SCOTUS Grants Guantanamo Prisoners Habeas Corpus

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Supporting facts please for "routine".

Why bother? Your extremist wacko politics ignores facts anyway. You never provide supporting facts for what you post. You blindly believe what George Jr decrees. You have admited your intelligence does not comprehend anything beyond the first paragraph - sound byte logic. Why bother?

So TheMercenary still denies America was routinely performing torture and extraordinary rendition? Routine from anyone who worships George Jr.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by tw

Why bother? Your extremist wacko politics ignores facts anyway. You never provide supporting facts for what you post. You blindly believe what George Jr decrees. You have admited your intelligence does not comprehend anything beyond the first paragraph - sound byte logic. Why bother?

So TheMercenary still denies America was routinely performing torture and extraordinary rendition? Routine from anyone who worships George Jr.

Correct. You have no evidence of "routine" torture or "routine" extraordinary rendition. If you do post your original source documents.

tw="You blindly believe what George Jr decrees."

You cannot support that satement either.

Further you have not answered to your statement:

Originally Posted by tw
TheMercenary - who even lied about his service record.…

So I would like you to post your facts surrounding this allegation. Like I said Tommy ole boy, put up or shut the fuck up.

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Correct. You have no evidence of "routine" torture or "routine" extraordinary rendition.

Again TheMercenary denies that torture and extraordinary rendition was ongoing. After all, that is the George Jr administration line. His storm troopers will repeat that lie forever. Extremists - a threat to the American culture, American way of life, and stability of the world. TheMercenary is again exposed spouting Cheney's political agenda. Was America torturing in Guantanamo? Then when General Miller was transferred to Abu Ghraib, torture did not happen there - according to TheMercenary. Denial is the wacko extremist line that even includes changing the definition of torture to justify it. But why rehash well published history. TheMercenary is so wacko extremist as to still deny it.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by tw

This court ruling comes with cheers from virtually the entire Military Judge Advocate corp who have been appalled at the perversion of American laws, military justice, massive violations of basic human rights, and routine use of torture.

ORLY - Proof please, again - We can't take all your unfounded accusations as gospel. You keep stating things as fact then never back them up.

Originally Posted by flaja

Does this means that you support occasional torture?

Occasionally.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by tw

Again TheMercenary denies that torture and extraordinary rendition was ongoing.

Wrong again, you are the wacko. I quoted you and as you have done with other who try to nail you down and get you to post original source supporting documents you have failed.

You have no evidence of "routine" torture or "routine" extraordinary rendition. If you do post your original source documents.

tw, note your use of the word ROUTINE. This is what I expect you to prove. Since you seem so sure of yourself it shouldn't be to hard.

:
tw="You blindly believe what George Jr decrees."

You cannot support that satement either.

Further you have not answered to your statement:

:
Originally Posted by tw
TheMercenary - who even lied about his service record.…

So I would like you to post your facts surrounding this allegation. Like I said Tommy ole boy, put up or shut the fuck up.

[flaja]

What would be a reasonable amount of time that habeas corpus could be suspended due to war, invasion or insurrection?

If 9-11 is defined as an invasion and habeas corpus is suspended as a consequence, how could we alter the Constitution so that this invasion can be declared to be over so habeas corpus cannot be suspended indefinitely? As it stands now, what safeguards do we have to keep a president from using something like 9-11 as an excuse for suspending habeas corpus and locking up his political opponents?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

You have no evidence of "routine" torture or "routine" extraordinary rendition. If you do post your original source documents.

Define 'routine'. If there are procedures in place for it and it is being done under the color of law, isn't that routine?

Everyone talks about Jack Bauer from '24'. If Jack Bauer needed to kill a 9-year-old girl to save a million lives, he might do it. Does that mean that someone needs to add a page to every manual on the methods and circumstances for killing 9-year-old girls?

The North Vietnamese were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. In theory, US prisoners had the same rights we grant detainees, which is whatever we decide and think we can get away with. Any intelligence the North Vietnamese could get could save lives, including civilian lives, so they considered themselves justified in their behavior. Do we consider that an excuse? I don't, and I don't think anyone else does except the North Vietnamese and their allies.

At this point there are probably as many people in the world who agree with the U.S. interrogation/rendition/detention policy as agree with North Vietnam's treatment of American POW's, and for pretty much the same reasons. Of course these aren't the same people.

We've already released prisoners from Guantanamo without charges. This was either a huge security breach or an admission that there was not enough evidence to find the suspects guilty even under a military tribunal.

A few decades from now, history will judge us. Unlike the suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war and the Alien and Sedition Act, or the Japanese-American detentions, this is not an internal issue. It involves foreign nationals and affects our standing in the world.

I consider it simpler to allow prisoners and their lawyers to make nuisances of themselves than to give traction to the idea that America has lost it's values. A lot of talk has been made of civil suits. The fact is that the burden of proof is much lower in civil suits. OJ Simpson is an example of this. I can only assume that if we have detained these people for years, we must have enough evidence to at least deflect a civil suit. If this isn't the case, then the question becomes how flimsy was the case for their detention?

[flaja]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Define 'routine'. If there are procedures in place for it and it is being done under the color of law, isn't that routine?

Everyone talks about Jack Bauer from '24'. If Jack Bauer needed to kill a 9-year-old girl to save a million lives, he might do it. Does that mean that someone needs to add a page to every manual on the methods and circumstances for killing 9-year-old girls?

