Update: I'm informed that KSM is not being tried by the UCMJ, though the major procedural objection is less that than that he's been tortured.
That is, of course, a major procedural, as well as a moral, objection. But is Obama really going to let him go rather than use that evidence at trial? That's a serious question. The American public polls in opposition to torture--but I'm willing to bet that it polls in even more serious opposition to releasing confessed terrorists. He must be hoping hard--as indeed we all are--that KSM decides to stick with the guilty plea. As Mark Ambinder says, the current orders buy peace now by kicking the can down the road.
In general, I agree with Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg that the exclusionary rule is a terrible substitute for civil servant accountability--but that's what we've got.
The main question I raised in my post--whether delaying the trials isn't an issue--clearly is a big problem, at least for the defendants lawyers. Or so says the Politico.
While Obama staffers may be hoping to conduct a more leisurely policy review, lawyers for some detainees are determined to move much faster in cases pressing for their clients' release. And already one federal judge on Wednesday ordered the government to explain its definition of "enemy combatant" within one week, a timeline which seems sharply at odds with Obama's planned review. "We'll vigorously oppose any delays in the habeas cases," a Chicago attorney representing several prisoners, Lowell Sachnoff, said yesterday. "If they said they could do it in a week, I'd give them a week, but I don't think they would ever say that." Sachnoff, who was in Washington to attend the inauguration, scoffed at Obama's recent pronouncement that closing Guantanamo will be "more complicated" than many had thought. "It's no more complicated or less complicated than it was many, many months ago," Sachnoff said.Thanks to everyone who emailed, and sorry for the delay. Unfortunately, this isn't my regular beat, and I was busy with the site launch.
Because, you know, within the first 24 hours he's supposed to magically take all the steps at once that will undo the damage.
With the combination of torture and massive incompetency, who would trust anything that's being handed to them? The innocent are not going to show up easily. They basically have to revisit the entire history of every detainee and make sense of the lies, forced interpretations, false accusations, and god knows what else.
Actually, an across the board 120 day freeze used to review anything the Bush administration touched would be useful.
I had the same thought. I suppose the idea is that the current tribunals are still unjust, so they're putting everything on hold until a new system can be enacted, but it's still rather ironic.
"Slow but steady" seems to be Obama's mantra about pretty much everything. I don't think he's going to move nearly as fast as some people were hoping, instead preferring to be seen as thoughtful and deliberate at all times. We'll see how that works out in the coming months.
From what I gather, this is intended to halt the military portion of trials, so that the defendants can be prosecuted as normal criminals (rather than "enemy combatants" or whatever other name we're calling them now). I'm not a lawyer, but I would assume that regular federal courts don't allow evidence gathered under coercion. So this is probably the quickest legal way to officially finding them innocent and releasing them. It's also a politically smart way of doing it - he shifts the actual decision of guilt or innocence (and by extension, whether or not to release a suspected terrorist) onto the Judicial branch rather than taking the full brunt of it himself. And if that defense holds up, it's also a precedent: a court has found that these suspects were treated badly. That could be important in any possible war crimes investigation. If he just pardoned them and said good-bye, that legal record wouldn't exist, and the suspects might not be in the mood to travel to Washington to testify in any future proceedings.
Simply put, the current tribunals are unconstitutional and do not provide even basic rights to the detainees.
I think you are right Megan.
All this does is extend the time before we can get rid of the place by 120 days.
Eventually, every person being held must either be released administratively, or tried and then either released or punished. That is if we assume indefinite detention is out. Which I think should not be ruled out. There have got to be some prisoners who are basically insurgent soldiers, who will go back to the fight as long as the fight continues. Who knows, maybe it would be more efficient to just let them go back to their insurgency--that is, it would take less manpower to kill them in battle than to hold them in Cuba.
This does NOT delay the closing of Guantanamo by 120 days. It (hopefully) shuts down the absurd kangaroo court system there while something new can be put in place.
And David, the idea of holding human beings indefinitely without trial is repulsive. If they've done something wrong, don't we have evidence for it? If we don't have enough evidence to prove they were doing something wrong, why are they being help prisoner?
Has it occurred to anybody that if we didn't have a place like Gitmo, most of the people currently there would have simply been shot?
They are alive because Rummy's DOD believed they had information worth extracting.
Furthermore, if the intel reports which our new President has just become privy to reveal that even ONE major attack has been averted under Bush's watch with info gathered from water-boarding, Obama's going to quietly find a way to let "Jack Bauer" get back to work on them, one way or another.
Has it occurred to anybody that if we didn't have a place like Gitmo, most of the people currently there would have simply been shot?
We shoot prisoners?
Can anyone tell me Teddy Kennedy's position on water-boarding?
Tara, I'm deeply sorry to have to tell you this, but Jack Bauer is not real.
I know, it was a blow to us all.
As much as I hate to derail this party with actual facts, here's a link to a CNN story which has the ACLU calling the action a step in the right direction. It looks like the first steps toward a shutdown of the system.
Isn't giving them civilian trials a violation of the Geneva accords? I thought that Geneva explicitly banned the use of civilian court systems to try prisoners of war (which is what the ACLU types like to refer to them as). I also thought that those accused of war crimes were traditionally tried by military tribunals pretty much in all wars. That's not to say we should torture them. But regarding the method of trying them in court, am I missing something?
We shoot prisoners?
No. They would not have been taken prisoner in the first place. A bullet is much cheaper than a jail cell, and no law on the globe prohibits soldiers from shooting non-uniformed combatants. Terrorists and pirates don't play by the rules, and so the rules don't protect them.
Tara, I'm deeply sorry to have to tell you this, but Jack Bauer is not real.
Hence the name in quotes. It's called a metaphor, kid.
I thought that Geneva explicitly banned the use of civilian court systems to try prisoners of war
Non-uniformed combatants can be tried in court. Otherwise, how would you try a suspected spy? They can also be executed under the Geneva Conventions. Our troops could have just shot them, but more than likely shooting a bunch of people in the back of the head would be bad press, but legal. Secondly, how many of these people were fighting US troops, and how many were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Without trials you can't figure that out.
We shoot prisoners?
No, we shoot them immediately before they would have become prisoners.
So you'd prefer we really did have a "take no prisoners" policy? That could get very messy very quickly.
No, Gene2, you're not missing anything. The left has, in recent years, has created completely fictitious traditions, laws and constitutional prohibitions in order to condemn Guantanamo.
You and Tara have brought up the only facts in this discussion. The Geneva conventions don't protect non-uniformed combatants. Prisoners of war are not allowed to be tried in regular civil courts, and they can also be indefinitely held, without access to lawyers, for the length of the conflict.
All of these real traditions, treaties and laws are completely ignored by the left in favor of vacuous notions of what they think the law should be.
If you disagree, using the real traditions and laws as precedents, you're subject to all kinds of abuse and accused of all manners of impropriety. It's silly.
Non-uniformed combatants can be tried in court.
Sure, they can be. The point is that people are arguing that they have the right to trial as some sort of internationally-guaranteed right.
They don't.
Secondly, how many of these people were fighting US troops, and how many were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Without trials you can't figure that out.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks that Bush didn't want to try these guys. Because, see, he tried, twice, to setup a system of courts to do so.
See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. See Boumediene v. Bush. Bush tried to try these guys two different times, and both efforts were struck down.
And yet, the left continues with this fantastical narrative that has absolutely no correlation to the what happened in the real world at all. There are numerous comments here that are completely at odds with the basic facts of the issue. It's almost surreal.
It's just all fire and fury. The facts just aren't interesting enough.
I have a hard time believing you're sincerely confused about this. He's halting so they can review how to get rid/legitimize the process. The delay clearly serves a proper end (either moving to military system, or releasing or whatever).
If the delay was simply to keep them in jail longer, sure. You'd have a point then.
We shoot prisoners?
As late as WW II saboteurs and terrorists were summarily executed.
