I know everyone's tired of Guantanamo bay...

[queequeger]

Why close gitmo?

http://www.cageprisoners.com/prisoners.php?id=2057

In prison, Saidi was interrogated daily, sometimes twice a day, for weeks. Eventually, his interrogators produced an audiotape of the conversation in which he had allegedly talked about planes. But Saidi said he was talking about tires, not planes, that his brother-in-law planned to sell from Kenya to Tanzania. He said he was mixing English and Arabic and used the word "tirat," making "tire" plural by adding an Arabic "at" sound. Whoever was monitoring the conversation apparently understood the word as "tayarat," Arabic for planes.

"When I heard it, I asked the Moroccan translator if he understood what we were saying in the recording," Mr. Saidi said. After the Moroccan explained it to the interrogators, Mr. Saidi was never asked about it again.

"Why did they bring me to Afghanistan to ask such questions?" he said. "Why didn't they ask me in Tanzania? Why did they have to take me away from my family? Torture me?"

Mr. Saidi said the interrogators also accused him of hiding rockets in his house and of funneling money to Al Qaeda, allegations that he strongly denies and for which he said evidence was never produced.

If this guy was american, we'd have closed that place years ago. But who cares, he's just an arab. The whole article goes on and on... it's like a horror show.

[xoxoxoBruce]

He was an Algerian, living in Tanzania, under an assumed name with a fraudulent Tunisian passport and employed by Al Haramain charity which was shut down for diverting money to terrorist groups.

He was arrested by Tanzanian police who turned him over to "Malawians in plain clothes who were accompanied by two middle-aged Caucasian men".

He was moved to a "dark prison" and interrogated by two people who spoke English.

Then he was moved to another prison one of the guards said was outside Kabul.

He was flown to Tunisia, apparently because of his fraudulent passport, and they handed him over to the Algerians.

I don't see any mention of him going to Guantanamo.

[queequeger]

I didn't mean to imply that he specifically was imprisoned at guantanamo bay, but in an american run prison similar to it. I take it you're in favor of keeping it [gtmo] open?

[Flint]

How could you possibly get that, from what he posted? Your thread title was confusing, and he corrected an obvious error, without further comment. Is mind-reading going to be a habit with you?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by queequeger

I take it you're in favor of keeping it [gtmo] open?

As opposed to killing every suspect in the field.... yes.

[DanaC]

There are other options beyond killing every suspect in the field. Like for instance provding evidence and trying them a suspects....not torturing them and allowing them access to legal representation so their guilt or innocence can be fairly assessed.

[queequeger]

Is you being an asshole at every turn a habit with you? I made a mistake in wording by not looking over my post, he corrected it and I asked him if my reading his tone was correct, rather than just assuming it was. This being the internet, it's hard to read people's tones correctly.

Anywho, bruce don't you think we could have given this guy fair justice? That's why I'm against these kinds of systems, because too many people innocent of their crimes were put in them. We don't think they deserve any kind of due process, that they're guilty before innocent. And horror stories like these, which are likely not the norm, just serve to inflame anti-american sentiments.

It's just another symptom of this new concept of war. The bush administration is probably the first I've ever heard saying that this war will be 'faught in the shadows.' Pretty much the entire republican candidacy came out in favor of torture. What ever happened to 'holding ourselves to a higher standard?' Of course these abuses and things usually happen anyway, but there's been an attempt to control them. Now they seem the norm. Kinda smells to me.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There was certainly enough circumstantial evidence to suspect him, but keep in mind we've no proof of this guys story being accurate and factual. In fact, if it is true, I didn't see any proof is was indeed a total, or even partial, US operation. I don't doubt it could be, I just don't know for sure.

I was under the impression these offshore detention facilities are not a new phenomenon. Not Gitmo, but others in remote covert locations, with the cooperation of foreign governments.

Given Bush's propensity for ignoring American's rights, in the name of the War On Terror, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for him to permit, or even order, this sort of activity.