The North Vietnamese were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. In theory, US prisoners had the same rights we grant detainees, which is whatever we decide and think we can get away with. Any intelligence the North Vietnamese could get could save lives, including civilian lives, so they considered themselves justified in their behavior. Do we consider that an excuse? I don't, and I don't think anyone else does except the North Vietnamese and their allies.

At this point there are probably as many people in the world who agree with the U.S. interrogation/rendition/detention policy as agree with North Vietnam's treatment of American POW's, and for pretty much the same reasons. Of course these aren't the same people.

We've already released prisoners from Guantanamo without charges. This was either a huge security breach or an admission that there was not enough evidence to find the suspects guilty even under a military tribunal.

A few decades from now, history will judge us. Unlike the suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war and the Alien and Sedition Act, or the Japanese-American detentions, this is not an internal issue. It involves foreign nationals and affects our standing in the world.

I consider it simpler to allow prisoners and their lawyers to make nuisances of themselves than to give traction to the idea that America has lost it's values. A lot of talk has been made of civil suits. The fact is that the burden of proof is much lower in civil suits. OJ Simpson is an example of this. I can only assume that if we have detained these people for years, we must have enough evidence to at least deflect a civil suit. If this isn't the case, then the question becomes how flimsy was the case for their detention?

The mere fact that we can have a discussion about the legitimacy of torture as a law enforcement/national security tool in the United States shows how far America has sunk when it comes to respecting the Constitution and the rights and liberties that we have fought and died to maintain for hundreds of years. America is not long for this world.

[classicman]

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Let's not confuse the civil rights of American citizens with the Geneva protections of prisoners of war, which is what these fellows are de facto. The Geneva Conventions protections are also what they are getting.

What SCOTUS did was, well, really bending over backwards. I'm not sure I see the need, myself. Looks like some Justices see it my way too.

[flaja]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Let's not confuse the civil rights of American citizens with the Geneva protections of prisoners of war, which is what these fellows are de facto. The Geneva Conventions protections are also what they are getting.

What SCOTUS did was, well, really bending over backwards. I'm not sure I see the need, myself. Looks like some Justices see it my way too.

GWB’s war on terror has no defined victory parameters so it is for all intents and purposes a perpetual war. Under the Geneva Convention being a POW is not supposed to be a life sentence.

Furthermore, the Geneva Convention requires that POWs be encamped in a region that resembles the climate of the battlefield where they were captured. I doubt tropical Cuba is all that similar to Afghanistan.

And the Geneva Convention requires any country that holds POWs to give them the same pay that they holding country pays its own military personnel of the same rank. Is the U.S. paying salaries to anyone it is holding at Gitmo?

And the Geneva Convention prohibits torture, so any act of torture on the part of the U.S. or by any other country at the behest of the U.S. violates the Geneva Convention.

And under the Geneva Convention POWs are not required to give anything but their name, rank and serial number. They are not supposed to be interrogated for intelligence purposes. If the people we have locked up at Gitmo are really POWs, then we have no right to interrogate them about past, present or future terrorist operations.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Let's not confuse the civil rights of American citizens with the Geneva protections of prisoners of war, which is what these fellows are de facto. The Geneva Conventions protections are also what they are getting.

What SCOTUS did was, well, really bending over backwards. I'm not sure I see the need, myself. Looks like some Justices see it my way too.

I'm not sure these guys are getting full Geneva protections. If I remember correctly, the administration argued their status as 'enemy combatants' did not afford them full protection. Waterboarding is not allowed under the Geneva protocols.

[deadbeater]

Originally Posted by flaja

Diplomats have diplomatic immunity because of treaty agreements. The most any foreign government can do to diplomats is expel them from the foreign government’s country.

Since Congress has not declared war on any country, I don’t know of any treaty that would be applicable to the inmates at Gitmo. But since Congress has the constitutional power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations and to make laws governing capture on both land and sea, anyone whom we have captured in Iraq or Afghanistan would be under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts (if we were legally at war, then the Geneva Convention would kick in but I don’t know if POWs would have automatic access to U.S. civil courts- we have tried enemy espionage agents in civil courts during times of war).

Furthermore, there is something inherently dangerous about any government that takes it upon itself to lock-up someone indefinitely without charge or trial. The rightwing media pundits that are hinting that the President/military should ignore the court and continue to keep people jailed at Gitmo are little different than the SS and Gestapo that routinely took criminal defendants into “protective custody” after they had been acquitted by German courts.

If the Supreme Court ruled otherwise, diplomatic immunity, Geneva conventions, treaties, etc are considered null and void, under the banner 'unlawful combatant.'

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Let the record show that none of the anti-Guantanamo faction here -- anywhere really -- has any likelihood of winning the war any better if they do it their way. Which seems neither to be a way, nor a doing.

If the Democrats have a better war plan than the Republicans, it's a well kept secret. The leftists are explicit in their desire that the nation lose the war so they, the irresponsible left, could say we would and that we should have listened to them. As part of this, they're trying to con people into thinking that it's criminal to conduct foreign policy while being Republican, in conditions of war and conflict.

Crazy.

[Aliantha]

I think tw is gwb in disguise. I think it's all a plot to see what he can get away with among a group of 'readers'.