Wikileaks publishes secret files on Gitmo prisoners
81 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;29421776]Yep. God forbid those dirty terrorist scum would ever see habeas corpus!
also known as the main reason these people won't be tried in american courts is a. the case against them would be thrown out as evidence against them is often so insubstantial it's a joke and b. if they were, they would be granted the freedoms and protections of the constitution, god forbid.
also loving the idea of "putting them on trial would be pointless, so we'll just fucking keep them" excellent.[/QUOTE]
Innocent until proven guilty?!
[QUOTE=aydin690;29425412]Innocent until proven guilty?![/QUOTE]
does not apply to terrorists
[QUOTE=Uber|nooB;29426013]does not apply to terrorists[/QUOTE]
You don't know that yet.
[editline]25th April 2011[/editline]
know that they are in fact terrorists.
[QUOTE=aydin690;29425213]Do you really think children should be sent to g-bay?[/QUOTE]
They should be treated like child soldiers are, not the same way that terrorists accused of the most evil things are.
[editline]25th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=aydin690;29426160]You don't know that yet.
[editline]25th April 2011[/editline]
know that they are in fact terrorists.[/QUOTE]
Most of the people there have been picked up in warzones, those ones probably have a high probability of being terrorists. The other ones however..
Ah, this is a lot more interesting to read than the war diaries. Thanks wikileaks.
[QUOTE=Jsm;29427015]They should be treated like child soldiers are, not the same way that terrorists accused of the most evil things are.[/QUOTE]
Well, that's not the case. All g-bay detainees are treated the same.
[QUOTE=Jsm;29427015]Most of the people there have been picked up in warzones, those ones probably have a high probability of being terrorists. The other ones however..[/QUOTE]
Probably being the key word.
[QUOTE=GunFox;29412743]The prison, in its lifetime, has housed under 1000 prisoners. Of those, a tiny fraction have ever even been disputed as being there under false pretenses. A surprisingly small number actually.
The rest are legitimately unpleasant folks. In some cases, if I recall, so much so that they no longer have citizenship in their own country because their own government disowned them. Meaning that even if they were to be released, they would literally have nowhere to go.
The prison exists because we don't know what else to do with terrorist prisoners. They can't be housed in civilian prisons, and they aren't conventional prisoners of war, so mixing them with standard military prison is a bad idea. So we put them there.
Putting them on trial would be pointless. We capture them overseas. We have no jurisdiction overseas. They have possibly not even broken any laws in their home country.
Not that anyone ever takes the time to understand that fighting against terrorist factions doesn't work like other scenarios.[/QUOTE]
Then who the fuck gives the US the right to hold people in g-bay?
You say yourself: No jurisdiction overseas. But in g-bay they somehow have? How does that logic work out?
[QUOTE=Killuah;29427535]Then who the fuck gives the US the right to hold people in g-bay?
You say yourself: No jurisdiction overseas. But in g-bay they somehow have? How does that logic work out?[/QUOTE]
It isn't a legal case at all. It is a military one. They are basically prisoners of war, but because they lack a parent nation, they lack the protections provided to prisoners of war.
Okay, I am not doing this to equate terrorists to Nazis, but simply because it is a convenient comparison:
Imagine it is World War II and whatever intelligence agency in your nation has managed to intercept that someone in Austria is planning on hitting a civilian shipping depot with a bomb in your nation. Basically a saboteur. He intends on killing the civilian workers and damaging the facility in order to disrupt ammunition supply lines.
The intelligence agency deploys, grabs the saboteur, and hauls him back to prison in order to obtain more information.
He is never put on trial because he hasn't broken any laws. At the conclusion of the war he is released and he goes on living his life because the conflict is now resolved.
Now back to the present. All of that matches up with combating terrorism, except for the last part. The conflict doesn't end because there isn't a way for it to end. You intercept a saboteur before he hits his target and now you have to basically hold him indefinitely. You do NOT have the right to put him on trial.
Putting him on trial trivializes the justice system by violating its fundamental rules.
I'm not saying that I like the system, I'm saying that there are not a lot of options.
I say this without sarcasm: If you have a better alternative, I am all ears.
