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-- Guantanamo Is Closing
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quote:

Originally posted by josh4 They're closing the secret prisons, outlawing torture, but its in your quote, they have to "preserve some tools." I don't see a problem with that or how it amounts to fraud.

Are you serious? It's the exact same "tools"... how is that any different that what we've had going on for the last 8 years? Josh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume you're quite familiar with the extraordinary renditions program and don't need a recap... honestly, I'm puzzled by your response .

quote:

Originally posted by shaolin_Z Are you serious? It's the exact same "tools"... how is that any different that what we've had going on for the last 8 years? Josh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume you're quite familiar with the extraordinary renditions program and don't need a recap... honestly, I'm puzzled by your response .

As long as it doesn't involve secret prisons and torture I don't see a problem with maintaining the tools to deal with our enemies. Since Obama said a big stern NO to both of those, they won't be a factor in it. The difference between the last 8 years is it won't involve secret prisons and torture.

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Originally posted by josh4 As long as it doesn't involve secret prisons and torture I don't see a problem with maintaining the tools to deal with our enemies. Since Obama said a big stern NO to both of those, they won't be a factor in it. The difference between the last 8 years is it won't involve secret prisons and torture.

Yeah, I was going to point out that extraordinary rendition doesn't necessarily mean torture. It's when it's secretive that we have a problem... I'll wait to see whether there's a bit more transparency (and a bit less torture) this time around before leaping down his throat.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Yeah, I was going to point out that extraordinary rendition doesn't necessarily mean torture. It's when it's secretive that we have a problem... I'll wait to see whether there's a bit more transparency (and a bit less torture) this time around before leaping down his throat.

I'm not well versed on this whole rendition thing and the nuances so maybe someone can help clear this up for me.... but didn't Obama just EXPAND rendition? Here is what I understand (someone correct me where I'm wrong):

With rendition, agents turn detainees over to authorities in their home country for interrogation. The Left went berzerk over this practice under Bush (even though it started under Clinton)... and this was one of the things that was going to change under Obama. According to this LA Times article, Obama had a sudden revelation as President that renditions are more necessary than ever (I assume after being able to read the actual intelligence reports after becoming president) if the CIA can't hold these subjects at Gitmo or its own secret sites. Here's a blurb:

quote:

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba. But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool. Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism � aside from Predator missile strikes � for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-r...8176,full.story

So, the major controversy was due primarily because the home countries of the terrorists torture for information. Most of these terror suspects grabbed by the CIA come from countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and other places where the Geneva Convention only provides respectability but not any legal constraints of any kind. People were bitching that the CIA essentially outsourced its torture to subcontractors in this rendition process, ensuring that these methods would get used without getting their own hands dirty and getting the information torture produced.

Because of the Gitmo hysteria, Obama's kind of forced to expand rendition now because there's no place to put them. By law, the CIA can't bring suspects back to the US, so the only options are now rendition, assassination, or release.

"Frankly, I think the US does a better job of treating its detainees than anywhere a rendition program would deliver them, but without a Gitmo or CIA holding site, that's the only way to ensure that we can get any intelligence that will protect the US. I'm not surprised that Obama has reached the same conclusion, now that he has the responsibility to keep the nation secure from foreign attack. It's amazing how clarifying that responsibility can be, and Obama at least must have a little more comprehension of what Bush went through the last seven years. Perhaps the Left will suddenly realize the same logic and give him a pass on this."
-Kevin McCollough

People were going berserk because detainees were being renditioned to secret prisons in Egypt and Eastern Europe. Leaving them under the jurisdiction of their home countries is a good deal more just.

quote:

Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov People were going berserk because detainees were being renditioned to secret prisons in Egypt and Eastern Europe. Leaving them under the jurisdiction of their home countries is a good deal more just.

yeah but isn't he still going to secretly allow "enhanced interrogation tactics" in a classified annex to the current Army Field Manuel? What's the difference between then and now, really?

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss yeah but isn't he still going to secretly allow "enhanced interrogation tactics" in a classified annex to the current Army Field Manuel? What's the difference between then and now, really?

That's reading quite a bit between the lines. I'm going to wait to see if that happens, but you're right - it does make me a bit uneasy that this leaves the door open for some of the same to continue, albeit on a smaller scale.

The real problem with closing the Gitmo prison isn't what you are going to do with the terrorists you want to hold. Some unlucky junior Republican senator is going to have a supermax terrorist prison built in their state, that much is nearly certain. The problem is what do you do with the people we have detained and now cleared for release? No country in the world wants them, imagine the government of any country that accepted them trying to explain that decision away on TV when the "cleared" terrorists they accepted blew up a train station and killed 800 civilians. You think "well the US said they were OK" would fly" as an explanation? I don't. Obama sure as hell won't be bringing them on US soil, it would be political suicide for him and all the democrats if one of them pulls something here.

Well, for all the talk that Obama isn't reversing Bush's policies... the Bush administration sure seems to think he is.

quote:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a �high probability� that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration�s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed. In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration�s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects. And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans�and, he charged, many members of Obama�s own team�understand. �When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,� Cheney said. Protecting the country�s security is �a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,� he said. �These are evil people. And we�re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.�

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18390.html

quote:

Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Well, for all the talk that Obama isn't reversing Bush's policies... the Bush administration sure seems to think he is. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18390.html

That's to be expected, it doesn't mean anything. Saying it now supposedly resolves them of any blame in the future and gives him an I told you so should something happen. It would be that way no matter what Obama does.

quote:

Originally posted by shaolin_Z Source: Democracy Now Additional Link: LA Times I'm just curious when everyone is stop loosing their mind every time Obama sneezes or blinks, not that it's likely to stop any time soon. The man is a fraud, not to mention the whitest black man since Colin Powell. And when I say white, I mean no different than your average WASP, except with a darker skin tone; a Wallstreet whore on a leash firmly tugged by AIPAC. Lame .

RACIST!!! STEP IN LINE. NOW!!

OOOOPS! Meet the new boss... same as the old boss.

Obama's Pentagon review: Gitmo legally meets the standards of the Geneva Conventions:

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A Pentagon review of conditions in the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Convention but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction with each other, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document. The report, which was ordered by President Obama, was prepared by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been delivered to the White House. Obama requested the review as part of an executive order on the planned closure of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. Walsh concluded that force-feeding, which involves strapping prisoners to feeding chairs and forcing tubes down one nostril and into their stomachs, is in compliance the Geneva Convention's mandate that the lives of prisoners must be preserved, the government official said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...prss=rss_nation


Even more ass backwards is this.

Obama Administration: Detainess have no Constitutional rights.

quote:

Detainees being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their detention, the US says. The justice department ruled that some 600 so-called enemy combatants at Bagram have no constitutional rights. Most have been arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of waging a terrorist war against the US. The ruling has disappointed human rights lawyers who had hoped the Obama administration would take a different line to that of George W Bush. Prof Barbara Olshansky, the lead counsel in a legal challenge on behalf of four Bagram detainees, told the BBC the justice department's decision not to reform the rules was both surprising and "enormously disappointing".

The exact quote from the Barack Obama-era Department of Justice? "Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position."

The DoJ and the DoD consider Bagram detainees "unlawful combatants" without any rights to access the US court system and with no recourse for release... just as it did in the George Bush administration.

Remember how the Left considered Bush a war criminal for taking this exact position? I do.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7903005.stm

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss OOOOPS! Meet the new boss... same as the old boss. Obama's Pentagon review: Gitmo legally meets the standards of the Geneva Conventions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...prss=rss_nation Even more ass backwards is this. Obama Administration: Detainess have no Constitutional rights. The exact quote from the Barack Obama-era Department of Justice? "Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position." The DoJ and the DoD consider Bagram detainees "unlawful combatants" without any rights to access the US court system and with no recourse for release... just as it did in the George Bush administration. Remember how the Left considered Bush a war criminal for taking this exact position? I do. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7903005.stm

Bush is a war criminal...

1. Tortured hundreds of prisoners.
2. Initiated a war of aggression.

Same crimes the Nazi leadership were convicted of at Nuremburg.

Disappointing to say the least

Why not have an external review of Gitmo legality instead of an in-house one? Oh wait, they probably would have declared it illegal or advisded that the prisoners get Geneva convention rights or something.

I think it was already mentioned in this thread, but why can't the many Department of Corrections SuperMax facilities host these baddest-of-the-bad? Would putting them there require giving them the same rights to due process as any other inmate?

It's misleading to pin the Pentagon review on Obama (remember who is in charge over there - Gates), but the Bagram stuff is disappointing to say the least.

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton Bush is a war criminal... 1. Tortured hundreds of prisoners.

He personally tortured them? (don't worry, I know what you me). This torture debate could go on forever and I don't want to start down that line.

quote:

2. Initiated a war of aggression.

as opposed to a war of pacificism?

quote:

Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov It's misleading to pin the Pentagon review on Obama (remember who is in charge over there - Gates), but the Bagram stuff is disappointing to say the least.

huh? re-read paragraph 2 in the quoted article.

quote:

The report, which was ordered by President Obama, was prepared by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been delivered to the White House. Obama requested the review as part of an executive order on the planned closure of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss huh? re-read paragraph 2 in the quoted article.

Ordered, not prepared.

quote:

Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov It's misleading to pin the Pentagon review on Obama (remember who is in charge over there - Gates),

Obama didn't write the Geneva Conventions either, what is your point?

...and just who do you think is Gates' boss?

you've been fed an agenda concerning Gitmo. one based on flimsy, sometimes non-existent legal precedent. that agenda was not determined by our President despite what he claimed in order for you to vote for him to become our President.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss He personally tortured them? (don't worry, I know what you mean). This torture debate could go on forever and I don't want to start down that line.

You smart ass..

This book explains it all...

quote:

as opposed to a war of pacificism?

lol, wars of aggression are war crimes, as detailed in the Nuremburg Trials...

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo Obama didn't write the Geneva Conventions either, what is your point?

That I wouldn't attribute the writing of this report or the Geneva Conventions to Obama. What's your point?

quote:

you've been fed an agenda concerning Gitmo. one based on flimsy, sometimes non-existent legal precedent. that agenda was not determined by our President despite what he claimed in order for you to vote for him to become our President.

I'm not even sure what you're arguing here. That Guantanamo isn't a powerful symbol, or that the closing of Guantanamo wouldn't do more for American public diplomacy than anything since Inauguration Day?

quote:

Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov What's your point?

that you're not in ANY position intellectually to determine wtf is "misleading" or not.

quote:

I'm not even sure what you're arguing here. That Guantanamo isn't a powerful symbol, or that the closing of Guantanamo wouldn't do more for American public diplomacy than anything since Inauguration Day?

the problem here is you and other followers of the agenda (read, sheep) think public perception is the law. thats just not the case.

you and the followers irrationally believe that somehow if you scream loud enough you become the law.

you know how it works, Q... the squeeky wheel gets the grease. Just look at the muslims' success in England with that.

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton lol, wars of aggression are war crimes, as detailed in the Nuremburg Trials...

whoever taught you history should lose their tenure.

do you know what the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is?

did you know that the ICC with regards to aggression is determinate by the UN Security Council?

did you know Iraq was found repeatedly in violation of a Security Council ceasefire in 2003?

i amusingly realize none of that matters to you because you are consumed with hate. good luck with that, but i've told you before it clouds your judgement

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss you know how it works, Q... the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

do i ever. before these idiots trash our Constitution, lets change the Geneva Conventions. otherwise they should stfu

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