Also, a lot of those who were released were found back on the battlefield in Afganistan shooting at our troops. So keep in mind that you might be getting young Marines and soldiers killed in the quest for a lily-white national conscience.
Also, al marri is still in prison, despite the suggestion that there is no constitutional authority to hold him. If there isn't authority, he should have been released yesterday at noon.
What I've been wondering about is, if waterboarding is torture and Obama plans to ban it, is he going to stop all waterboarding under all circumstances? And if they're thinking of prosecuting those involved in waterboarding, will that include those who did it under earlier administrations, such as Clinton's? And what about the reporters that did it for TV - are there any punishments for televising torture or for carrying it out (or submitting to it) for money?
Does anyone know if Obama is going to end all torture, including our traditional use of it for training purposes?
Also, a lot of those who were released were found back on the battlefield in Afganistan shooting at our troops. So keep in mind that you might be getting young Marines and soldiers killed in the quest for a lily-white national conscience.
Even more likely, a peaceful Afghan (or Afghans) will be killed by them.
When you are kind to the cruel, you end up being cruel to the kind.
Greenwald, A student that he is, seems to have done the reading for us.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/21/guantanamo/
And Ann, a soldier or a reporter undergoing "waterboarding" for the sake of training (or because CNN has 15 minutes of dead air to fill) is not the same as real torture. It's the difference between a lineman sacking the quarterback, and the same lineman assaulting someone on the street the next morning.
Megan, I agree with 99% of what you write about the economy, and I thought your pieces on the US auto industry have been fantastic. But are the next four years going to be like your last three posts? Some idiots booed Bush, and now a “reasonable” conservative friend of yours is ready for revenge? The speech wasn’t “truly transformative”? And as publius said, you’re really, honestly confused about why Obama might want to put a hold on the Gitmo trials?
The Geneva conventions don't protect non-uniformed combatants.
This is false. Protocol I grants the protections of the Geneva Convention to guerrilla fighters who are combating an occupying force.
The Bush administration has violated the convention with this legal fiction of an unrecognized third status that provides none of the rights of civilians or combatants. Bush was attempting to invent a loophole that does not conform with existing requirements, but there was no legal justification to do this.
The Gitmo inmates should be treated either as POW's or as civilians. Given the circumstances and the wording of Protocol I, treating them as POW's would be more appropriate. The alternative would be try them as felons in civilian trials. To do otherwise is just sloppy and lazy, or something worse.
No. They would not have been taken prisoner in the first place. A bullet is much cheaper than a jail cell, and no law on the globe prohibits soldiers from shooting non-uniformed combatants. Terrorists and pirates don't play by the rules, and so the rules don't protect them.
Of the prisoners at Gitmo, only 5% were captured by US soldiers. 95% were captured by warlords, etc., in response to bounties we put out. They were not captured on the battlefield, were not captured fighting, were not captured with weapons in hand. They were turned over to us in exchange for $5000 and up.
Megan, you are a little confused. Neither KSM nor any other Gitmo detainee has been tried under the UCMJ. The Gitmo Military Commissions do not follow the UCMJ, they are done pursuant to the Military Commissions Act. The UCMJ is great, has lots of robust procedural protections, and has a long history and lots of integrity. The Bush administration chose not to use the UCMJ.
In Hamdan, the Supreme Court held the MCA was illegal precisely because, among other things, it failed to comply with the UCMJ:
"The military commission at issue lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedures violate both the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949."
The MCA procedures are a joke, tailor-made for only the Gitmo prisoners. That's why the Obama administration is suspending them.
> a lot of those who were released were found back on the battlefield in Afganistan shooting at our troops.
Like who exactly? Unfortunately the DoD seems to lying about this.
http://law.shu.edu/administration/public_relations/press_releases/2009/shl_defense_dept_wrong_on_gtmo.htm
The DoD also considers holding a press conference to be 'returning to the fight'.
- - - -
Our government lying to us? Goodness gracious. How could that ever happen.
that seton hall "rebuttal" left me wanting, to put it mildly..
in any case, there are few serious people arguing that the majority of individuals being held in guantanamo are "dangerous" and should not be released as such.
excuse me, there are few serious people arguing that the majority of individuals are NOT dangerous. Most of them certainly are.
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/1216_detainees_wittes.aspx
in any case, there are few serious people arguing that the majority of individuals being held in guantanamo are "dangerous" and should not be released as such.
If they are dangerous then there is evidence that they are dangerous and have broken laws. So, put them through a trial, convict them and then put them away for life or execute them. You won't hear me crying for them. If there's no evidence that they are dangerous, then how do you know?
Apsaras -
You seem to be saying that waterboarding isn't always torture, and that it depends on the circumstances. But then why should Obama have an immediate, absolute ban, rather than looking at the specific circumstances of the (three or four) cases in which it has been used? I suppose it might be for appearances/reputation, because the use even in isolated cases brings very bad publicity around the world.
I'm genuinely puzzled that people are so outraged at the use of waterboarding in some cases and yet never even take time to mention whether or not we still plan to use it in other cases. If it's so unquestionably wrong, why not have a total ban?
The Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions you are referring to is also known as the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
The United States is not a signatory to said additional protocols, primarily *because* guerrilla fighters were given armed combatant status -- none of the congresses and administrations between then and now have decided to give the protections due soldiers always distinguishable from civilians to people who put on uniforms only when attacking us, then blend back into the population and pretend to be civilians.
Incidentally, I think this is a good thing: the soldier is put in danger by being recognizable even when not specifically attacking the enemy, and the civilians around the soldier are correspondingly in less danger. He is *entitled* to greater safeguards, better treatment than captured, et cetera, than the guerrilla who looks just like everyone else except when he's picked up a rifle and slipped on a sign recognizable at a distance (if you could see him at all) and is shooting at you.
Note that wearing uniforms (or being otherwise readily distinguishable from civilians) during actual military operations is *still* a requirement under the 1977 revisions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_I
I agree with BudFox2, Megan.
If you are really confused about Obama's intentions on this, how can you possibly be trusted to be able to critically address your "reasonable" conservative friend's implication that he is justified in seeking 'revenge' because many in the crowd booed Bush?
(Hint: You might start by saying that such so-called conservatives' wish for 'revenge'--against Democrats, against Hussein-- is what helped push us into this disastrous mess we are in.)
If you want to be taken seriously, at least be honest. No facile statements like "I am confused" unless you really are, which in the case of Gitmo, is hardly believable unless you are terribly uninformed..
Doesn't this just further prolong the incarceration of anyone who might be innocent?
This is snark, right?
This is false. Protocol I grants the protections of the Geneva Convention to guerrilla fighters who are combating an occupying force
This would be an interesting discussion if Al Queda was a "High Contractng Party." But it, of course, is not.
The Taliban arguably were, which is why the Bush Administration said as much back in 2003.
Even then, Protocol I was never ratified by the US anyway. We didn't ratify it because of the very silliness you're attempting to argue now.
I wouldn't be surprised if Obama never pushes the Senate to ratify it either.
But again, the facts are elided and ignored by the left. You want something to be a binding law, so you just pretend that it is.
In Hamdan, the Supreme Court held the MCA was illegal precisely because, among other things, it failed to comply with the UCMJ
As I alluded to previously, the MCA was the second attempt to apply a system of courts to the problem of Guantanamo (after the previous attempted failed with Hamdan). Again, as I alluded to, the MCA was overturned by Boumediene et al v. Bush.
The MCA was signed on October 17, 2006. Hamdan was handed down on June 29, 2006. I think you're confused.
It's ok. You're not the only one.
Talk about a great way to evade "First 100 Days" articles! Demand an extra 20!
And if he takes 120 days to review the Bush legacy, how long does he want to take to catch up for the first 4 months of his own presidency?
Protocol I was never ratified by the US anyway
You made the statement that "The Geneva conventions don't protect non-uniformed combatants." Clearly, they do. The United States may object to that protocol, but the protocol exists.