[QUOTE=GunFox;29428033]It isn't a legal case at all. It is a military one. They are basically prisoners of war, but because they lack a parent nation, they lack the protections provided to prisoners of war.
Okay, I am not doing this to equate terrorists to Nazis, but simply because it is a convenient comparison:
Imagine it is World War II and whatever intelligence agency in your nation has managed to intercept that someone in Austria is planning on hitting a civilian shipping depot with a bomb in your nation. Basically a saboteur. He intends on killing the civilian workers and damaging the facility in order to disrupt ammunition supply lines.
The intelligence agency deploys, grabs the saboteur, and hauls him back to prison in order to obtain more information.
He is never put on trial because he hasn't broken any laws. At the conclusion of the war he is released and he goes on living his life because the conflict is now resolved.
Now back to the present. All of that matches up with combating terrorism, except for the last part. The conflict doesn't end because there isn't a way for it to end. You intercept a saboteur before he hits his target and now you have to basically hold him indefinitely. You do NOT have the right to put him on trial.
Putting him on trial trivializes the justice system by violating its fundamental rules.
I'm not saying that I like the system, I'm saying that there are not a lot of options.
I say this without sarcasm: If you have a better alternative, I am all ears.[/QUOTE]
I understand the necessity of these actions. And of course I can't come up with something better. People far more intelligent than me are thinking about this and come to no conclusion and with my limited knowledge, so do I.
The thing I don't like is people and especially the US government acting as if there was no moral (and there can't be a juristic as you just said)problem at all.
By following your logical steps: no direct party in this conflict -> can't release them , they basically sacrifice the purpose of "defending freedom and justice"
They're releasing them slowly, ugh.
Feels like Valve all over again.
[QUOTE=Jsm;29412249]So do I. I think the problem with (as they have said) a massive dump of information however is that people do not have the chance to take in and process (in their minds) the information.[/QUOTE]
i think they're still releasing cables from that huge cable leak, actually.
[QUOTE=GunFox;29415965]The US isn't part of that treaty. [/QUOTE]
I find it kind of humourous that your two arguments in this thread so far are "we don't have laws that cover these prisoners so we can mistreat them if we want" and "while the general consensus is that landmines are illegal we didn't agree to that so they're legal for us".
Kind of makes the US look, you know, horrible and backwater
[QUOTE=Zeke129;29429774]I find it kind of humourous that your two arguments in this thread so far are "we don't have laws that cover these prisoners so we can mistreat them if we want" and "while the general consensus is that landmines are illegal we didn't agree to that so they're legal for us".
Kind of makes the US look, you know, horrible and backwater[/QUOTE]
He never said he liked it. He was just stating the facts.
Also, limiting yourself in war is extremely foolish when your enemies will not use such restrictions.
[QUOTE=Explosions;29431423]He never said he liked it. He was just stating the facts.
Also, limiting yourself in war is extremely foolish when your enemies will not use such restrictions.[/QUOTE]
I think we are ahead of are enemy to the point that we could afford basic human rights and still win.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;29429774]I find it kind of humourous that your two arguments in this thread so far are "we don't have laws that cover these prisoners so we can mistreat them if we want" and "while the general consensus is that landmines are illegal we didn't agree to that so they're legal for us".
Kind of makes the US look, you know, horrible and backwater[/QUOTE]
I simply have pointed out the reasons they are as they are.
Land mines aren't illegal for anyone on a global level. There is no set enforcement system for dealing with land mine usage. Nor is there a proper system in place for punishing those that do. They are simply treaties. The United States has elected not to agree to said treaties because we acknowledge that there may come a time when lives depend on anti personnel mines being deployed. Our anti personnel mines have multiple fail safes designed to render them inert after a set period of time (Days, not years), and some require a human operator to detonate them when triggered. In the event that a scenario arises where we need to protect allies and have limited manpower in a region to do so, then we retain the option of using the mines.
It isn't backwater at all, it is simply practical. Do you believe for one instant that if China started a war with Canada, that you wouldn't utilize every possible weapon at your disposal? That you wouldn't seek to stop their armored advance with a mix of anti-personnel mines and AT mines? Or that you wouldn't immediately agree to the US using our full arsenal of weapons to defend you?
