Judge Frees Five From Guantanamo

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/us/21guantanamo.html?bl&ex=1227330000&en=cb254b577ccf4790&ei=5087

It seems hard to argue that the Bush administration is responsible for a massive miscarriage of justice in Guantanamo.

Either these five (and others) are more or less innocent people who were held for seven years in tough conditions (and would have, if Bush and the four staunch conservatives on the Supreme Court had their way, would have been held indefinitely without charges or court review of any kind)

OR

These people are bonafide threats who for whatever reason the Bush administration couldn't pull it together enough to provide sufficient evidence of their dangerousness to convince a W-appointed judge that they should remain locked up.

Enemy combatants have NEVER in the history of the US had access to the US Justice system. That is now forever gone. I would have hope we had learned. The only reason Mohammed Atta was available to fly into the WTC was because the US forced Israel to release him from jail. Had we not forced them, he would not have been a part of 9/11. When one of these idiots goes out and commits another act of terror, who we will have to blame?

There's never been that concept until 2001ish, because previously terrorists were treated as criminals.

Is there a reason suspected enemy combatants shouldn't have access to the U.S. Justice system? Should the president be able to unilaterally declare someone an enemy combatant and lock them away forever?

The prosecutors who so badly screwed the pooch that they could not prove that these guys were terrorists despite having the full power of the government to do so? The Bush administration for pursuing a theory that it didn't have to collect or present such evidence?

The fascinating thing to watch will be this - these poor innocent men who have suffered so greatly also are totally unwanted by their country of origin or previous residence. They have nowhere to go. Oh the insult which is added to the horrible injury!

Enemy Combatants have always been the enemy. Japanese in WWII, Terrorists in WoT. Nothing new. We were not at war with terrorists before.

I don't really see the problem with the 'old' way we seemed to do things.

1. Enemy combatant in uniform, or taken prisoner while bearing arms against the United States Armed Forces: May be a made a POW and is subject to the rights set forth in the Geneva Convention. Does not have access to the US Justice System or the rights of an American citizen under the Constitution.

2. Terrorist arrested on American soil: Federal case handled through the FBI and the Justice System. Suspect is granted the same legal rights as either a) a U.S. citizen if this is the case (like McVeigh) or b) the same legal rights as a legal or illegal alien, as applicable.

3. Terrorist arrested on foreign soil: Suspect is at the mercy of their justice system. CIA can negotiate for the chance to question the suspect. CIA is NOT allowed to use torture or other domestically illegal methods. (I'm not saying the CIA has always played by those rules, but those would be my rules if I was king)

There is no need for Gitmo under any of these circumstances, except maybe as a POW camp under case 1. Far be it from me to be considered 'soft' on these fuckers, but when it comes to trusting the government to detain people indefinitely with no trial I become a little leery. When we enter these murky places we need, as a nation and a people, to take the high road and stay on it. Once we fail in that regard, we begin turning into the very thing we're fighting against.

If you can't bring prosecution against them after seven years, then let them go with the countrie's deepest apologies.

Damn straight.

I say we put them all on a slow boat back home and prey it does not fall victim to "terrorist attacks" before it makes it to their home port

Seconded. Or is that thirded?

"terrorist attacks"

So what you are implying is that your government should take these prisoners it has been unable to present evidence against after seven years and secretly execute them?

I would love to see a Gitmo supporter address the points you raise here. If someone on the left makes them, they're suspect because we're namby-pamby tree-huggers who want to pal around with terrorists.

But I just don't see how someone can claim to be concerned about government overreaching and not be bothered by the notion of a president who thinks and hopes he can hold whoever he considers to be enemies of the state indefinitely without trial, without access to lawyers, with torture and so forth.

I'm sure these guys are guilty of nothing more than being in a Peruvian pan flute band in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have a compromise.

Tag them subcutaneously, release them, and then track them. If it's found that they are responsible for the death of one single American citizen, the judge eats a bullet.

Let's see if he's really willing to stick his neck out for them then.

By those standards will you also agree to a system where if a judge, jury, or prosecutor is found to have participated in the conviction and subsequent execution of an innocent person they will all be executed themselves?

Here's an op-ed piece on the same subject that doesn't hyperventilate as much over their 'rights' to our legal system. Oh, and this one actually mentions why they were detained.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions...courting_disaster_civilian_trials_are_no.html

Hey, they are terrorists. Do you think that the military just said, "Hey, I'm bored. Lets just go pick out some innocent civilians at random in some countries halfway around the world and bring them back to Cuba and lock them up". They are lucky to be alive, they should have been shot where they were found. This is and should remain a military matter dealing with people outside the US and our courts should not be involved in any way as they do not have jurisdiction over military matters, the military has its own courts to decide things.