You could at least spare us the subterfuge and be more honest about your objectives. You obviously believe that the US has the right to act as a rogue nation and to invent law on the fly, even if it flies in the face of existing international conventions or the US Constitution.
It's nice to know that civil liberties aren't worth the parchment paper that they are printed on, and that we can't be bothered with having legal proceedings, even when there is no reason not to. Makes me proud to be an American, knowing that we can be capricious whenever it suits us, just because. Trials and due process? Nah, those are just crazy talk!
You made the statement that "The Geneva conventions don't protect non-uniformed combatants." Clearly, they do. The United States may object to that protocol, but the protocol exists.
And you made the statement:
The Bush administration has violated the convention with this legal fiction of an unrecognized third status that provides none of the rights of civilians or combatants
I may have been careless and quick in my simplifications, but even now you refuse to admit the reality that the additional Protocol is not any sort of binding law on the US whatsoever.
You merely say we "object" to it. Well, yes, but that's deliberately avoiding the point. We don't just "object" to it, it's not international law in any meaningful sense of the term. Thus it's impossible for Bush, or any other American President to "violate." You can't violate contracts you aren't a party to.
You could at least spare us the subterfuge and be more honest about your objectives. You obviously believe that the US has the right to act as a rogue nation and to invent law on the fly, even if it flies in the face of existing international conventions or the US Constitution.
You're the one arguing that we're bound by international "law" the Senate never ratified, and yet you have the audacity to say that I'm advocating violating the Constitution?
Really?
It's nice to know that civil liberties aren't worth the parchment paper that they are printed on, and that we can't be bothered with having legal proceedings, even when there is no reason not to. Makes me proud to be an American, knowing that we can be capricious whenever it suits us, just because. Trials and due process? Nah, those are just crazy talk!
If you'd have actually read my posts you would have noticed that twice I mentioned the Bush administration's several attempts to try those detained in Guantanamo.
But, as usual, those like you are adverse to facts. Those are just obstacles on the golden-brick road of shrill hyperbole and strained indignation.
RW: "You made the statement that 'The Geneva conventions don't protect non-uniformed combatants.' Clearly, they do. The United States may object to that protocol, but the protocol exists."
Protocol I is an amendment to the treaty. Since treaties can't be unilaterally renegotiated, each signatory country must agree to the amendment for it to take on the force of law in said country. In our case, it means that Protocol I must be signed and ratified. As this has clearly not occurred, Protocol I is NOT the law of the land here, despite the fact that the “protocol exists.” Lots of treaties exist. We’re only bound by the ones we sign.
That being said, the rest of the world – including the Brits – have signed Protocol I and seem to be getting along just fine. I think we should sign it.
I’m intrigued by the question of whether Geneva prohibits trying prisoners of war in civilian court. It certainly makes sense. If you can set aside the political hacks that the Bush administration put in place, a military court – with military lawyers, judges, and juries – would seem to offer the fairest trial. After all, who better to try a fellow soldier than a soldier? Does anyone honestly believe that a civilian jury, who has never known the horror and confusion of combat, can draw the fine lines on what behavior is and is not acceptable?
In Kangaroo courts that the Supreme Court ruled didn't meet the bare minimums for a fair trial.
BudFox2: But are the next four years going to be like your last three posts?
Those last three posts have pretty much convinced me to stop following Megan's blog after today. They didn't make me mad or anything, they're just...bad. And this one in particular seems to have brought out a lot of people who wish 24 was real, which is the last thing I need to deal with.
You're the one arguing that we're bound by international "law" the Senate never ratified
Er, no. Firstly, I'm correcting your misstatement about the Geneva Convention. You falsely claimed that non-combatants aren't covered by it. In fact, they are covered by it.
Secondly, I am noting your obvious willingness to exclude the US from said international conventions. You are clearly hostile to the notion of the United States being bound to international agreements when they prove to be inconvenient to your ideological mindset.
If the US wants to hold a place in the community of nations, then it needs to behave like a member of the community. I realize that this means nothing to right-wing hawks like yourself, but that tendency to behave in a unilateral fashion is what gets us into trouble in the first place.
You provide no sound reason to not provide an internationally acceptable form of due process to the detainees. This failure has created needless foreign policy headaches for the US, which failed under Bush Jr. to develop effective coalitions as did his father.
As usual, ideological blinders are useful when there is no desire to ensure that policies are actually effective. God forbid that anyone on the right actually take personal responsibility for how badly that they've screwed things up. I guess responsibility must be for other people.
You falsely claimed that non-combatants aren't covered by it.
Good Lord, AQ have gone from terrorists to guerrila fighters to non-combatants.
I wouldn't be so quick to diminish Protocol I. Doesn't it basically imply that the signatories can hold guerillas and rebels without charges for the extent of the hostilities? I can see why certain many oppressive nations signed it.
Er, no. Firstly, I'm correcting your misstatement about the Geneva Convention. You falsely claimed that non-combatants aren't covered by it. In fact, they are covered by it.
First off, I never claimed that "non-combatants" weren't covered by the Geneva Conventions.
What I actually said is that non-uniformed combatants aren't covered. That's because I was referring to the Geneva Conventions we actually ratified. Those have the force of law. Those conventions have no protections for non-uninformed combatants.
You're referring to an additional protocol to the Conventions. That's an amendment to the conventions we never ratified. Thus it has no force of law. The only Geneva Conventions that are relevant to the US and binding on the US have no protections for non-uniformed combatants.
You've chosen to attack my integrity and my motivations instead of bothering to even get my claims right.
Secondly, I am noting your obvious willingness to exclude the US from said international conventions. You are clearly hostile to the notion of the United States being bound to international agreements when they prove to be inconvenient to your ideological mindset.
Yes, I'm hostile to the notion of the US being bound to International "agreements" we never agreed to.
If the Senate were to ratify Protocol I tomorrow than I would agree that were bound to it. Since the Senate hasn't, we are not. This isn't just because of my personal whim, it's because of what the Constitution says.
See, I believe in the law as it is. You want to believe in the law as you want it to be.
That is not only foolish, but wrong.
That is not only foolish, but wrong.
On the contrary, it would be foolish to perpetuate the policies of an inept president/wannabe tyrant who, time and time again, miserably failed to serve the interests of the United States.
It will take considerable effort to undo the damage that was produced by the last several years of shrill impotence that some dare call a foreign policy. Fortunately, the repair job can start today. If those in your camp aren't happy with the results, I'll consider that to be a plus.
Whatever is decided, a couple of points:
1) That our ability to use lethal force (hopefully overwhelming) to kill those firing on U.S. military forces is preserved;
2) That U.S. military forces are not put in further harm's way collecting evidence for use in any legal proceedings against those taken into custody who engaged U.S. military forces.
On the contrary, it would be foolish to perpetuate the policies of an inept president/wannabe tyrant who, time and time again, miserably failed to serve the interests of the United States.
I'm sorry, you were accusing me of being beholden to a certain ideological mindset?
I'm beginning to wonder why I even bothered to discredit you. You're doing a fairly decent job of doing it to yourself.
Well, I'm glad to see that there are those who insist that, rather than be a moral compass for the world, we should adopt the practices of the Nazis and Communists.
Andrew Sullivan's done a good job of pointing out where these "enhanced interrogation" (a phrase taken from the Nazis) have come from and whose used them before.
And for Ann, we tried Japanese soldiers post WWII for waterboarding as torture, convicted them and had them executed.
Should it (or any other torture) be legal? No. We shouldn't condone it legally. If the heretofore never experienced anywhere ticking time bomb/ 24 situation actually ever occurred, I'm sure a presidential pardon could be in order. But since, this never has and never will happen, I think we can make an exception for it.
You made the statement that "The Geneva conventions don't protect non-uniformed combatants." Clearly, they do. The United States may object to that protocol, but the protocol exists.
Wow. So your position is we're bound by a treaty we never signed? Good luck with that, pal.