It is common for the nations which sport large militaries to not sign weapon restriction treaties. China, the United States, and Russia regularly do not sign them because we sport military forces that are several orders of magnitude stronger than any of the single nations which sign them. I cannot stress this enough: most nations do not have a military that is very useful for anything other than defense. The lack of a navy makes them extremely limited in their ability to get places.
And again, in regards to the detainees, if you have a better alternative, I would seriously be glad to hear it. For the record, I do not advocate torture or abuse of the detainees.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;29429774]I find it kind of humourous that your two arguments in this thread so far are "we don't have laws that cover these prisoners so we can mistreat them if we want" and "while the general consensus is that landmines are illegal we didn't agree to that so they're legal for us".
Kind of makes the US look, you know, horrible and backwater[/QUOTE]
The way I see it, we're like "OK, fine, we get it, you guys don't like weapon A. We won't use weapon A if we don't have to, we'll try to stick with weapons B and C. But if we absolutely NEED weapon A, we'll use it."
I could be biased because the television is pouring brainwashing signals into my brain telling me to go buy more war bonds, but that's just how I see it.
also, say a door in a US military base gets totaled. Which is more fun? Fixing the thing properly, or just taking a bunch of landmines and setting them up to go KABLOOEY once's everyone's backed the fuck up then just buy a new door? Depending on the damage, the latter can also be more cost-effective.
I like how we debate over these remedial topics that just end in flurries of paragraphs
anyways this guy seems pretty crazy
[url]http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/prisoner/356.html[/url]
or is he??
[QUOTE=GunFox;29412743]The prison, in its lifetime, has housed under 1000 prisoners. Of those, a tiny fraction have ever even been disputed as being there under false pretenses. A surprisingly small number actually.
The rest are legitimately unpleasant folks. In some cases, if I recall, so much so that they no longer have citizenship in their own country because their own government disowned them. Meaning that even if they were to be released, they would literally have nowhere to go.
The prison exists because we don't know what else to do with terrorist prisoners. They can't be housed in civilian prisons, and they aren't conventional prisoners of war, so mixing them with standard military prison is a bad idea. So we put them there.
Putting them on trial would be pointless. We capture them overseas. We have no jurisdiction overseas. They have possibly not even broken any laws in their home country.
Not that anyone ever takes the time to understand that fighting against terrorist factions doesn't work like other scenarios.[/QUOTE]
Don't you have a couple of states with huge expanses of land that they aren't using? like nevada
[QUOTE=GunFox;29432528]I cannot stress this enough: most nations do not have a military that is very useful for anything other than defense. The lack of a navy makes them extremely limited in their ability to get places.[/QUOTE]
Not all militaries need to be transglobal expeditionary-capable to be "useful for anything other than defense", but certainly for the United States as the post-Cold War bully/policeman
Every single one of them are named either Abdul or Ahmed
i love watching Gunfox justify warcrimes.
[editline]26th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=GunFox;29432528]
And again, in regards to the detainees, if you have a better alternative, I would seriously be glad to hear it. For the record, I do not advocate torture or abuse of the detainees.[/QUOTE]
The amount of land available to imprison them is pretty abundant. And you're doing a pretty damn good job at defending and advocating this. I mean, I'm not surprised, if the US military initiated a 'rape and kill babies on sight' order, you'd still defend it.
[QUOTE=amute;29442879]i love watching Gunfox justify warcrimes.
[editline]26th April 2011[/editline]
The amount of land available to imprison them is pretty abundant. And you're doing a pretty damn good job at defending and advocating this. I mean, I'm not surprised, if the US military initiated a 'rape and kill babies on sight' order, you'd still defend it.[/QUOTE]
Wait so what is your goal? You just want the prison moved?
To what end?
[editline]26th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Tac Error;29439443]Not all militaries need to be transglobal expeditionary-capable to be "useful for anything other than defense", but certainly for the United States as the post-Cold War bully/policeman[/QUOTE]
Oh yeah I'm not suggesting that they need one. I'm just saying that they can safely make treaties like this because the only time that they will EVER need to use land mines is in a situation where they would have no issue violating the treaty.
