MUSLIMS GOOD! America evil bad.
The detainees at Guantanomo and their handlers are little more than modernized beduion tribesmen expanding their tribal warfare to the rest of the world.
Isn't political correctness nice. It prevents the people that need to know from knowing the truth about Islam and Muslim theocracy and the goals of its leading practitioners. Hard to believe none of these ideals existed prior to January 20, 2001.
Events in Mecca and Medina 1500 years ago have nothing to do with anything today do they? Any little nut case can go hide in a cave, have a dream/vision, come home and start a vicious gang of street thugs, then blame it on everybody else.
If George W. Bush had not been elected none of this would have happened; right?
Does it really matter if you are an American Citizen or not? Does the Declaration of Independence not clearly dictate our nations human rights policy.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
There's even a mention of God in there for you to hang your hat on if you need. It's as clear as the Cuban waters. For our nation to act as though these unalienable rights should only be extended to those of us fortunate enough to be born on U.S. Soil is arrogant, ignorant and embarasingly narrow minded.
The United States must be a beacon to all of the world. We must practice what we preach and remember the ideals of the founding fathers of our great nation.
Close Guantanamo and as a nation lets send a message to the world that we will not tolerate inhumane acts by any nation at anytime for any reason.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
I agree fully... until these people try to kill me because I don't agree with their fundamentalist views. Then all bets are off.
As far as I'm concerned, the Gitmo detainees are fortunate that we just locked them up. Otherwise, they might continue to fight and end up on the wrong end of a Marine rifle.
many prisoners were just citizens captured and sold for the bounty paid by US military. Without trials, we can't know who they are. We should close all foreign military bases and maintain first class mobile units when and where they are needed.
I just love to read all these "Close the prison camp and no water boarding and pull all the troops out of other country" postings. It amazes me how shortsighted some people can be. First of all I was a Paramedic for 20 years and am the parent of three grown children. I turned 50 years old this January and I remember being a very young adult and having all these "pie in the sky" ideas. I grew up during the late 60's and did my time as a 'flower child' so I have been where a great many of you are right now. I just want to bring a little reality into your worlds. As much as I would love to live in the world that you espouse, people, it just isn't the real one. When I was a young girl, the "Cold War" was in full swing. Every week at school we had 'duck and cover' exercises in the hall, in the event of a nuclear attack by the Russians. Americans were afraid that Russia was going to drop a bomb on us because our political beliefs were different. Of course, as you well know, that didn't happen. What happened instead was in 2001 a group of terrorists decided to murder innocent men, women and children by commandeering commercial airliners and flying them into buildings...not because of politics but because we aren't the same religion as they are. As if that was going to change our religious beliefs. On that day, folks, the entire landscape of warfare and American life changed forever. The terrorists had brought their death and destruction onto American soil. So let's start with the prison camp in Cuba. Say we close it...what then? Where are we going to put all these people who have sworn to murder ordinary American citizens? Release them?...Suicide. Move them to prisons in the USA where they have access to our existing criminal populations (a group of people without many scruples to begin with)? That would provide them with potential new recruits who KNOW all about America and who FIT INTO OUR SOCIETY. These recruits wouldn't have to learn our language or customs. They would be perfect recruits, no morals, familiar with the territory, greedy for the unlimited funding these terrorists can offer them and with a grudge against America. Not to mention that once these terrorists become prisoners on American soil, they will receive the same Constitutional protections as a burglar or check kiter and thus have access to a jury trial, lawyers paid for at taxpayer's expense and every source and bit of evidence against them stated in open court. Do you really want our national security resources splashed across the front page every night for all to see? Talk about a bloodbath! Then there would be all the appeals they would be entitled to, not to mention Parole. Do you want these people riding next to you on the subway? Or having access to your children? I could go on but I am sure you get the idea about the can of worms closing this prison camp down would cause. Yes it is controversial now, but it is not down the street from an elementary school. Now on to FISA and water boarding. The Constitution does not protect the privacy rights of foreigners...period. Read it for yourself. While the CIA is waiting for the incredibly slow beaucracy to move so it can obtain a warrant, they have managed to plan their next attack. Without the ability to wiretap terrorists we have lost one of the most valuable resources we have to find out about planned attacks. Right now, while Ms. Pelosi is sitting and sipping coffee the terrorists are planning their next attack on America and we have no way to know about it. If there is an attack on America that was planned during our Senate's vacation, everyone should send her and the rest of the Senate a great big "Thank you" card because they will have been as guilty as the person planning that attack. It is horrible, but exactly what you can expect from this group of politicians. Ordinary Americans have NOTHING to worry about from wiretaps on terrorists. If you aren't planning an attack on America, the government just isn't paying attention. Has there been one, ONE criminal charge brought from wiretapping terrorists that heard something unrelated to terrorism? It was a rhetorical question...there hasn't. But for the sake of this discourse let's move on to another scenario. Now let's say the CIA gets a RELIABLE tip from a RELIABLE informant that there are bombs with biologic agents planted in seventy schools and ten malls in five states. They know that the bombs will be going off in TWO HOURS. They also know that a particular man, who they have in custody, was the mastermind of this plan and knows both the locations of the bombs and the ways to disarm them. Now remember, this man is a hardened terrorist, trained to resist the coercive techniques in the Army Field Manual. He thinks nothing of cutting off the heads of men, women and children in front of cameras for 'publicity' for his 'cause'. He has been responsible for bombing and killing hundreds of people in other countries. You know that, because he brags about it. That is how contemptible this creature is and how ruthless. OK, you know the bombs are going to go off. You know when. You know that when they go off they are going to contaminate and kill not just the children and people in the immediate vicinity, but they are going to unleash a virulent strain of disease that is untreatable upon thousands of other innocent people. What do you do? Invite him to tea? Ask him nicely? Ask him harshly? Threaten him?...with what? You only have two hours to get the information, disseminate it so the bombs can be disarmed and no idea where the bombs are planted. Even if you wanted to you can't evacuate every school and mall in every state and besides it wouldn't do much good because of the contaminants in the bombs. Maybe you don't care about strangers so let's add that people you love work in malls and you have children who are in school. The general population doesn't know about the danger, there is no time to inform them and even if there were you still have that pesky contaminant to deal with. So, folks...do you water board that piece of human detritus? Now remember, that water boarding, while admittedly terrifying (but then so is having one's head chopped off or being blown up...but nobody ever thinks about what the terrorist is responsible for, do they?), water boarding is neither fatal nor does it cause any long-lasting disability. Well, what do you do? Are you willing to be the one who goes and notifies all those family members that even though you could have gotten the information to save their loved ones, you didn't because you didn't want to cause a TERRORIST any discomfort? Having been the one to notify family members that their loved ones had been shot or stabbed or raped and murdered, I can tell you from bitter experience it is not something you would ever choose to do. How about you? That is the REAL world that our new President will have to deal with. People, I would love, LOVE to live in a world where there were no terrorists, no hatred, no wars. But as long as those things exist, I am selfish. I don't want to be fighting those wars on American soil. I don't want terrorists recruiting criminals in American prisons to help do their dirty work, or getting lawyers at my expense, or becoming eligible for parole and living in the house next door to me. If there must be a war, I want to take to war to the enemy, not invite the enemy into my country. Americans are soft hearted in many ways. Often that is good but in the case of dealing with terrorists, it is foolish and dangerous. Do you truly believe that if we pulled out of Iraq and removed our troops from every overseas operation, that all the violence would stop? Everyone would love us? No, folks. All it would do is give those people the opportunity to organize, buy arms, plan their attacks and pull off an attack on American soil that makes September 11th look like a back-alley brawl. Do you remember the last time your power was out due to a storm or downed power lines? Remember how you called the power company and complained and grumbled until the power came back on? What a hardship you thought that was? It was nothing, compared to life in a war zone. Talk to someone who lived in England during WWII. Ask them what it was like, living there, being bombed, having no food, no lights, no transportation. Remember that America 'sat-out' that war for a pretty long time before we came to England's aid. It was 'over there' and 'not our problem'. We tried the isolationist role and had to fight a much longer and harder war because we did. Sometimes it is just better to get into the fight early or just be in the area and be a deterrent to fighting. We cannot hide our heads and pretend that the terrorists are going to leave us alone if we just don't bother them. They have made their intentions quite clear and they did it long before we went into Iraq. They want to kill us..period. The question is...are we going to let them?
Unbelievable! Supporting operating a concentration camp on the soil of a nation the U.S. government constantly accuses of human rights abuses is the height of hypocrisy! The arrogant swine George Bush and his henchmen sully our nation's reputation and stains what remains of our honor. Close this travesty, comply with the rule of law and impeach the criminals responsible for this moral outrage. Reinhold Heydrich must be laughing from HELL!
With peace and hope always,
Craig Lindley
It is not a concentration camp. Have you studied your history at all? The people there are not starving, they are not tortured, and they are not there because of their religion. They are there because they are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children. If anyone is laughing, it is Osama laughing at the foolishness of those 'pie in the sky' liberals, who would turn these murderers loose in their own community. Millions of Jews and other nationalities were murdered because they were a specific religion. They didn't fly airplanes into buildings in Germany, they didn't strap bombs on pregnant women or children and have them walk into marketplaces where they could maim and murder innocent civilians. They were just regular people, going about their daily lives who were snatched up out of their homes and put on cattle cars and shipped off to REAL concentration camps, not places with 3 Kosher (or the equivalent) meals a day, televisions, the Koran (Bible), reading material, recreation activities, heating and air conditioning, bathroom facilities, beds etc. For you to equate those innocent Jews and others with the murdering terrorists in Cuba is unforgivable and just demonstrates either your total ignorance about both subjects or your refusal to see the facts that are staring you in the face. Those men, women and children who were locked up in those real concentration camps would have stood in line for days to enter that "concentration camp" (as you call it) in Cuba rather than the hell they were forced to endure before being shoved into ovens ALIVE. Wake up!! Pull your head off those liberal web sites and do some research before forming an opinion...certainly before voting. You (like almost every single liberal I have ever asked) never answered my original question....WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THOSE TERRORISTS? READ MY LETTER AGAIN, LOOK AT THE SCENARIO I POSTED AND ANSWER THE QUESTION...WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN THE real WORLD? If it were YOUR family or friends who were under threat?? Not in some idealistic theoretical world in which we all would like to live, friend, but the world that has been forced upon us by those terrorists you seem to feel such compassion for! What would you do if the clock were ticking and YOU were responsible for American lives? It isn't quite so easy when you are the one on whom the final responsibility rests.
Sorry, totally disagree, I do not Quantanamo closed and that scum jailed in the US, there is enough scum here already, in the form of our own and in the form of illegals.
hello again reality check. i see you did not address what i said, in favor of misquoting me:
"Congratulations Uncle Osbert. You have been totally dhimmified. ISLAM/MUSLIMS GOOD! America evil bad."
where did i say that? i only said that our nation must uphold its own laws.
"The detainees at Guantanomo and their handlers are little more than modernized beduion tribesmen expanding their tribal warfare to the rest of the world."
what proof do you have that this is true?
if for example you lived in nazi germany in the 40s, would you have believed their propaganda? or would you have thought, hmmm, most of the jews i know are not evil monsters?
i mean, that's all your average german was working with. now we see how they all believed it. the government told me this, therefore it must be believed. is that about the size of it?
given our conversation elsewhere, might there be something we could look at together, instead just shouting LIAR at each other?
i will patiently await your response.
for mccandless:
"I agree fully... until these people try to kill me because I don't agree with their fundamentalist views. Then all bets are off."
well, let's see if the people we're arresting are fundamentalist murderers...
"Cheney’s shadows saw a moment of sunlight recently, as Alex Gibney won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary Feature for his film “Taxi to the Dark Side.” The film traces the final days of a young Afghan man, Dilawar (many Afghans use just one name), who was arrested in 2001 by the U.S. military and brought to the hellish prison at Bagram Air Base. Five days later, Dilawar was dead, beaten and tortured to death by the United States military. Gibney obtained remarkable eyewitness accounts of Dilawar’s demise from the very low-level soldiers who beat him to death. We see the simple village that was his lifelong home and hear from people there how Dilawar had volunteered to drive the taxi, which was an important source of income for the village.
Dilawar had never spent the night away from home. His first sleepover was spent with arms shackled overhead, subjected to sleep and water deprivation, receiving regular beatings, including harsh knee kicks to the legs that would render his legs “pulpified.” He had been fingered as a participant in a rocket attack on the Americans, by some Afghans who were later proved to be the attackers themselves. Gibney uses the tragic story of Dilawar to open up a searing and compelling indictment of U.S. torture policy from Bush and Cheney, through Donald Rumsfeld and the author of the infamous “torture memo,” now-University of California Berkeley law professor John Yoo."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/28/7362/
well, it appears at least one of the men we arrested and tortured to death without trial, was a taxi driver.
this is why we have a bill of rights. what i still don't get, is how you think it can be waived for anyone, and still mean anything. here you are, defending our government as it imprisons, tortures and murders innocent people.
what kind of a nation does that? this one.
over and over again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/feb/06/world.guantanamo
here's what you're defending:
"Mubanga arrived in Guantánamo at the beginning of May. For the first two months he was held with other English-speaking prisoners, including one of the three men from Tipton in the west Midlands released last March. 'He was planning to write a letter to Tony Blair complaining about our plight, and I suggested he put in a bit saying that Blair had said he would never talk to terrorists yet had negotiated with the IRA. Of course they [the Americans] read it. It seemed to make them mad, because for the next 18 months I was kept in cell blocks where the only people around me apart from the guards spoke only Arabic. I always thought one of the main things they were trying to do was break you mentally, make you go crazy. So I thought, either I sink or I swim. I decided to swim and that meant learning Arabic.'"
great! we're kidnapping brits to make them learn arabic. WTF!
truly, how can any of you defend this? do you just not ever read the news?
this is for celestejak. way way after you tell us your life story, you finally say something about guantanamo:
"Say we close it...what then? Where are we going to put all these people who have sworn to murder ordinary American citizens? Release them?...Suicide."
again i would point out, we appear to be holding taxi drivers and english citizens who we release who go directly to the papers. how have you missed this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/feb/06/world.guantanamo
how do you know the people we have captured have done anything? we haven't even charged them with anything. instead, you skip all that in favor of fantasizing about how dangerous they must be. you know what's dangerous though?
"...I am selfish. I don't want to be fighting those wars on American soil. I don't want terrorists recruiting criminals in American prisons to help do their dirty work, or getting lawyers at my expense, or becoming eligible for parole and living in the house next door to me."
you are. you're right. you are selfish. you have shut off your rational mind in favor of paranoia, and it doesn't bother you in the slightest that other people might be injured or die because of it.
you require not a single shred of evidence in order to convict these people, only the knowledge that they are foreign and the government said they are terrorists. and that is the most dangerous thing to happen to a country, that values truth and liberty. if we value truth, we must seek it, even when it is unpleasant. if we value liberty, we must protect it even when we fear what it will be used for. it is our burden, but it is not light or easy to bear. but that is no reason to reject it.
"If there must be a war, I want to take to war to the enemy, not invite the enemy into my country. Americans are soft hearted in many ways."
if there must be a war, then we must ensure it is waged intelligently. it must not be simply an excuse for vengeance. it must not ensnare those who mean us no harm and do not hate us.
in short, we the people must ensure our wars are just. if we do not, then we demonstrate how much our country is like everyone else's, and how little it really means to be an american. you go on to say...
"What would you do if the clock were ticking and YOU were responsible for American lives? It isn't quite so easy when you are the one on whom the final responsibility rests."
thank god you're not. i would make sure we weren't wasting time torturing the wrong guy. but here you are, defending it as a necessary part of the process.
why? apparently we can be just as selfish and hardhearted as any nazi. you have just stated it more clearly than i ever could.
The relationship between American law and International Law seems to be an interesting one. The powers-that-be seems to be fully prepared to enforce International Law in other countries when other people are breaking it (Saddam's forces masacaring the Kurds), but not when their own soldiers are (Inprisonment without trial in Guantanomo, Abu grab prison's change of management but not it's conditions).
You cannot prove (BRD) that a prisoner is a terrorist until you gather evidence against them and they have had a trial, until then they are 'suspected terrorists'... Or do American lawyers ignore that bit about innocent until proved otherwise. If the American military has evidence, let them go to trial.
I often hear people sprouting lines about how America should be a 'beacon of light' for the rest of the world, both on human rights, and Climate Change... Regretably, at the moment, America is so far behind that it is an embarasment, but one that is so powerful and influential, it can't be ignored.
I believe in the right for each terrorist to be convicted as such before taking away all their human rights. Until a charge and conviction is made, they are humans, not terrorists to be tortured and interrogated.
Bush should be water boarded until he admits that water boarding is torture, that he is secretly planing the next terror attack, and that interrogation techniques like this produce unreliable intelligence. With no rights as a terror suspect and no hope of ever being released... what is he going to do? Challenge his detention?
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