I thought The One's first official act was going to be to announce the decision to close Gitmo.....now he's not only not announcing the shut down, but suspending the current process for at least 120 days?
I think Gitmo's going to be open for business for a long, long time........and whatever interogation techniques our new Dear Leader authorizes will make waterboarding look like an amusement park ride.......
Oh, Megan, you should realize that the entire policy has to fit into a 3-second sound-bite and onto one word on a very determined-looking poster.
I think Gitmo's going to be open for business for a long, long time...
Of course. Now that he's president Obama has the same problem Bush had - there really isn't any good way to deal with these people. The idea the prisoners are going to be tried in civilian courts is ridiculous, and Obama knows it. But releasing the prisoners is political suicide. So he'll just keep studying the situation for his entire term.
asparas wrote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/21/guantanamo/
And Ann, a soldier or a reporter undergoing "waterboarding" for the sake of training (or because CNN has 15 minutes of dead air to fill) is not the same as real torture. It's the difference between a lineman sacking the quarterback, and the same lineman assaulting someone on the street the next morning.
And Hitchens submitted to being waterboarded and came to the conlusion based on his experiences that it was torture. Of course by declaring his experience torture he in fact invalidates your argument.
Becuase we use waterboarding to train our troops and they are required to undergo it to finish their training. So its consensual. However, Hitchens waterboarding was also consensual (twice in fact) yet he still declared it torture. If the act itself regardless of context is torture then a case should be made that we should target the military for routine war crimes as they've been waterboarding american citizens for years.
Though I would argue that if we can use waterboarding in the context of training and it doesn't shock our conscience then in rare cases where there is a ticking time bomb or a target like Khalid Sheik mohammad who can provide intel that might stop attacks or lead to the capture of other Al Qaeda members, then it wouldn't shock my conscience there either. Not that it should be used for anyone captured on the battlefield (nor was it).
Go ahead & bring them to trial here.
When the defense attorney stands before the court and says: "Your honor, my client was never properly marandized or notifies of his rights, we dont even know the specific soldiers that witnessed my client's alledged involvement, and since, in the fog of war, no one can specifically identify my client as actually being an combatant versus an average iraqi protecting himself against unknown forces . . . . . "
You get the government you vote for.
I'm confused as to why people are arguing over Protocol 1. The main reason the Supreme Court threw out Bush's first set of tribunals was that they violated the UCMJ and Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, both of which uphold the right of habeus corpus. Boumediene v Bush threw out the second set of tribunals because they still violated habeus corpus. I think the main reason people oppose the tribunals is not simply the fact that they're separate from the regular justice system, but that in their current form they don't provide even minimal rights such as habeus corpus or the prevention of evidence gathered through torture.
Frankly, Obama's actions thus far reek of political stunt.
At the end of the day, Obama has to try them, hold them, or release them. He has no other options. He's got no magic wands.
He's not going to release everyone there, though I suspect he's going to make a big show of releasing some small number of prisoners we probably would have released anyway under an executive order. The previous administration released hundreds of prisoners with much less fanfare, but fanfare is what Obama is proving to be all about.
He's not going to try them, at least not in the sense of trying them in civilian courts. That would be political suicide. As soon as he tried to do that, pundits would begin pointing out the realities of suggesting someone caught on the battlefield needs to have the same rights as a criminal found on the street. Once that started happening, you'd start hearing the military grumbling about imposing an unrealistic police burden on them in the middle of combat, about the enormous burden in extra training it would entail, and the additional loss of life asking soldiers to act like policemen would involve. Once those arguments begin to be heard by the American public, Obama would appear utterly foolish. Obama's not so stupid as to even risk this argument taking front and center stage. What I expect Obama to do is release some fairly insubstantial procedural changes and then announce how much fairer the new rules are.
Finally, Obama isn't going to summarily hold them either, but he's going to find that there are quite a few prisoners that can neither be tried nor released. So he's going to announce an agreement where these are returned to face trial in Afghanistan, only you will never here the term 'rendition' when he does that.
The end result is going to be alot of loud proclimations of how different he is, with no substantive changes in policy - which is par for the course this far.
QUOTED:[Oh, Megan, you should realize that the entire policy has to fit into a 3-second sound-bite and onto one word on a very determined-looking poster.]
Or at least fit a bumper sticker
Yes, but Megan, don't you realize...OBAMA did this...so...IT'S MAGICALLY A GOOD THING!
The argument that "holding people without trial" is somehow inherently evil or unconstitutional is ridiculous.
People captured on the battlefield (on both sides) are routinely held until the cessation of hostilities. In the case of the United States, it is done under the auspices of the Geneva Convention. The US, having ratified all convention revisions except for two in 1977...is legally bound (both internationally and constitutionally).
Given the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision, which specified that "certain high ranking terror suspects" qualified as "enemy combatants" under the terms of the Geneva Convention...if anything has been done "unconstitutionally"....it is stopping a lawfully empaneled Martial Court.
I like how RW wants us to kneel before some vague international ruling that put our uniformed troops in even more danger, while decreasing the risk to non-uniform combatants (terrorists). Why does he hate our troops?
How dare you question the wisdom of The One?
You can forget about Obama calling on you at a press conference or letting you on Air Force One. And that cushy NY Times you were counting on? Out the window.
Actually, we need a couple more attacks on U.S. cities before liberals will begin to wake up from MTV and Jack Bauer as representing the real world. In the real world, people really die and the guys at Guantanamo will be happy to oblige. Luckily all of our large cities are liberal havens....
As the Russians and Chinese have been saying for decades, fat-dumb-and-happy US of A will kill itself with decadence. Putting a Chicago politician with zero idea of what the military is in charge of the U.S. during a wartime is just perfect. Sort of like the Children's Crusade.
Megan, you're half right. It costs these guys nothing to have those captured released back to Afghanistan, but they get the benefit of their own improved moral superiority. And if some dark skinned folk have to die for it, well thems the breaks.
The point is everyone has been going on about how people at Guantanamo aren't getting trials at all, and now we come to find out that Obama is suspending the trials that they've been getting for months/years already!
So why are people just hearing about this now? Go go unbiased press!
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am the Great and Powerful Obama from Chicago! Look upon my works and despair!
I heard on FNC today that they may not put him on trial for 9-11 (because he was "tortured"). They would instead put him on trial in a federal court for the first World Trade Center bombing only. The only people who will go on trial from Guantanamo will be the CIA and military operatives who waterboarded him. Hope and Change!
What's amazing to me is the mind-boggling number of people here who think they know what they are talking about, but who are ostensibly unaware of the fact that waterboarding was only used on 3 people, the last of which was in 2005.
Waterboarding was a psychological tool to make the prisoner doubt what they thought their training had taught them (that the US wouldn't harm them physically). After the technique was made public, it ceased to be useful, and we know that it wasn't used afterwards.
I wonder if the American people know who they elected. Public opinion on this issue is running against Obama. Only 35% supports closing Gitmo.
As for delaying the trials, I don't get it either. The Democrats have been in control of Congress for two years, they had ample opportunity to get all the information they wanted on Gitmo. The idea that all these people have been tortured by the big bad Bushies is nonsense. For years, the Bush administration and the Congress have worked to try and create a tribunal system for these people without any help from Barack Obama.
MnZ: "I wouldn't be so quick to diminish Protocol I. Doesn't it basically imply that the signatories can hold guerillas and rebels without charges for the extent of the hostilities? I can see why certain many oppressive nations signed it."
You seem to be missing the entire concept of prisoners of war. All prisoners of war get held for the duration of hostilities (the "war"), after which they are repatriated to their home country. A big portion of Geneva is how these people are treated while they are held - the conventions were not designed to put in place a system where people could be repatriated to hostile forces while hostilities were still underway. That would defeat the entire purpose of capturing prisoners.