Basically win win for them because they can gain PR without losing a single thing.
[QUOTE=GunFox;29443794]Wait so what is your goal? You just want the prison moved?
To what end?[/quote]
Put it under US law. Not "Military law".
Besides keeping them locked up and being waterboarded, where most of them are actually innocent in some some military prison, where the hell do YOU think they should go?
[QUOTE=amute;29446113]Put it under US law. Not "Military law".
Besides keeping them locked up and being waterboarded, where most of them are actually innocent in some some military prison, where the hell do YOU think they should go?[/QUOTE]
That doesn't put them under US law. What they did still wasn't likely on US soil. There is no legal jurisdiction no matter how you slice it.
Regardless, that is a pointless gesture anyways, as Guantanamo, like all foreign US military bases, is considered US soil. All you would accomplish is moving the base from one location to another.
They will NEVER be under civilian control because they aren't civilian prisoners. They are military prisoners and will always be subject to military control.
The number that people have reasonably suggested are actually innocent inside the facility has proven to be very small and has apparently gotten many of them released.
And again, unless you have a better idea, I do not see an alternative. Your idealism is admirable, unfortunately it seems it also blinds you as to the reality of the situation. There simply aren't a lot of options here.
Keeping a 14 year old boy locked up in G-Bay gg america
[QUOTE=GunFox;29447309]That doesn't put them under US law. What they did still wasn't likely on US soil. There is no legal jurisdiction no matter how you slice it.
Regardless, that is a pointless gesture anyways, as Guantanamo, like all foreign US military bases, is considered US soil. All you would accomplish is moving the base from one location to another.
They will NEVER be under civilian control because they aren't civilian prisoners. They are military prisoners and will always be subject to military control.
The number that people have reasonably suggested are actually innocent inside the facility has proven to be very small and has apparently gotten many of them released.
And again, unless you have a better idea, I do not see an alternative. Your idealism is admirable, unfortunately it seems it also blinds you as to the reality of the situation. There simply aren't a lot of options here.[/QUOTE]
You kept calling it idealism, but your only argument is that they can't put them under US law because... Well, you still haven't even provided that
[QUOTE=amute;29448366]You kept calling it idealism, but your only argument is that they can't put them under US law because... Well, you still haven't even provided that[/QUOTE]
It's the same reason why it's legally impossible to accuse Julian Assange of treason. They are not citizens of the US, and their actions generally didn't affect US citizens.
[QUOTE=5killer;29448617]It's the same reason why it's legally impossible to accuse Julian Assange of treason. They are not citizens of the US, and their actions generally didn't affect US citizens.[/QUOTE]
The "didn't affect US citizens" bit is questionable, but even if it did that's not really the issue here. These are people (allegedly) being taken off on non US soil by the US government. This is literally trying to be "world police". If someone plots an attack against America but resides in a country where that is not illegal the US should not think they have the right to detain that person.
[QUOTE=amute;29448366]You kept calling it idealism, but your only argument is that they can't put them under US law because... Well, you still haven't even provided that[/QUOTE]
I have provided it multiple times, you just don't understand how laws work.
Laws have a jurisdiction. The location of the prisoner doesn't matter. The location of the CRIME matters. We could move them to the moon and it wouldn't change anything. Many may have committed crimes, but the crimes likely occurred outside of our jurisdiction.
But that is irrelevant because they are ultimately enemy combatants. You don't charge enemy saboteurs under civilian law. You detain them until the end of the conflict, at which point they are repatriated. Terrorist factions have elected to forgo the protections provided by such engagements and are now subject to the other side of the rope.
They have failed to adhere to past agreements placed on conflict for the benefit of all parties. Now they suffer the consequences of those actions. The consequences aren't intentional, they are what nations, the United States included, tried to avoid by making rules for PoW's.
This isn't saying that "they aren't following the rules so we shouldn't either" it is saying "they aren't following the rules so the SYSTEM BREAKS". BOTH parties have to play to some semblance of the same tune if they wish to engage in warfare and not have PoW's treated like shit.
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