Hmmm. Interesting proposition you have there.

Ummm.... no. As American citizens with actual rights to the judicial system, they're already given countless opportunities to prove their innocence even if they're on death row. I also believe DNA forensics have reduced the epidemic of 'everyone in prison is innocent'.

However, I will agree to flaming pits that open up without warning on Nascar tracks.

Compromise accepted, the sooner that abomination of a competition is destroyed the better.

I have no issue with that whatsoever.

I'm all for making a decision on what to do with these guys instead of just holding them forever but giving them access to American courts is a disaster now and a even bigger disaster in any future conflicts.

These men were caught on battlefields and in foreign locations. They were not on American soil.

And what happens when no country wants to take these men back? Well like these guys, "continuing the hold the Uighurs because it could not find a country willing to accept them" they will be in the same situation.

Or even worse they get released into American communities.

The only time any foreigner should have access to an American court is if they are on US soil when they commit their crime or they've been sentenced to die by a military court and the Supreme Court takes a look at the case.

I'm not a "Gitmo supporter" per se, but I do think that the notion of putting them into the American legal system is both unworkable, and sets a VERY bad precedent.

The simple fact of the matter is that these fuckers have fundamentally altered the playing field and we have not yet established a clear and reasonable manner for dealing with the problem while at the same time holding onto the "moral high ground"

Gitmo results from that fact. Legal philosophy has not yet caught up with and assimilated the reality of these assholes.

Unfortunately however the system has however already caught up with many people who were ultimately determined to not be enemy combatants and released after years of captivity in Gitmo, often only after attention from outside, so it has already been demonstrated that the philosophy there cannot be trusted without legal oversight.

I'm not going to quibble the details of every case because I get dramatically different takes from the two seperate sides of the argument and I don't have the first hand knowledge to know who's got their facts straight.

I DO know that the left has lied to me before about "horrible conditions" and "torture" and "flushing the Koran down the toilet" so I'm inclined to hear even more charges that we have been Mighty in our Evil at Gitmo with a great deal of skepticism.

But frankly, I can't be arsed to sort through the rubble. Sometimes we succumb to the temptation to want a "civilized war" which is often a contradiction in terms when both sides have not agreed to the rules of civility.

Maybe we can turn gitmo into a resort for ceo's?

Why?

And what would "making a decision on what to do with these guys" entail?

What happens if the president decides that he does want to just hold them forever, regardless of what people think or evidence of their guilt?

Just because they were in foreign locations doesn't seem to me that we should be able to hold them indefinitely without evidence.

If we screw up and sweep up people who are innocent or at least people who we can't prove are guilty, and they are tainted enough that their home countries don't want them, we should at least move them out of Gitmo to another, less prisonlike facility.

How do you feel about the past assertions by the Bush administration that it has the power to hold even American citizens arrested on American soil indefinitely as enemy combatants?

I agree!

No. It says that the US justice system doesn't work overseas because we lack basic ability for due process, chain of evidence, reliable witness testimony and other necessary standards of using the standards of our civilian legal system in an attempt to apply them to areas that are war zones.

I don't think the mafia has much on Al Qaeda when it comes to witness intimidation, do you? And it might be hard to collect evidence in a war zone.

Well, said W appointed judge originally ruled that the prisoners had no right to habeas corpus, but was later overruled.

In that constraint, he said there was sufficient evidence to detain the men for intelligence purposes, but not for a court ruling - which he had previously ruled these men didn't have standing to request.

I think its speaks rather highly of the Judge that he didn't let his own beliefs over rule the established legal ruling. In this context, he said we didn't have enough to hold 5 of the 6 men.

He made no indication of whether or not he thought they posed a danger. Because that wasn't sufficient cause based on the supreme court ruling to continue to detain them.

Therein lies the real problem.

That is the true suspension of Habeas Corpus- not the other stuff- and it shouldn't be tolerated by the people. A non-American detainee, however, does not have the same rights under the Constitution as an American citizen.

Some have been. Many more are guilty.

And that's the rub. The Bush administration has fucked this one up so bad we either have innocent men being locked up for seven years or terrorists being let loose because the administration thinks it's above the law.

Interesting. So accusation should be taken as proof of guilt?

Holy Shit!

You bitch and moan about how Law Enforcement officers are stomping around on our rights with their jackboots and/or are a bunch of criminal thugs with badges all the time.

And yet you trust the military to do the right thing under similar circumstances with no judicial oversite?