Huh?: "The main reason the Supreme Court threw out Bush's first set of tribunals was that they violated the UCMJ and Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, both of which uphold the right of habeus corpus." In the context of this discussion it may be a minor point, but I feel compelled to note that the tribunals did not violate the UCMJ because such a thing isn't possible. The Supreme Court found that the tribunals conflicted with the UCMJ, which is like saying that Arkansas law conflicts with California law. The UCMJ is a set of criminal statutes and procedures that apply to military personnel. If you then set up a separate system outside the UCMJ then you don't get to throw out that system because it conflicts with the UCMJ any more than you could throw out California law because it conflicts with Arkansas law.
The Supreme Court's complaint was that the policies in place violated the Geneva Convention Article Three. This most notably includes the prohibition on outrages upon personal dignity, etc., and the requirement that sentences must be "pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." Neither the UCMJ nor the Geneva Convention discuss Habeus corpus, which is a judicial procedure internal to the United States.
--Simply put, the current tribunals are unconstitutional and do not provide even basic rights to the detainees.
This poster apparently knows nothing about the Constitution or Military Law.
Terrye above has it right. There's been harsh interrogation of one identified person Khalid, who know immense amounts of valuable information. Also note that the military tribunals were approved by Congress and kicked back by the Supreme Court, making this lengthier and more legally complicated than it should have been.
There has been a long history of military tribunals. Fortunately, we are at a new moment of our era, when history means nothing and the will of the One will prevail.
If this comments section isn't a microcosm for the last eight years, nothing is.
On the one hand, RW is absolutely certain that something evil has been done, and quotes Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions as proof.
On the other, Glorious correctly points out that 'feelings' don't matter, it is the law that binds our actions.
To which RW responds that Glorious just supports all the evil things that Bushhitlercheneyhalliburton did, and so there.
Facts no longer matter in the body politic. Only feelings.
Someone above said that there has been no case of a released Guantanamo detainee killing or being dangerous. This is a falsehood...........
Al-Kuwaiti is a former guest of the Guantanamo Bay resort and gentlemen's club; he's also a former human being -- and newly annointed martyr. Al-Kuwaiti is one of the featured stars in this al-Qaeda promotional video. According to Bill Roggio, he pulled off a spectacular suicide bombing in Mosul last March:
Ajmi was released from Guantanamo Bay and was searching for "a way to reconnect with the jihad." He claimed he was tortured while at Guantanamo Bay.
Ajmi "is seemingly responsible for an earlier truck bombing at the Iraqi Army HQ in the Harmat neighborhood of Mosul on March 23, 2008," said Kazimi. The attack occurred at Combat Outpost Inman, an Iraqi Army base that served as the headquarters for the 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Iraqi Army Division.
Thirteen Iraqi soldiers were killed and 42 were wounded after Ajmi drove an armored truck packed [with] an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives through the gate of the outpost and detonated [himself] in a spot between the three main buildings of the compound. The blast destroyed the facades of the three buildings, including the building housing the battalion headquarters.
Bill Rogio Long War Journal
The latest Pentagon "fact sheet" on "former GTMO detainee terrorist trends," dated June 13, is available here. It states that 37 former Guantanamo detainees are "confirmed or suspected" of having returned to "terrorist activities" since their release. It puts the so-called recidivism rate at "between 5 and 7 percent."
The Pentagon fact sheet names 13 former GITMO prisoners whose participation in various types of terrorist activity has been "confirmed," in most cases because they have been killed or captured on something resembling a battlefield. There is no evidence that any of the 13 killed Americans. The names range from the leader of an al-Qaeda cell in Turkey to Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti citizen who killed 7 people in a suicide bomb attack on Mosul in April. The list includes three Chechens, transferred to Russia and subsequently re-arrested for terrorist activities.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/from_gitmo_to_the_battlefield.html
Waterboarding has only been done 3 times that we know of. That doesn't account for all of the other people who have had other things done to them that amount to torture under any legal standard, including our own. Jump over to Glenn Greenwald for one case study today, amongst others.
Hell we tortured an American citizen to the point where he couldn't stand trial Wow, that's awesome.
But just ignore that. That's different.
Obama will continue waterboarding and Gitmo. And the left will stare down at their shoelaces. Why? Because they don't really believe in the things they lecture us about. It was all about Bush, not about Gitmo or waterboarding or FISA [which btw has just ruled in favor of Bush's "illegal wiretaps".
No worries. I already understood the Left had situational ethics the day after 9-11.
Brian,
Oh it's worse than that. People are routinely tortured, every day, right here in America.
But that happens in civilian prisons and doesn't fit neatly into someone's ideological agenda, so no biggy.
On the contrary, it would be foolish to perpetuate the policies of an inept president/wannabe tyrant who, time and time again, miserably failed to serve the interests of the United States.
I see no reason to bring FDR into this.
I think we've missed an elegant and satisfying solution to the long term detainees at GITMO. Release them...to Cuba. Like the Muriel boatlift. Except better.
What's amazing to me is the mind-boggling number of people here who think they know what they are talking about, but who are ostensibly unaware of the fact that waterboarding was only used on 3 people, the last of which was in 2005.
Personally, I'm all for waterboarding terrorists, but this doesn't really tell the whole picture. What we know is the CIA only waterboarded three people prior to 2006. We don't know how many people were waterboarded by the military, by contractors, by other US agencies, or by foreign governments with US agents observing. Maybe many, maybe none.
It's hard to believe the CIA was the only agency trying to get information out of the bad guys, but there's no real reason to engage in rank speculation (or demanding trials) in the absence of information. It's probably information that should see the light of day, but that's really up to Obama now.
DaveS writes:
the fact [is] that waterboarding was only used on 3 people, the last of which was in 2005.
Dave, where did you get this information? From the torturers? From their accountants? From the agencies or persons who tortured?
That water boarding was only used on three persons and these before 2006 may be true or a lie. But there is no way that any claim by any government agency on this matter can be taken as "fact."
What's your source, and why should it be believed, given the motivation for lying?
The agencies that torture are not agencies that have compunctions about lying. They will admit to what you already know, or to what serves them.
But KSM and 5 others to be tried with him have confessed repeatedly and in the court room. Their lawyer can't shut them up. They want to be martyrs and are anxious to get to heaven and all those virgins.
The one should set all of the folks at Guantanamo free. He should also give them boatloads of freshly-printed cash and grant them U.S. citizenship. He could hook them up with really nice homes in Maryland's posh suburbs.
Clearly, they're all outstanding individuals whose intentions were merely misunderstood. They pose no threat to anyone.
At some point, you either believe in this country, or you don't. Because we haven't changed much, really, in the last 240 years. (See: Jefferson deals with Barbary Pirates in 1803 -- his international authority was . . . ?) In that regard, the same electoral system that produced W produced the Obamessiah. Deal with it. Allegations of electoral fraud abound on both sides. Get over it; we have. (see: ACORN).
There are so many smart comments on this board, I only want to add that those who would selectively castigate the Bush adminstration for keeping us safe for the last seven years, after a decade-long run-up to the BIG EVENT (which was not 9/11 -- that was just the next step, and please, just read a little history before you respond) need to comprehend the nature of the enemy.
Yes, Virginia, there is An Enemy. He wants to KILL YOU. Period. He will not spare you because you want to understand him. He will not spare the Obamessiah, either (and Barry gets this, make no mistake). The Enemy finds your earnest debate over Gitmo an enormous source of amusement. Because in his world, "enemy combatants" (including, reporters, tourists) are summarily BEHEADED.
Try to just look at the facts. Formulate your resolutions in view of those. The world as it is, not as you wish it was.
"We are the World" is a song by Michael Jackson. Like him, it is not real.
Oh, grow up, before you get us all killed.
I, for one, find interesting the notion that the means (sacrificing the lives of American soldiers and civilians) are justified by the ends (not "torturing" their -- our -- would-be murderers).