It would be interesting to know if this sort of activity is gleaning any useful information. I suppose that won't be known for 50 years or so.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Once again George is being accused of something that I don't think he's doing. And when proof is demanded of instances these "denials of rights" or examples of persons who have been raped of their rights as American citizens, there is sudden and very complete silence.

No one's ever given foreign POWs any nation's legal rights. It's not a matter of law, merely one of keeping the enemies caged until hostilities are over or the end of their natural lives whichever comes first.

Bruce has not suffered an abridgement of his freedom of association, speech, or conscience; he can still buy any firearm the state of Pennsylvania allows (though the city of Philadelphia may shaft him); troops have not been quartered in his residence; no one has insisted on going through his sock drawer or any other drawers on a whim; he has not been obliged to incriminate himself in any criminal proceeding; he's not been tried in secret nor unduly slowly, nor have any verdicts reached against him in trial been illegally reviewed -- indeed he hasn't had punishment of any description from the law usual or otherwise, nor have his Constitutional rights been construed to be the limit of his human rights. Et cetera.

What the Administration is doing is nothing other than trying to aggregate the powers to fight a war, for the purpose of winning that war. I want us to win it, but there are some posters around here I couldn't say that of. I am quite certain that one doesn't. No it isn't you, Bruce.

We need to give them ALL international, Geneva, POW rights at ALL times, from the moment we take them into custody.
We need to treat them exactly the way we want them to treat our soldiers, at ALL times.

[queequeger]

You can win a war, but if you do it 'at all costs' you might end up worse than when you started it. And to be perfectly frank, I don't think there's a war against some amorphous enemy called 'terrorism' any more than you could declare a war against any other concept. All it's really done is scared the people of this country into giving themselves and their convictions up.

No, they're not afforded rights of the capturing country... is that right? No. Especially, which rk points out, if we want them to treat our soldiers with any dignity.

You can say that I 'don't want us to win the war,' but there's no war going on, except some twisted advance of militarism in our society.

You ARE your tactics.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The strategy, and the tactics too, are: shrink the Thomas P.M. Barnettian Gap portion of the globe.

Queg, your point being, I suspect, that Congress has not passed a declaration of a state of war. The Constitution does not and never did require that be done. Consequently, we've been in about 150 shooting wars of one size or another. War was Congressionally declared for five. And nobody's ever been jailed for it, nor is anyone likely to. It is considered by wise persons (the rabidly anti-Republican must be excluded from this number) that the flexibility that results is necessary to handle the nasty little surprises that from time to time come up in foreign parts -- particularly in that abovementioned Gap. Shots fired and servicepeople down equals a war, particularly when we're going over there to do something about it -- no disparaging quotemarks or other this-is-not-a-war havering or illogic-chopping need apply. Not all the this-is-not-a-war types want us winning it, and bad cess and overflowing cesspools to that lot of half witty peckerslaps. In other words, they are liars and their parents were married -- to other people. Remember, too, just who it was that started it -- and tried to start it for eighteen years at that, from Marine Barracks Beirut in 1983 et seq. A declaration of war might have simplified the legal situation, but it would have restricted civilian civil liberties -- and not the maybes and allegations clouding the lower troposphere around DC, NYC, and the Bay Area -- and the whole idea of a Congressional declaration seemed disproportionate to the conflict as anticipated. It still seems disproportionate.

The crushing of undemocracies is what our nation does, and to my mind, is; partly by example, partly by bomb and bayonet. We've been at just that for over a hundred years straight now. I take a due measure of pride in having participated in the endeavor.

And "treating with dignity" by the other side has simply not happened.

And "treating with dignity" by the other side has simply not happened.

And we want to be just like them.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I say that's piffle, and I don't pick those nits. Our foes are creepy enough to tempt me to genocide. That's a measure of how bad they suck.

And considering that the inmates at Guantanamo aren't losing their Korans and are eating better than the guards are, last I heard -- perhaps the MP's are now eating three hots from the chow hall instead of MRE's -- concerns that we're "just like them" are unbelievably misplaced.

Just win the fucking war, man. Then these worries all go away.