ABC News reports: “Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.”
Los Angeles Paralegal says:
Of COURSE they did!
December 28, 2009, 6:05 pmCrunchy Frog says:
Clearly.
December 28, 2009, 6:16 pmjust jim says:
art therapy
December 28, 2009, 6:17 pmDustin says:
The best Christmas present ever!
December 28, 2009, 6:17 pmPeteP says:
““American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.””
December 28, 2009, 6:27 pmKazinski says:
I guess Bush radicalized those poor goat herders, perhaps if we offered them reparations and American citizenship as recompense then we can all move on.
December 28, 2009, 6:35 pmAnton says:
Who’s for Waterboarding Abdulmutallab?
December 28, 2009, 6:46 pmMike says:
People aren’t buying into the narrative this time. We will not be terrorized – by goat herders or our own government’s mythmaking.
Isn’t it about time for Goldman Sachs to pay out record (taxpayer funded) bonuses? Isn’t the debt ceiling soon to be raised to $12.4 trillion? Isn’t Fannie and Freddie going to cost taxpayers $400 billion? And how much are the executives who caused the market meltdown going to get paid – because of the taxpayer funded bailouts
No doubt all of this is coincidental. It couldn’t be that some attention-seeking idiots (think Balloon Boy’s parents) acted alone? No. Boo! Terrorism!
The real terrorism is being planned out on Wall Street.
December 28, 2009, 6:47 pmBart DePalma says:
Why is this surprising? DoD disclosed last year that 11% of the prisoners released from Gitmo had returned to waging war on the United States, including ascending to al Qaeda leadership positions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. And this was under the supposedly overly restrictive military detention rules of the Bush Administration. I can hardly wait to see the recidivism rate among those the military did determine were dangerous, but the courts are currently releasing as quickly as they can under habeas corpus review.
December 28, 2009, 6:48 pmAnderson says:
So, if true, this is another data point that Bush’s people (1) held people who didn’t need to be held, and (2) released people who didn’t need to be released.
Dog bites man. Move along.
(Nor, it seems, were the alleged plotters terribly brilliant at the whole terror thing.)
December 28, 2009, 7:07 pm11-B.2O/B4 says:
But all the detainees at Gitmo are simultaneously innocent of all charges and heroic freedom fighters resisting American oppression. And anything they do is simultaneously the result of 75 years of American foreign policy and personally George Bush’s fault.
December 28, 2009, 7:10 pmAnderson says:
Do you think most Americans prefer that this guy is A) Watching cable tv is a warm cell funded by taxpayers and enjoying his right to remain silent (i.e, BHO reality); or B) At an undisclosed location being waterboarded to learn about his little friends back in Yemen and their plans to kill us. I’d say 65% + of Americans would prefer B…. But just a guess.
Anton reminds us why the Framers saw the need for a bill of rights — to protect the people from “government by the people.”
December 28, 2009, 7:12 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
That means that 89% didn’t. If we don’t want to lock people up forever because they were in wrong place/wrong time, some decisions will be made that in retrospective will turn out to have been bad. Ideally only those who won’t return to waging war are released. In reality we do the best we can and that means minimizing mistakes, not eliminating them entirely.
This does serve to remind us that every single person locked up at Gitmo wasn’t a peace-loving goatherder prior to crossing our path.
December 28, 2009, 7:17 pmJohn says:
I don’t think the Framers saw the need for a Bill of Rights to protect foreign nationals who conspire to kill American civilians.
December 28, 2009, 7:21 pmfrankcross says:
Ah, but they may have seen the need to protect foreign nationals who don’t conspire to kill American civilians.
December 28, 2009, 7:26 pmAndrew Sullivan (2002 version) says:
Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.
December 28, 2009, 7:29 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Even this isn’t true; I don’t see why the idea that detainees-by-mistake were radicalized in captivity is so absurd. All sorts of war movies show this dynamic when the trend is towards the American position, why not the other way around too?
December 28, 2009, 7:29 pmChrisTS says:
Laura:
Well said. And, thank you for saying it, so that neither I nor any of the other ‘libtards’* on site had to. :-)
* It might be ‘libertards.’ I’m not sure of the convention.
December 28, 2009, 7:29 pmJohn says:
But we aren’t talking about any of those people, we’re talking about a guy who pretty obviously did conspire to kill American civilians.
December 28, 2009, 7:32 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Andrew, are you in fact saying that every person at Gitmo WAS a peace-loving goatherd?
December 28, 2009, 7:35 pmChrisTS says:
Andrew:
I agree with your point about ‘radicalization.’ I’m curious as to which films that run the ‘pro-US’ way you have in mind. Is the idea that people learn to respect U.S. policies/principles when … what?
December 28, 2009, 7:40 pmMalvolio says:
“Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up.”
December 28, 2009, 7:53 pm– General Buck Turgidson
steve s says:
The prisoners at Gitmo were a mixed lot. Many of them were there as a result of the bounty paid. A lot of them were also al Qaeda and some were ordinary Taliban, at that time a group mostly invovled with intra-Afghanistan issues and no international interests. We lumped them all in together.
It will be difficult to know when they were radicalized. I have to say that if I was 20 y/o again, and had just spent 6 years hooded and isolated in Gitmo for something I did not do, I would have been mighty pissed.
December 28, 2009, 7:58 pmMike says:
Why do you take these numbers seriously? Anyone who has sought to verify such numbers is met with the state secretes privilege. You’re basically taking what is said on faith, and reporting it as Gospel. Let’s leave the non-verifiable claims to the religious folks; and require our government to verify its statistics with actual data; and to subject the statistical analysis to independent peer review.
In sum, let’s start treating the government as we would any other organization that seeks to increase its scope and power. Or do only private-sector companies have an incentive to play accounting trips?
December 28, 2009, 8:07 pmJoe says:
Also in the news: people released from prison, including those never charged and/or never found guilty of the crime they was put in prison for, two or more years afterward are allegedly involved in crimes.
If Bush’s policies were upheld, other members of some terrorist organization would have been involved here as they have been in attempts of this character for quite some time. The idea that radicalization in G. might have encouraged involvement is possible, if unlikely to be proven one way or the other.
The news here is really not that interesting nor is the leap some people take from it surprising.
December 28, 2009, 8:08 pmKazinski says:
No its not. They were Arabs captured in Afghanistan, there is not any doubt they were radicalized before they got there. Afghanistan doesn’t have a goatherd shortage and they are not importing low cost foreign goatherds from the the gulf petro-states. These guys were Saudi Jihadies just like almost all the 9/11 hijackers. Likely they were from middle class and well to do families, which is why the were diverted to Art-Therapy when they were repatriated to Saudi Arabia.
December 28, 2009, 8:09 pmLeo Marvin says:
It takes someone seriously libtarded not to know the proper term.
December 28, 2009, 8:10 pmLeo Marvin says:
For the reason Laura explained, it’s still a useful number, even if it isn’t exaggerated.
December 28, 2009, 8:18 pmChris Travers says:
If we could accomplish such a low recitivism rate with our supermax offenders, I would be all for changing their sentences from long, multi-decade, multi-lifetime, and death sentences to a mere few years at gitmo. What do you all think?
December 28, 2009, 8:18 pmKazinski says:
Mike:
I have to say I agree with you totally. We need to stop the government from taking over health care, and get rid of half the cabinet departments starting with Education. Government needs to be kept in its place, and stopping the expansion of domestic programs and then starting the rollback is the first step.
December 28, 2009, 8:22 pmyankee says:
Especially if you had also been
December 28, 2009, 8:31 pmtorturedenhancedly interrogated.ChrisTS says:
Steve & Andrew:
All this reminds me of a story I heard from a young Irish girl, Margaret, in NYC about 20 years back. Her family was determinedly non-political, both because her mother was a pacifist and the parents thought this the best way to protect the lives of their 8 boys. They endured the standard rudeness and prejudice of the British military with little complaint and carefully avoided any suspect relationships.
However, they were Catholic and lived in one of a string of row-houses in Belfast; so, they were on someone’s ‘list.’ One night, the door and doorjam were knocked in by a group of British soldiers wearing full combat gear. Most of the family, except the youngest children, were in their sitting room watching ‘telly.’ All jumped up in alarm, including Dad and her 4 older brothers. The men in her family, including her 14 year old brother, were assaulted: struck with rifle butts, knocked to the floor and kicked, and so on. Margaret and her mother were shoved against a wall, guns in their faces; they were shouted at in abusive terms she had never heard. Her mother was terrified when the soldiers ran up the stairs to where the 4 ‘babies’ were sleeping, but was knocked back down the stairs as she tried to follow.
The soldiers had made a mistake. It turned out they wanted another house in the row. Margaret’s dad found this out only after obtaining legal counsel to see if he could recover the cost of having his door replaced [he did not]. Margaret and 3 of her older brothers emigrated to the U.S. because, as she put it to me, if they had stayed after that night they feared they would have joined the IRA. She thought the older boy who remained home might have ‘gone over,’ but did not want to speak of it.
We got to know Margaret very well. She lived with us for a few months in NYC when she had nowhere else to go, and she came to stay with us for several weeks after we moved to PA. to escape a sexually predatory employer. My husband and I often talk about the night when she sat on our porch looking at fireflies and wondered aloud if our beer was spiked – because she was seeing all these ‘flyin’ lights.’ Margaret was about as far from a radical as one could get. But she thought she could have been tempted into violence because of what her family suffered.
Margaret had no love for the IRA and wanted nothing more than for the ‘troubles’ to end. Even so, this lovely young woman thought she might turn to violence, might become radicalized, because of the injustice her family suffered. And she knew many others who had suffered worse.
Sorry for this lengthy comment. I just want people to understand that good people can be turned to evil if they are misused. I cannot believe anyone does not recognize this fact.
December 28, 2009, 8:32 pmrmd says:
(Yes, I see the smiley with your comment. Consider it returned with this one.)
Perhaps later you can explain the subtle semantic differences between “Repuglicans,” “Rethuglicans,” and “Repukes.” Thanks in advance.
December 28, 2009, 8:41 pmMike says:
That was a beautiful story. Unfortunately, racism demands that people will ignore it. Al-Qaeda people are “brown.” Thus, they are viewed as inferior to us right-thinking Americans.
Does the average American have more in common with a “brown” person, or with a tycoon on Wall Street? With a normal villager in Afghanistan, or with the CEO of a weapons company?
We won’t end the madness until people realize that the War on Terror is based on racism. The average American (and even the bright Americans, like those who post on the VC) have been allowed their minds to be uploaded with racist software. It’s us (white, right-thinking people) v. them (brown, superstitious people).
Meanwhile, the fat cats get fatter. Racism is great for business. Keep us terrified of brown villagers, while sending trillions to Wall Street.
December 28, 2009, 8:43 pmD.R.M. says:
It’s quite possible for innocents to get radicalized by things like Gitmo.
It’s quite ridiculous to pretend that Said Ali al-Shihri is an innocent who was persecuted because of his race and radicialized by Gitmo. He was up to his neck in terrorist connections before his capture in Afghanistan.
December 28, 2009, 9:07 pmMalvolio says:
Do you actually believe this nonsense? I have met CEOs of weapons companies and we have a lot in common; I’ve never met any Afghan villagers but from what I’ve read, we would also have a lot in common (item #1: a fondness for mutton). You know who I have nothing in common with?
1. People who blow up civilian airliners; and
December 28, 2009, 9:10 pm2. People who believe or claim to believe that the WoT is waged against Afghan villagers for the benefit of CEOs of weapons companies — instead of the obvious truth that it is waged against (1) for the benefit of everyone else.
ChrisTS says:
rmd:
No clue (the last was unpleasantly new to me). I detest all this nasty stuff. I suppose I especially dislike the ‘tard’ suffix as it seem to be a reference to retarded persons (?). But, it is all stupid insult with no substance.
December 28, 2009, 9:30 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Oh, for pete’s sake. Is it your understanding that racism didn’t exist in this country until 2001? If you’re looking for a cause-and-effect for the WOT, racism is all you can come up with?
December 28, 2009, 9:31 pmChrisTS says:
Well, we can agree that there are people committed to evil. We can also agree that intelligent good people should take care in their efforts to combat the former.
December 28, 2009, 9:32 pmChrisTS says:
Mike:
I suspect that there is some ‘racist’ element in much of what any of us does. However, I’m inclined to think that the anti-Muslim/Arabic sentiment that you see around us at this point in time is more the result of fear of terrorism than it is of pre-existing racial antipathy.
In fact, I perceive more anti-Islamic feeling than anti-Arab/brown peoples antipathy surrounding the ‘WoT.’ Sure, our picture of the ‘standard’ Arabic Muslim generates some genuinely ethnic stereotyping and hostility. But I think this is parasitical on the fear of ‘Islamoterrorism.’
I do not think the resistance to recognizing the radicalizing effects of mistreatment is grounded in racism. I think it is more likely grounded in the – perfectly natural – desire to think of ourselves as people who do not treat others unjustly.
It is also a result of desperation and confusion. How can we fight people who mean us ill if we cannot identify them? And, how should we deal with our own errors in dealing with individuals when we are confronted with such a profound threat? It is just so much easier to think that all ‘those’ people are guilty.
December 28, 2009, 9:56 pmBart DePalma says:
The next question is why the hell was Abdulmutallab arrested as a civilian criminal suspect and told he has a right to silence rather than in military custody as a military combatant and under interrogation about the plot and everything else he knows about al Qaeda?
There is no need to avoid interrogation in order to prove a subsequent criminal case. The man was caught in the act.
Why is the Obama Administration foregoing intelligence gathering???
Is this how we will treat bin Laden or Zawahiri when we capture them?
December 28, 2009, 9:57 pmArthurKirkland says:
A great discussion (until the past half-dozen or so contributions veered off-course).
From the importance of sorting good from bad (and in a timely manner) among detainees, to the warping influence (even among the formerly uninvolved) of being abused by bullies, to the general lack of Bush/Republican/conservative vs. Obama/Democratic/liberal drive-bying.
December 28, 2009, 10:08 pmRowerinVA says:
The GITMO problem is slowly taking care of itself through the invisible hand of incentives. The statistics make it clear that, since the military and covert services know that they will have to make essentially a US criminal case against any detainee, they aren’t detaining nearly as many people. They are simply killing them. More people who might be innocent are likely to be killed on the battlefield, and more people who might be saved by intelligence gathered from detainees are also likely to die, but at least we have a smug smile or two to be enjoyed by those who cannot tell the difference between a criminal justice system and a war.
December 28, 2009, 10:10 pmChris Travers says:
I have often thought that the single most damaging thing someone like bin Ladin could do to the US would be to smuggle himself to the UK and turn himself in to the Brits.
Extradition proceedings could get… interesting.
What do you think: Accept an extradition treaty that requires a fair trial and prohibits the death penalty?
December 28, 2009, 10:33 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
No, not every, but possibly some. Use of words like returned [to battle against the USA] take for granted that the detainee was an anti-American terrorist before capture.
Well, for one thing, at the moment we have only his say-so that he trained in Yemen and was assisted by Al Qaeda. (And one could argue that even if that were true, there would still be reasons to try him as a civilian.) Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if we dragged someone into military court only to discover that there isn’t any justification for a military trial? (Unless you want to adopt the Bush-Padilla Doctrine, since discredited, that the President has the authority to order military trials, or for that matter imprisonment without trial, on his own whim.)
December 28, 2009, 10:44 pmTwirip says:
The Bill of Rights is government by the people. The thing was not actually handed down on stone tablets by God to James Madison. It’s a little known fact that the BoR and the rest of the Constitution were the creation of “the people”.
December 28, 2009, 10:46 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
People on an actual battlefield have a fairly weak argument in favor of their innocence. Detainees collected for bounties, a different story. I see the problem as the smug smiles of those who can’t tell the difference between a battlefield and an airport terminal, and don’t care.
December 28, 2009, 10:47 pmJoe Kowalski says:
Armchair guess is that the acts were committed in a civilian plane, in domestic airspace, where the military has no jurisdiction whatsoever and he was apprehended by civilian authorities. Which is precisely the same reason that Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui are in federal prision and not Gitmo.
December 28, 2009, 10:56 pmTwirip says:
Ah, there’s a textbook example of Frankfurt School neo-Marxism. I suppose it will take a few more decades for it to follow regular Marxism into the dustbin of history.
Amusingly enough, the only people who believe this claptrap are white people.
December 28, 2009, 10:59 pmTwirip says:
How intriguing. And what is the armchair guess as to why the German terrorists who were arrested by the FBI in 1942 (while planning attacks on civilian targets) were tried by military commissions?
December 28, 2009, 11:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
46.Andrew J. Lazarus says:
Laura(southernxyl): Andrew, are you in fact saying that every person at Gitmo WAS a peace-loving goatherd?
No, not every, but possibly some.
Okay, but your original statement was that it was not true that not every Gitmo prisoner was a peace-loving goatherd.
Use of words like returned [to battle against the USA] take for granted that the detainee was an anti-American terrorist before capture.
Well, sure, we take that for granted. Do you think our folks went out and rounded up peaceful goatherds for the pure hell of it?
December 28, 2009, 11:08 pmGuy says:
I think they didn’t take the necessary steps to distinguish peaceful goatherds from those who pose a real threat, if these people were released before Boumediene v. Bush was handed down, that means even the military-appointed CSRT’s, following DoD’s protocols with no meaningful Congressional or judicial oversight, had to admit that there was no evidence in the government’s possession supporting the claim that these people were dangerous.
The real problem is the fact that the political administration decided that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply, so an on-the-battlefield adjudication was never provided. Had such a process been followed, anyone taken into custody would have been a POW and their habeus rights would have been limited to a court confirming that they had been properly given the required adjudication. Since such an adjudication was never given, the situation has become an almost intractable mess.
December 28, 2009, 11:41 pmrpt says:
Well, yes. Many were captured for just that reason. Read the Seton Hall report.
December 28, 2009, 11:48 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Guy, if people were captured, transported to Gitmo, given medical attention, checked out to be safe, and returned home, I think that beats hell out of their being shot on the battlefield. Don’t you?
lgm, are you seriously telling me that our guys deliberately and knowingly picked up peaceful goatherds and transported them to Cuba for imprisonment? Seriously? Will you please tell me why, in your universe, anyone would do that?
December 28, 2009, 11:54 pmlol says:
I like how Anderson spins it. Naw, Bush wasn’t really malicious, just incompetent — because he contrived to detain goat herders AND let terrorists go!
Welcome to Anderson-World.
December 28, 2009, 11:55 pmGuy says:
I haven’t seen the pleadings in the habeus briefs, and I certainly haven’t seen the government’s evidence, but it’s my understanding that many of the detainees allege that they were never on the battlefield, some were turned in by neighbors to collect a bounty. We know the “enemy combatant” label wasn’t only given to people “on the battlefield”, because it’s been given to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, it’s also been given (erroneously) to people like Khalid El-Masri, who were detained in Europe on the basis of their name being similar to that of a known terrorist. Maybe the Gitmo detainees were more carefully selected, but I doubt it.
It’s somewhat of an academic debate now, since they’ve already been detained, but I would point out that the detainees weren’t being given any process, not even the CSRT’s, until the Supreme Court got involved. The government argued in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the detainees had the opportunity to protest their innocence to their interrogators, thus no further process was required. That, to me, is a truly astounding proposition.
December 29, 2009, 12:18 amTwirip says:
The Geneva Conventions did not and do not apply, regardless of what any “politcal administration” may think.
Is there a single shred of evidence that any “peaceful goatherd” was ever held at Gitmo? I know it’s an article of faith on the left that this is so, but some of like to see a little evidence.
December 29, 2009, 12:27 amObserver says:
Anderson: “So, if true, this is another data point that Bush’s people (1) held people who didn’t need to be held, and (2) released people who didn’t need to be released.”
No, this is another data point that they released people who didn’t need to be released, likely as an attempt to comply with the requests of those who claimed that they held people who didn’t need to be held. How someone can cite this case to support proposition (1) is beyond me.
December 29, 2009, 12:31 amTwirip says:
Now there’s a reliable source of information! Who’d have guessed that the defence lawyers for the people in Gitmo would claim that their clients are innocent?
December 29, 2009, 12:31 amBrian G. says:
Released in November 2007. Proves what we already knew. It’s Bush’s fault that these people plot day and night to kill us, because of his illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his being a toady for Israel.
December 29, 2009, 12:38 amGuy says:
I find the argument that the Conventions don’t apply utterly unconvincing. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld five Justices of one of the most conservative Supreme Courts we’ve had in a long time did as well, even Justice Thomas, who dissented, described the majority’s interpretation as “admittedly plausible”.
I could just as easily say that it is an “article of faith” on the right that everyone ever detained at Gitmo was a terrorist, I’ve always been of the opinion that the burden of proof lies on the prosecution, not the defendant – innocent until proven guilty and all that – but that would ignore the fact that evidence for my claim certainly does exist. Khalid El-Masri wasn’t held at Gitmo, nor was he, I believe, a goatherd, but he was wrongfully detained as an enemy combatant. The fact that military commissions as well as Article III courts found that some detainees had to be released is, I think, very strong evidence that the government wasn’t terribly careful in making sure that there was credible evidence against the people they detained.
December 29, 2009, 1:06 amGaryC says:
No, Mike, those are the old limits. There is apparently no limit on how much these two GSEs can now cost taxpayers. A mere $400 billion is obviously not enough. We may find out how much a gazillion is.
December 29, 2009, 1:20 amGaryC says:
We also have Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen saying that they trained him for his mission, so it becoming somewhat more difficult to argue that they didn’t. Frankly, given his incompetence, I am somewhat surprised to see anybody claiming “credit” for “training” him. It reminds me of the Monty Python skit about the Queen’s Own McKamikaze Highlander training program, and the only survivor.
December 29, 2009, 1:36 amMike says:
When Tim McVeigh blew up the OKC buildings, there was no movement to round up every white guy. Or to racially profile whites. Or to invade his home state. He was just a crazy loon.
When a black or brown person lights himself on fire, suddenly we must racially profile. We must assume a larger conspiracy of other brown and black people. We invade their countries. Entire countries and hundreds of thousands of dead collateral damage.
If that isn’t racism, then what is?
Or were you and others demanding that, after the OKC bombings, that white people be racially profiled?
December 29, 2009, 1:46 amGaryC says:
Given the way in which the recidivists are identified, I think that 11% is a lower limit, and 89% is an upper limit. There are statistical techniques that could be applied to correct for selection effects, but I am certainly not an expert in their use, so I’m not even going to guess at what such an analysis would show.
December 29, 2009, 1:46 amMike says:
Dang! Here I am, noting the distractions…Yet I’m distracted, too. This “terrorism” stuff is pretty effective. Even when you think you’re payting attention to what matters, “terrorism” means that you’re not.
Thanks for the correction.
December 29, 2009, 1:50 amMike says:
Of course, if they weren’t taking credit, we’d give it to them anyway. Classic confirmation bias.
Situation 1: Al-Qaeda denies involvement. Well, of course they are lying. They’re terrorists! Can’t trust ‘em!
Situation 2: Al-Qaeda (or at least the people we’re told are Al-Qaeda) claim involvement: Well, of course they are reliable!
Now, let’s assume that Al-Qaeda was actually responsible: Shouldn’t that make us feel good. After all, if this is the best Al-Qaeda can we, we’re sitting pretty. No need to kill a bunch of more innocent civilians, or further enrich DoD contractors. Right? Right? Right?
Or will we be back here:
Situation 1: Al-Qaeda was responsible. Our enemy is alive and well More wars! More profit!
Situation 2: Al-Qaeda was not responsible. Still, this just shows that Al-Qaeda could have done. More ways! More profit!
Ultimately we need to ask ourselves who the real terrorists are. The random guy lighting himself on fire, or the people who create an atmosphere of hysteria, panic, and terror?
December 29, 2009, 1:56 amKazinski says:
Al Qaida declared war on the US, bombed our embassies, sunk the Cole, took down the World Trade towers, and now are taking credit for this attempted aircraft bombing.
Can’t we just take them at their word, or shouldn’t we take them seriously because they are Black, Brown, whatever? I believe them, so I think we should hunt them down and kill them. You seem to think because they aren’t white we shouldn’t take them seriously.
December 29, 2009, 2:00 amjukeboxgrad says:
twirip:
Now there’s a convincing argument! Who’d have guessed that a commenter would glibly dismiss the Seton Hall reports, as if they weren’t based on data provided by the DoD?
Are you going to show evidence of a substantive problem with the Seton Hall reports, or are you going to continue your pattern of posting misinformation and then disappearing once you’ve been proven wrong?
Many of the people in Gitmo appear to have been innocent bystanders. That’s explained here:
Those claims are well-documented in the Seton Hall reports.
More proof that we locked up innocent people is here.
December 29, 2009, 2:05 amGuy says:
All I can say is that if I’d known that anything claimed by a defense attorney could be disregarded solely on the grounds that it was claimed by a defense attorney, all other evidence notwithstanding, I would have become a DA and ensured myself perfect job performance.
December 29, 2009, 2:18 amMike says:
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Eventually you need to ask yourself who is really terrorizing you. Who is making the announcements? Who has told you about Al-Qaeda?
The same government that lied about WMDs in Iraq and just gave trillions to Wall Street is your source. Do you really think you should just take their assertions on faith?
I believe that the current Administration (and one before it) is staffed with sociopaths who would gladly lie to terrorize Americans in order to enrich their friends and future employers. After the bailouts, the burden of proof is on you to prove why an assertion coming from the United States Government is reliable.
In litigation asking the U.S. Government to prove its assertions, litigants are met with the state secrets doctrine. It’s secret. Take what we say on faith! Again, after the wealth transfer to Wall Street, it’s up to you to prove to me why I should trust the government’s assertion that Al-Qaeda was involved.
War is highly profitable. The revolving door from “public service” to defense contractors is spinning round and round. There are millions to be had in exchange for profitable wars.
The bailouts proved right before our eyes that the people in the highest offices of government will lie to us when it will it’s profitable. Why should terrorism be any different?
Or do you think the same people who stole trillions from U.S. taxpayers deserve to be viewed as inherently credible when it comes to terrorism?
December 29, 2009, 2:27 amD.R.M. says:
The portion of the Geneva Conventions which the Court held applied in Hamdan was specifically Common Article 3, appearing in all four Geneva Conventions, and which does not in any way involve POW status, but applies to all persons not currently taking active part in hostilities (even if only because they are physically restrained from doing so). The Court in Hamdan specifically did not rule on the applicability of the fifth article of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which is to say it did not conclude that any provision unique to the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was applicable to any detainees to any degree.
And given the requirements of the fourth article of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, it is next-to-impossible for any of the non-Afghanis captured in Afghanistan to make even a colorable case that they are entitled to POW protections.
December 29, 2009, 2:37 amjukeboxgrad says:
guy:
Good point. On the other hand, this is a good rule of thumb: anything claimed by twirip can be disregarded solely on the grounds that it was claimed by twirip. Because unlike claims made by a defense attorney, claims emanating from twirip are typically unencumbered by an iota of evidence. And are typically wrong, as has been demonstrated here and elsewhere.
December 29, 2009, 2:49 amjukeboxgrad says:
drm:
Who said anything about “POW protections?” The claim twirip made was this: “the Geneva Conventions did not and do not apply.” That claim is false. GC is not just about “POW protections.”
Indeed. Which means that GC does indeed apply. Every portion of GC? Of course not. But this portion does. Which means that it is false to flatly claim “the Geneva Conventions did not and do not apply.” But of course that’s what certain people do, persistently.
December 29, 2009, 2:56 amjukeboxgrad says:
mike:
Indeed. And we spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, even though our major enemy went out of business a number of years ago. Therefore it’s very important that we stir up some new enemies. Otherwise, defense spending might go down. Just think of the people who might suffer as a result (link).
Here’s a good way to stir up a new enemy: lock up innocent people and torture them. Here’s another way: invade and occupy a country that never attacked us.
December 29, 2009, 3:06 amKazinski says:
Mike:
KATIE COURIC!!!!
It’s all making sense now.
December 29, 2009, 3:20 amMike says:
And when people are growing tired of Afghanistan, make a big deal out of a Nigerian. And start thinking of reasons to invade another country…like Yemen.
December 29, 2009, 3:39 amMike says:
Speaking of coincidences. The U.S. government spent a few trillion on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Dec. 24th. A day or so later, a Nigerian lights his pants on fire. What happened on Sept. 10, 2001? The day before 9/11, it was reported that $2.3 trillion in money went missing. Seems that story got lost in the media shuffle.
Of course, to speak such things are conspiracy theories. Just as the bailouts are a conspiracy theory. Oh, wait…No, the bailouts actually happened. Trillions went to Wall Street. TARP was sold as a way to increase lending, although it’s been proven that Paulson never intended to use TARP to increase lending. Goldman Schs will pay record bonuses using taxpayer money while there is 10% unemployment.
Wall Street banks are borrowing money from the Federal Reserve at .25% interest, and loaning that same money to the U.S. Government (through the purchase of Treasuries) for 4.5%. Oh, at ten times leverage. With $1 billion in equity, a bank can borrow $10 billion. All of that stuff is actually happening.
No one needs to draw any inferences. Just facts. Trillions gone from government to Wall Street.
In light of the bailouts, how can anyone take what the government says about terrorism seriously?
I’m serious. I used to dismiss the odder coincidences are conspiracy theories. Yet the bailouts are a 100% true conspiracy theory. We’ve seen it.
Why should we view claims of terrorism differently? Why should the government suddenly viewed as having clean hands when terrorism issues are involved, even though the war budge involves half-a-trillion each each? And even thought it was admitted that the Department of Defense could not account for $2.3 trillion.
At some people you must start wondering if the people running things are credible. And if we should take what the government says on faith.
December 29, 2009, 3:49 amGuy says:
True, but had there been tribunals to determine their status in the first place, the Court would have been less skeptical, and I doubt that a finding of POW status would have been questioned by the Court had the administration characterized the conflict as being between the U.S. and Afghanistan. I thought the Court was pretty clear that the absence of any sort of court-martial or similar proceeding at the time of detention was the primary problem, if the government is burdened by having to dig up the evidence after the fact that is a hardship they placed on themselves. At any rate, common article 3 still requires “previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples”, which is precisely the provision enforced by the Supreme Court through habeas corpus proceedings.
December 29, 2009, 3:57 amGuy says:
To be fair, I mentioned POW status. My point being that the government can’t declare a person to be an “enemy combatant” without some kind of judicial proceeding, which is true so long as at least article 3 applies.
December 29, 2009, 4:04 amPaul says:
President Obama has been in office for almost a year. I am quite sure he would like to get anyone out of Gitmo that he reasonably could because he would like to close it. I am sure he has had someone look at the information available on everyone currently there. If there were any innocent Goatherders would he have not pushed them out the door. I am guessing he has also concluded that the people there pose a threat.
December 29, 2009, 5:37 amBart DePalma says:
Military custody and interrogation does not preclude later civilian criminal trial.
Moreover, there is nothing discredited about the President having the military detain a foreign enemy combatant for the duration of the conflict and for interrogation.
December 29, 2009, 8:23 amJoe says:
innocent Goat herders
Isn’t it time for a cite to the Sound of Music?
December 29, 2009, 8:30 amMark Field says:
Lots of those held in Gitmo — and by “lots” I mean maybe 75% or more — were NOT captured by US troops, not on a battlefield, not anywhere. They were instead sold to the US in return for bounties we offered as rewards for bad guys. Turns out, the guys from the US who accepted those prisoners (and presumably paid out your tax dollars) were pretty bad at judging who was a real “bad guy” — even the Bush Administration let many of these detainees go free (after abusing them).
I’ll leave it up to you to characterize this process, but “stupid”, “dishonest”, “credulous”, and “insane” come to my mind.
December 29, 2009, 10:22 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mike, this is a stupid argument. Tim McVeigh did not claim whiteness as a rationale for what he did. He did not claim to act for other white people. He never said that his religion requires white people to do this sort of thing. What’s the white equivalent of “Allahu akbar”? And has it escaped your notice that Arab is not a race, al Qaeda is not a race, and Muslim is not a race?
December 29, 2009, 10:31 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Also, perhaps it has escaped your notice that TSA does NOT profile Arab-appearing people in airports; they inconvenience all of us equally?
December 29, 2009, 10:32 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
As I have written here often, the Bush claims to omnipotence required a parallel claim to omniscience. If they had merely provided tribunals as anticipated by the GC, the courts would never have gotten into the mess. But Bush and Rumsfeld were internally compelled to claim they could distinguish the “worst of the worst” wholesale from DC, and the result of that was imprisoning goatherds sold for bounties.
December 29, 2009, 10:34 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mark – you still are not justifying why, as stated, we deliberately and knowingly rounded up people who were not problematic.
Then we were trying to get bad guys, not peaceful goatherds. May I point out that if you get a bad guy given up to you for a bounty, he is not blowing you up with ieds, sniping, or shooting at you (or you at him) on the battlefield.
Oh – they were let go? LET GO? Wow.
December 29, 2009, 10:44 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
You left out the QC/QA. Without quality control, you just end up paying bounties for goatherds. Now, if we had set up on-the-spot tribunals, we might have known that in real time, instead of years too late. But somehow Bush and Rummy knew that we were paying to get the worst of the worst (that’s a quote). I can’t imagine how much money those clowns would lose to a three-card-monte operator if one got past security.
December 29, 2009, 10:57 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Andrew, do you know for a fact that they did absolutely no checking before they paid bounties and transported goatherds? Tribunals of the kind you wish they had had, would have been the only means of separating the sheep from the goats? Without those, they paid every single bounty offered, every time? That is hard for me to believe.
December 29, 2009, 11:34 amDaniel Chapman says:
Anyone noticed that despite this being a right-of-center blog, the comments are increasingly dominated by angry liberal shouters and a few angry right-wingers responding to them?
Civil conversation has pretty much died here, which I expect was the goal of at least a few people. Just close the comments entirely or go to a pre-approval system. The blog will improve.
December 29, 2009, 11:39 amPaul Creech says:
I’m sorry, it seems that many are under the impression that U.S. Marines drove around the desert with big nets attached to trucks scooping people up arbitrarily and then shipping them to Gitmo. That is absurd, insulting, and really just a stupid way to think about the people in Gitmo. People came into custody in different ways, but to think a random shepherd was mistakenly picked up as a Taliban because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is moronic. More likely shooting at the wrong people at the wrong time. Believe me, next time the 19 year old PFC (or the 30 year old Staff Sergeant) will be less likely to show restraint, make a righteous kill, and save everyone the trouble. The clowns losing at the curbside shell game are those that think there is a high probability that the Gitmo crew are farmers that President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld mistook as Osamabuddies. It must be very easy to think of enlisted military personnel as uneducated morons who shoot, kill, and capture everything that moves, instead of highly trained, highly skilled, highly professional warriors It must be easy to view the detention process as a rubberstamp review with no investigation or supervision (I mean of course by actual experts not for Congressional political theater). Being really really smart makes it very easy be cynical about the Americans involved and very sorry for murderous vermin. I bet your friends all agree with you, your expertise on security and military matters is highly sought after, all because of your real world experience and ivy league smarts. Have you seen Avatar!?! Wonderful story!!
December 29, 2009, 11:40 amHarry Eagar says:
Shorter Mike: Americans cannot defend themselves against people who want to kill them if those people are not white.
December 29, 2009, 11:58 amMark Field says:
I treat reckless disregard for the truth as equivalent to “deliberate”.
“Trying” in the same sense that I “try” to dunk a basketball.
If you fill your prison with innocent people, the guilty are still roaming the hills.
After years of abuse, yes.
December 29, 2009, 12:18 pmMark Buehner says:
Source?
December 29, 2009, 1:36 pmMark Field says:
The Seton Hall reports jbg linked earlier in this thread. Or google “Seton Hall Guantanamo”.
December 29, 2009, 3:40 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
It would not have taken much checking to weed out the 15-y.o. boy and the totally senile old man. Ergo, in some cases, they did no checking at all. By the way, we didn’t acquire many of the detainees via the military, but rather intelligence [sic] agencies. The military might have been more careful. And this fantasy of more righteous kills makes no sense for detainees who weren’t detained under battlefield conditions. Such comments say something more about the dreams of the commenters than our military’s behavior in the field.
December 29, 2009, 5:39 pmMark Buehner says:
…
Is this accurate? I’m not sure how seriously we should take a study by the lawyers representing the detainees… not least of which considering they have no access to the classified data. This all comes back to the same issue- these people are being held in a context of warfare. If you want to treat them like civilians you are sure to have whatever sources and means (intelligence) used to capture them disclosed, which would seem to put the nations security at risk. You can’t have it both ways.
December 29, 2009, 6:24 pmChrisTS says:
Bart:
You DO know that your beloved Bush Admin proceeded in exactly the same way with several terrorists?
December 29, 2009, 6:51 pmChrisTS says:
Arthur: Well, I hope I did not contribute to our going off the rails. I suppose this is proof, if we need it, that we are all driven by our emotions to some extent when a [near] attack like this occurs. I DO think that most of the discussion on these mutiple threads has been, largely, very good.
December 29, 2009, 7:02 pmArthurKirkland says:
Just close the comments entirely or go to a pre-approval system. The blog will
December 30, 2009, 12:59 amimprovebecome a RedState-FreeRepublic hybrid.jukeboxgrad says:
Kazinski:
You think that’s a joke, but the joke is on you, and on all of us. The same corporate interests that own our government also own our mass media, and both are manipulated to create profits via war. It’s no surprise that in 2002 the press mostly parroted and amplified Bush’s bogus WMD claims, instead of investigating and questioning. Ever hear of Judith Miller? Those darn liberals.
============
guy:
Good point, I missed that, my mistake. I apologize to DRM, because my remark to him implied that he introduced the POW issue for no reason.
The main problem is not what DRM said, it’s what twirip said (“the Geneva Conventions did not and do not apply”). That statement is false. And in his typical style, he apparently has no intention to take responsibility for his false claim.
============
creech:
It must be easy to stick with your doctrinaire notions even in the face of contrary evidence.
============
buehner:
I’m not sure how seriously we should take a commenter who glibly dismisses evidence. Oddly enough, it’s the lawyers representing the detainees who were motivated to dig into the DoD data. Who else is going to do it? Our lazy, subservient press?
Who cares? So what? There’s plenty of unclassified data available, and that unclassified data is sufficient to support the claims they made. If you can show otherwise, please do so.
Yes, the study does not claim to know exactly how many times we paid bounties. But it was something we promoted. We distributed a flyer that said this:
With a message like that, it’s no surprise that we ended up holding plenty of innocent people.
December 30, 2009, 2:20 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Not goatherders. Many of them were turned over by Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency, which had supported the Taliban and probably Al Qaeda and still is doing that.
Case in point: The man in Chicago arrested for maaking repeated viisits toi Mumbai to plan the massacres of November 2008 and now getting ready to plan something in Denmark was the son of a former Pakistani diplomat who had attended military school in Pakistan before moving to the United States. It was not IN SPITE OF but BECAUSE of his high level military connections in Pakistan that he got involved in terrorism. His half-brother is now the spokesman for the Pakistani Prime Minister, who unlike the President (whose wife Benazir Bhutto was asassinated) is probably not on our side)
And there were all kinds of other ways people got included in the list of detainees.
Guy: The government argued in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the detainees had the opportunity to protest their innocence to their interrogators, thus no further process was required. That, to me, is a truly astounding proposition.
What really bothers me is that tyhere was nobody who seemed to have understood the dynamics of the situation. Once somebody was detained it seems like there wasn’t anybody who had the courage to release them and it wasn’t all 100% accurate. This was obvious.
December 30, 2009, 11:10 pmPerry says:
Released detainees are planning attacks on us…hmm, I wonder why. It couldn’t be because they were just captured, tortured and released again by us, no, that’s WAY too rediculous. They have just spent weeks, if not months or years, in Guantanamo, being tortured in all sorts of horrendous ways. I shall list a few that are reliably documented in government files:
Beating
-Fist*
-Truncheon*
-Whip
-Kick*
-Slamming (Against wall, etc.)*
Electrical Shocks
-External electrodes*
-Internal electrodes*
Stretching or Suspension*
Water immersion*
Obstructing airway*
-Chest compression*
Suspension*
Burning
Deprivation of:
-Food*
-Water*
-Access to Toilet*
-Shelter From Heat or Cold
-Medical Care*
-Sleep*
-Sensory Deprivation*
And etc.
Now, why on earth would these people want to terrorize against us? 759 people have passed through Guantanamo. Over half of those were deemed innocent and released. Mohammad Lameen Sidi Mohammad, one of those innocent, was even sexually abused. And many of these detainees are denied the right of habeas corpus, even after the revision of the Military Comissions act. I could go on for pages, but I have a feeling that might be a bit much.
I, for one, am appalled. TORTURE is the big problem here. Maybe if we didn’t torture people, they might treat us a bit better.
January 5, 2010, 10:15 pmNow, thank you for reading this immensely long comment, good bye.
Perry says:
Oh, and yes, I have seen Avatar. AmAAAzing! You know, Richard Taylor and WETA workshop did the special effects. They worked on Lord of the Rings as well… oh, I’m going on a tangent, sorry.
January 5, 2010, 10:22 pmPerry says:
This will probably be the last time I ever visit this sight, so I wish you all wonderful lives. Bye
January 5, 2010, 10:26 pmBenjamin Hall says:
I also suffer from panic attacks and i can manage it by deep and slow breathing. i also practice meditation.. `
April 28, 2010, 2:33 pm