Good Lord, is it too much to ask that educate yourself on this topic before spouting off nonsense about it? At least read a little Glenn Greenwald or something before posting on this topic. In one brief paragraph you've shown that you know absolutely nothing about why Obama made this move and what it means.
Obama just made a huge mistake. He does indeed want these guys tried in civilian courts. Since none of them were read Miranda Rights by Soldiers, Marines, or CIA officers, they will ALL be let go.
This is what Obama wants.
Of course, it means picking a SIDE. The Muslim terrorists who are obviously guilty (Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who planned 9/11 and beheaded Daniel Pearl on camera) over Americans. That is what Obama has done.
Already the 9/11 Victims Families are protesting, and may indeed picket the White House. This action is no surprise for a man born and raised a Muslim, and with his own autobiography filled with his words expressing dislike to hatred of Whites and America.
Of course, when not if these released guys kill Americans, Republicans can blame Obama and Dems for making the choice of Terrorist Rights over American Lives. Because that IS the choice.
We did not read Hermann Goerring his rights either. We treated him plenty rough in the beginning. We would have convicted him had he not committed suicide. We hung most of his fellow prisoners. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is like Goerring, except he had fewer opportunities to murder that's all.
Obama now has to make choices. The moment these guys go free, he and Dems OWN everything they do, including all the murders of Americans, and if you thought Willie Horton was bad, wait till America gets a load of Obama (born and raised a Muslim) letting Muslim terrorists go, including the Architect of 9/11.
Obama is going to make everyone long for the competence of Jimmy Carter during the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Assuming Glenn Greenwald is a source of legitimate education/information about the topic? Good Lord, indeed.
tim geithner is john gault (of taxes).
Time to pay up and come back down from the mountain to take over.
Welcome, Democratic fussy-butts, to 21st century America, where we must thread the needle of our civilization with the nasty threads of those who will do anything to destroy us.
You have been shrill with easy judgement while OUR president (yours and mine) wrestled with awful choices. Now our new president will do the same.
Just as the New York Times front page analysis said, finally, on Nov. 3 (!), Guantanamo is a pretty darn good answer to a terrible problem. (Oh, and all that about shredding the constitution, uh, never mind).
As I said, welcome to the discussions many of us have been having for the last several years. Good luck, and may we all survive your solutions.
Here's the NYT on 11/2 about Guantanamo:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/us/03gitmo.html
It underscores the problem facing the administration and shows that a huge chunk of these people are hardened terrorists caught with Al Qaeda members or who are known as terrorists, not just guys out for a stroll in afghanistan.
It also highlights that 60 people or so have been cleared for transfer or release but that they can't yet be moved because of difficulties negotiating transfer agreements between the United States and other countries. Which again is a problem ignored by the critics of Guantanamo. Namely that we have been releasing plenty of people already from Guantanamo (many of whom have returned to the battlefield.
So the entirety of the critics argument is one big bogeyman.
You seem to be missing the entire concept of prisoners of war. All prisoners of war get held for the duration of hostilities (the "war"), after which they are repatriated to their home country. A big portion of Geneva is how these people are treated while they are held - the conventions were not designed to put in place a system where people could be repatriated to hostile forces while hostilities were still underway. That would defeat the entire purpose of capturing prisoners.
Actually, my point was this. Suppose a country wanted to hold suspected dissidents without charges. Based on my reading, the country could hold those dissidents without charges as prisoners of war if they could argue that those dissidents were related to armed hostilities.
RW: You obviously believe that the US has the right to act as a rogue nation and to invent law on the fly, even if it flies in the face of existing international conventions or the US Constitution.
"Invent law on the fly"? You're the one who seems to think that other nations can just impose their ideology on us with the force of law, without our own incompetent legislators even getting a vote. How many of the nations that ratified Protocol I are even democracies?
You are clearly hostile to the notion of the United States being bound to international agreements when they prove to be inconvenient to your ideological mindset.
No, I'm extremely hostile to the notion of the US being bound by international agreements we have not ratified, regardless of whether they are 'inconvenient to my mindset', whatever that means.
If the US wants to hold a place in the community of nations, then it needs to behave like a member of the community. I realize that this means nothing to right-wing hawks like yourself, but that tendency to behave in a unilateral fashion is what gets us into trouble in the first place.
No, what got us into trouble was idiots like you who think that war fighting is a function of the judicial branch of government.
Nothing Bush has done has been unilateral, and you know that, so your rhetoric is so hollow it echoes. We had seventeen UN resolutions stacked up on Saddam's desk. Forty countries sent troops to support the mission in Iraq. Get a clue. You're entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
And Megan, try not to understand the workings of H's mind. Even he doesn't know what he's thinking.
BBB
How can there possibly be anyone still alive at Gitmo? I mean, how could anyone survive these past six years being tortured day and night?
Assuming Glenn Greenwald is a source of legitimate education/information about the topic? Good Lord, indeed.
Because someone who practiced law is no match for an armchair lawyer on Megan's blog!
"Suppose a country wanted to hold suspected dissidents without charges. Based on my reading, the country could hold those dissidents without charges as prisoners of war if they could argue that those dissidents were related to armed hostilities."
Actually they can detain foreign nationals for the duration of the conflict. Not just EPWs but civilians who happen to be on the wrong side of a border when hostilaties start.
Obama stopped the trials as a sap to the nutcase left. There is no easy sollution to this problem. We know many if not all of these people are very dangerous. However, to prove as much in federal district court would be nearly impossible in most cases due restrictions on hearsay and the need not to reveal intelligence sources.
What do you do when you have a source high up in Al Quada or say the Iranian government who tells you that person X is a terrorist? Do you just let him go and hope for the best? You can't try him based on that information. You can get a FISA warrent and tap his phones and search his house. If you are lucky you will get a case against him. But if he is smart you won't find anything. What do you do then? It is not so easy. Further, considering the stakes where 10 or 15 motivated people can kill thousands, the decision is especially difficult.
One of the guys down there was responsible for the US Cole bombing. You can't just let that guy go, but the evidence may not be there to prove it in federal court. Of course there is a difference between legal guilt and factual guilt. We know the guy is factually guilty but we can't jump through the legal hoops to prove it in court.
Some would argue that we should change the rules of evidence in federal court to accomodate these cases. But I think that would be a disaster. I dont' trust for a moment that DOJ wouldn't take those rules and start applying them in non terrorism cases. I think rules against hearsay and the right to confront witnesses are vital to our criminal process. I don't want ordinary accused losing those rights. But those rights are very difficult to square with the problem of modern terrorism. In terrorism cases the evidence may be hearsay. The witness may be unavailable or worse yet even revealing their identities could do tremendous damage to our intelligence efforts.
Make no mistake, Obama is not suicidal. These people are not going free. So what are we going to do with them? My fear is that by shutting down military tribunals and forcing these cases into federal court we will end up with terrible precidents. No judge is going to want to let one of these guys go. So what they will do is warp existing criminal law and procedure to get the result they want. That precident can then be applied to other cases and we will all be a lot worse off. We are much better off putting these cases in special tribunals.
Of course I would imagine the career prosecutors over at DOJ wouldn't be too upset to see the Constitution evicerated in the name of terror and for that precident to apply to all cases. Thus, I would imagine that is what is going to happen.
Oh really? Care to point out which section of the Constitution is being violated? Or are you, like so many poorly educated liberal shills, just using "unconstitutional" as a synonym for "something I don't like"?
"Because someone who practiced law is no match for an armchair lawyer on Megan's blog!"
Yes. Practicing law imbues all those who do it with wisdom and knowledge.
I think only those who practice law are fully aware of how many people who practice law are dumb as a bucket of bolts, and of how 100% of those who practice law are human beings subject to all of the same foibles and frailties such as thinking and writing while blinkering reality so as not to let it intrude into a mindset that comforts them or makes them feel better about themselves.
For the record, Greenwald has never practiced International Law or the Law of War. Just because you have practiced law doesn't mean you know anything about a given area outside your practice. Would you go to a divorce lawyer to fill out your corporate disclosure forms or defend you in a murder case? Moreover, Greenwald is just an angry bitter person who shows daily that he is incapable of thinking fairly or rationally about this subject.
First, the current tribunals are unconstitutional, check Boumediene v Bush, which states prisoners have a right to habeas corpus under the constitution.
Second, the NYT article mentions about 50-60 people held in Guantanamo who are connected to terrorism, out of the 250 there. That's not exactly a huge portion. Furthermore, by the DoD's own estimates (Geoff Morrell, Jan 13 2009), 61 detainees returned to terrorism, except only 18 are confirmed. Even if we assume 61, this corresponds to a recidivism rate of 11%. Normal prison populations have a recidivism rate of about 50%. Which seems to indicate that a large number of detainees are innocent.
"Second, the NYT article mentions about 50-60 people held in Guantanamo who are connected to terrorism, out of the 250 there. That's not exactly a huge portion. Furthermore, by the DoD's own estimates (Geoff Morrell, Jan 13 2009), 61 detainees returned to terrorism, except only 18 are confirmed. Even if we assume 61, this corresponds to a recidivism rate of 11%. Normal prison populations have a recidivism rate of about 50%. Which seems to indicate that a large number of detainees are innocent."
No doubt some of them are innocent. No question we need to have a process to sort that out. But you are far too blyth about the recidivism rate. Someone dealing drugs or stealing after prison is a lot different than someone blowing themselves up or worse killing 10s or 100s or even thousands of people. Terrorism is not like other crime. Other crime doesn't result in the deaths of 1000s of people. Considering that one dedicated terrorist can take down an airliner or blow up a crowded metro train, a 1% recidivist rate is unacceptable.
I'm a bit skeptical about Hitchens' definition of torture, considering that his baseline is an empty liquor cabinet.
Damn. Your employers should consider docking your pay. You clearly don't have a clue about this subject.
Like Glenn, I'm an attorney, and the Constitutional violations that exist at Gitmo are numerous and severe and really, you shouldn't be writing about the subject, if you don't even know the basics.
You are right about one thing. You are confused.
Geez, Megan. You are woefully ignorant of what the issue even is. Hey Atlantic Monthly, I'm ignorant - but highly opinionated - too. Can I have one of these bloggin' jobs? Embarrassing in the extreme. Do yourself a favor and read Glenn Greenwald. He really spanks you here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/22/abject_ignorance/index.html
As Glen Greenwald points out, this is a ludicrously inaccurate paragraph, and a correction/mea culpa are in order: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/11/george-the-giant-lobster_n_156921.html
Ugh, my wife just purchased a subscription to the Atlantic and this is what we're paying for? I hope the magazine's quality is much higher than what's suggested by these defiantly uninformed thought-droppings from Ms. McArdle.
Glenn Greenwald just gave your points a sound thrashing. How do you even still have a job? Are you and Thomas Friedman in the same union or something?
This excrement is a disgrace to the concept of written language.
stopped reading this tripe long ago.
only stopped by today because of greenwald's link.
anyone who has spent any time reading mccardle's uninformed, but boldly stated, nonsense is very familiar with her ridiculous methods.
what is simply amazing is that the atlantic continues to provide her with a platform.
i would imagine that a certain level of embarrassment would kick in at some point.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/22/abject_ignorance/
Jeez Megan you need a full reaction of this post. Your ignorance is sad, but more importantly entirely misleading and thus thoroughly frustrating.
On what issue can insure your readership you actually do understand?
Uh!!!! No!
I was under the mistaken impression that "journalists" were supposed to "research" their "stories" before writing about them in their "journals." Not to just spew vomit into the public domain as if the words have no meaning.
The Military Tribunals being held at G-bay are NOT being conducted pursuant to the UCMJ. That is the whole point of the argument.
Why don't you pull your head out of the Bushian sewer it is currently embedded in and do a little "Research."
Why not start with the Magna Carta and work your way up to the U.S. Constitution and then maybe try the UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions and, oh, the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
After all that, maybe you can begin to weigh in on the issues at hand. Until then, it would be best to keep your "confused" dribble from reaching the masses.
P.S. Georgie Boy's very point in all of this is that these people are not enemy combatants. they "unlawful" enemy combatants. This is his entire justification for why the Geneva Conventions don't apply (They are non-uniformed, this is why you can hang a spy, and why there is so much added danger to be going behind enemy lines, just putting on enemy uniforms is enough to get you hanged.) and why the UCMJ doesn't need to be followed in their cases. He may have a point, but nothing about not wearing uniforms should allow coerced confessions to be used against them at trial.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/22/abject_ignorance/
Jeez Megan, you need to retract your statements or admit your inaccuracies in this post. Your ignorance is sad, but more importantly entirely misleading and thus thoroughly frustrating.
Of what issues can insure your readership that you actually do have understanding?
"Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was being tried by the UCMJ"
No, you moron, he was not. That's the whole point of the protesting against the "trials" at Guantanamo.
Megan is more than a little confused. Mohammad is not being tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The military commissions formed under Bush's watchful eye were created specifically to avoid having to use the UCMJ, which would have allowed the kind of rights the detainees have been denied. Read up on your stuff, Meg, before you spout off.
MEgan,
You need to start moderating your comments. Most of these people are morons who dont' want to have any kind of intelligent conversation. These people are scary. If BO started putting people in ovens, they would be marching down the road with him.
Mr. Felix, the Dec. of Ind. says all men are created equal. The Constitution extends rights to people. Men, if you will. Why should we not extend rights to whomever falls under our jurisdiction? Isn't that in keeping with the underlying philosophy of America? Or does your world divide up into "people like me," and "all the other ragheads"?
1. It is quite likely that the ongoing proceeding at GITMO violate the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments. The reason to stop the trials is to prevent any further waste of resources and to increase the chance that a constitutionally appropriate trial could actually go forward.
2. Even the DOD admits that a fair number of people detained at GITMO are actually innocent. Google Uighurs, for starters.
3. The Pentagon's claim of GITMO detainees returning to the fight include individuals who wrote op-ed pieces and participated in documentaries about their experiences. According to a Seton Hall study, precise one individual has been released from GITMO and later captured on a battlefield. (See Prof. Hilzoy's post here.)
4. Citizens of the US have no accurate information about the number of people waterboarded. Nor do we have any accurate information about the number of terrorist attacks avoided due to information obtained by torture. What we do have is centuries of proof that information obtained by torture is inherently unreliable and must be independently verified. We have no information about the amount of useful and verifiable information obtained by torture.
5. So why torture? Because it makes you pseudo-tough warriors feel good? Because it fits your need for revenge? Grow up. There's a war to win and torture ain't helping. And, btw, it violates our Constitution.
SO MEGAN, HAVE YOU LEARNED SOMETHING? HOW ABOUT A FOLLOW-UP THAT SHOWS SOME COMPREHENSION OF THE ISSUES?
If BO started putting people in ovens, they would be marching down the road with him.
Yikes! That is scary. Which ones in particular. Point those monster out, pronto. It's important! Thanks in advance!
Francis,
No question we shouldn't torture. But that doesn't answer the question of what we do with obviously dangerous people who can't be convicted in District Court.
Aside from the indisputable fact that the original blog post is 100% factually wrong in it's core assertion about the UCMJ (please retract your statements)..
There are a lot of inconvenient facts that I would like the Right to address before they cheerlead for the Bush tactics and Guantanamo.
- The Bush Administration [BA] has repeatedly stated that the prisoners are the worst of the worst. We've released hundreds of them even though we reserve the right to hold them indefinitely, without trial. How do you square this fact with the rhetoric? Why would we release the worst of the worst when they claimed they had no obligation to? Did BA hope to put the US in danger or were they simply lying from the start?
- The administration admits that there are prisoners who are completely innocent, the Chinese muslims as an example. There is absolutely no debate about their innocence but the BA claimed there was no where to send them (they're repressed in China and fled to Afghanistan as a result). Why does this reality not square with previous or recent BA rhetoric about the detainees being the worst terrorists?
- The Pentagon claims that ~90 former prisoners have 'returned to the fight' after release. Several questions.
First, the Pentagon has lied repeatedly. They claimed all detainees were terrorists, plainly false. They claimed that they didn't waterboard or torture, plainly false. They claimed they did not detain minors and subject them to 'harsh' interrogation techniques, now known to be plainly false. Again the Pentagon makes a claim while refusing to provide any evidence so why should you believe them? Name a detainee who returned to the fight.
Second, for all your blind allegiance to the BA.. again, why did they release people if they claimed the right to detain forever without habeas corpus and if they claimed they were all the most dangerous terrorists? If you insist on believing the Pentagon numbers, will you now rail against the BA and Pentagon for releasing known Terrorists?
- Several Military Prosecutors have resigned rather than proceed with the kangaroo courts. How does the right square the refusal of our own Military officers to participate with their support of the previous trial systems with support for our detention policies?
- The U.S. prosecuted Japanese [WW2] and Americans [Vietnam] for waterboarding. There is clear case law proving that the U.S. legal framework determines waterboarding to be a war crime. How do you square reality with the attempts by the BA to redefine torture? Why was it a crime before, but not a crime now without any legislation de-criminalizing waterboarding? Is it simply not a crime when a Republican does it?
- I've seen claims that the Clinton Administration waterboarded though I've seen no evidence to back this up. Regardless of whether this is bunk or not, our laws must be evenly applied. Anyone in any administration who commits a crime must be prosecuted if there is evidence to indict. Could the Right please point to voices from the 'left wing' that explictly exempt the Clinton administration from War Crimes law? ..even any supposedly liberal Talking Moron on TV?
And just a second for my current peeve (rather state of disbelief)
The latest hysterical right-wing outrage is that Obama plans to bring Terrorists into our neighborhoods. Seriously, I've seen quotes stating 'we don't want terrorists in our neighborhoods'. Huh? Do indicted murder suspects get housed in neighborhoods? Detainees would go to Federal or Military prisons.
Conservatives. The movement of fear, anger, and self-persecution complexes. Tough talk and soiled underwear.
P.S. to the moron who double quoted Jack Bauer and then dismissively pointed out that the quotes made the Bauer reference metaphorical..
Double quotes are literal you idiot.
i seem to recall that we have this quaint notion here in america.
if someone is suspected of being guilty of a particular act, you notify them of charges, engage in an adversarial process in court and everyone is resigned to accepting the ultimate results.
and if there is not sufficient evidence to prove that a particular person should have his liberty restrained by the government, then that person goes free.
it's pretty basic.
somewhere, somehow, i think those basic ideas and concepts are written down....
now, in totalitarian societies, despots determine, by fiat, often, that certain individuals simply are too dangerous to be free, even if there is no evidence to support that notion.
but we all know that we don't tolerate despots here in america...
You are more than "a little" confused. KSM was not being tried in according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice but by the military commissions set up by the Military Commission Act. The Act among other problems, allows evidence obtained by "coercive" techniques to be used.
I hope you will correct this dreadful mistake.
Megan, you are more than a LITTLE confused. Your ignorance on this issue is broad and deep, combining appalling factual errors--no, detainees are NOT being tried according to the UCMJ--with a seemingly complete inability to grasp the big picture. The rate at which detainees have been brought to "trial" has been incredibly slow for a variety of reasons that all trace back to flaws in the legal procedures. Arguing that pausing to fix the process is a bad idea because it will slow things down is exactly analogous to arguing that shutting down a broken machine in order to fix it is a bad idea because it would reduce the machine's output. Since you so clearly don't know the first things about this issue, what on earth made you feel qualified to comment on it? Your expertise, such as it is, is on economic affairs. Please stick to that domain.
Try to just look at the facts. Formulate your resolutions in view of those. The world as it is, not as you wish it was.
"We are the World" is a song by Michael Jackson. Like him, it is not real.
Chortle chortle. I love it.
First you lambast the other side for getting the facts wrong, then you add that last little bit for effect -- and get your facts 180 degrees wrong. Not only did Jackson not write the song, but he also refused to participate in the recording session due to an ego fit.
It's a good thing we have a pragmatist and Constitutional Scholar in the White House now. After 8 years of being led by a childish political faction with a one-dimensional view of the world, such a leader is desperately needed.
Your ignorance on this issue is appalling. The Military tribunals set up by bush specifically and purposefully do not follow the UCMJ.
THAT is the problem. One of bush own hand picked military tribunal prosecutors found the process so odious and unfair that he resigned his commission in the military rather then be forced to be a part of it.
THAT is the problem. The other problem is when people like yourself use your megaphone to spout outright falsehoods. Was this done out of ignorance? Apathy? Or were you purposefully being dishonest? In any case, your statements are appalling and sad.
It is funny to hear people who obviously know nothing about history or international law accuse megan of lack of knowledge. If you people want to learn something, which you don't but I can dream, you might want to go back and read about Nuremburg where people were tried and executed for ex post facto laws based on coerced evidence and judge by judges from the Soviet Union and the winning side. Yet, Nuremburg is still the gold standard of international tribunals. You also might want to read the ICTY legislation where witness can testify anonomously against an accused and hearsay is admissible. None of that would be allowed in federal district court.
You people are morons and fanatics. Stop talking about things you don't know.
Knucklehead, how do you have an intelligent conversation about Khalid Sheikh Muhammed being tried under the UCMJ?
BTW: The non-sequitur following the outrageous bowel movement on intelligent converation reveals your favorite medium for finger painting.
What, Megan McArdle made another factual error? Who'd have ever believed it possible?
Thank you for proving my point sy. I have made nunerous substantive points in this thread and no one responds to them because they can't. Instead they just throw invective.
After 30 or so comments telling Megan Mcardle she's wrong about the UCMJ and KSM, do we really need any more?
This was pointed out within hours of her original post, so vicariously debunking her through Glenn Greenwald's post a day later adds absolutely nothing to the discusion.
You're not more intelligent, educated or righteous just because you can obnoxiously repeat what Glenn and several dozen other posters already said.
Posted by Glenn Greenwald:
"There's just no way to have paid even a tiny amount of attention to what's been going on at Guantanamo and not understand that the controversy is over the rigged and profoundly un-Americans military commissions themselves, the denial of rights that the UCMJ affords, and the mockery of Western justice they entail. That is why Obama didn't want his name anywhere near those proceedings and why he immediately suspended them."
Dearest Terri,
After reading your rant from 10 last night, I have thought long and hard about what we can do to keep you safe. Being that your chances of being being killed are far exceeded by your chances of:
1. dying naturally,
2. being killed by a friend or neighbor
3. being killed by a stranger
4. being killed in a car accident or
5. being killed by an allergic reaction to a penguin bite
We have decided that because the world is such a dangerous place that the only way to keep you 100% safe from all of these (except #1 of course) is to put you away, in a small cell where none of these things can get you. Because there are so many things that can hurt or kill you, we find it easier to just put you in the cell instead. Perhaps then you can feel safe.
megan--you more than a little confused, you are clueless. The UCMJ is NOT conducting these trials. It is the Military Commissions Act that is in play here, created especially for Bush b/c the UCMJ would never allow torture-induced testimony to be used. Try paying attention to these things before you spout off your uninformed opinion.
Geez, the number of people on this thread who find Geneva, the bill of rights and even the Magna Carta to be softy liberal restrictions on good faith attempts to torture Muslims is depressing.
Bush tried to avoid the UCMJ and got slapped down by a pretty conservative Supreme Court, meanwhile the "liberal" democrats rolled over and tried to wipe out Habeus Corpus, arguably the single bedrock right of individual liberty.
The founding fathers must be so proud. All Obama's doing is re-instating a respect for legal norms. