SCOTUS Grants Guantanamo Prisoners Habeas Corpus

[DanaC]

Merc, you'e starting to sound like UG....except for the respect part, obviously...

[TheMercenary]

Well, I am just not willing to assume that same line of thinking. I am not UG.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I asked for a cite that torture occurred at Guantanamo. You quoted my request and then wrote a long post that does not contain a cite.

I wanted to be clear if I needed to find only waterboarding or if you agreed that the other methods are also torture.
How about the New York Times? It appears we took examples of torture that our military was being taught to withstand and turned it into a "howto" guide.

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

[TheMercenary]

I have been through SERE training. It is not what you think.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I have been through SERE training. It is not what you think.

I think it's to learn how to evade capture and withstand torture. The point of the article is that they took the "watch out for this" presentation and turned it into "here are some nifty new techniques" for interrogators.

[TheMercenary]

Actually it is not about "withstanding torture". It is about a delay, long enough for those who know that you are missing to change the data that you may know. After that you can tell them anything you want because all the data will have changed. So all you are taught to do is hang on for about 24 to 48 hours, after that it really does not matter.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Actually it is not about "withstanding torture". It is about a delay, long enough for those who know that you are missing to change the data that you may know. After that you can tell them anything you want because all the data will have changed. So all you are taught to do is hang on for about 24 to 48 hours, after that it really does not matter.

So I guess if they can isolate you for a couple of years you're pretty much screwed.

[TheMercenary]

I would say yes, you are basically fucked.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Actually it is not about "withstanding torture". It is about a delay, long enough for those who know that you are missing to change the data that you may know. After that you can tell them anything you want because all the data will have changed. So all you are taught to do is hang on for about 24 to 48 hours, after that it really does not matter.

I won't challenge your assertion that you've experienced this training. I won't challenge the fact that our military believes this is an effective policy. But, given that you yourself have first hand experience with this training and that the point of the training is to resist one's interrogators for, say, a couple days, after which the information you could possibly reveal would no longer be uselessly outdated, could you please tell me why we've detained these people at Gitmo for *weeks*?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by BigV

I won't challenge your assertion that you've experienced this training. I won't challenge the fact that our military believes this is an effective policy. But, given that you yourself have first hand experience with this training and that the point of the training is to resist one's interrogators for, say, a couple days, after which the information you could possibly reveal would no longer be uselessly outdated, could you please tell me why we've detained these people at Gitmo for *weeks*?

Actually, I do not believe that the 'military' believes that it is an effective policy. Also, we have detained some individuals for years before releasing them without charges.

[BigV]

The policy in question here is SERE training, not the detention policies at Gitmo.

"years"? orly?

note to self, get new batteries for sarcasm generator

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by BigV

I won't challenge your assertion that you've experienced this training. I won't challenge the fact that our military believes this is an effective policy. But, given that you yourself have first hand experience with this training and that the point of the training is to resist one's interrogators for, say, a couple days, after which the information you could possibly reveal would no longer be uselessly outdated, could you please tell me why we've detained these people at Gitmo for *weeks*?

Good question. I don't know. IMHO I would close it down the day I took office, let the majority of them off scott free and send them immediately back to their home countries regardless of their eventual disposition when they get there. Not our problem. But all they would get from me is a free ride on a C-17. Problem over. Take the ones we know are bad players and put them in a Federal Prison and give them lawyers. Hold trials under secret conditions with enough representatives from the civilian court system to be sure all the trials are fair and that the defendants have been duly represented in accordance with our laws. After that they are at the mercy of the courts.

My guess is they think some of them are still a threat coupled (so we will hang on to those) with the fact that the Military did it's job and now they have these people that they don't know what to do with and no one (from the government) is giving them any guidance as to what to do next.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Actually, I do not believe that the 'military' believes that it is an effective policy.

I agree. Many people I have spoken with think they should have either not been taken there or left in home country.

[TheMercenary]

In related news

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/us/03gitmo.html

[ZenGum]

Am I the only one who sniggers at the acronym SCOTUS?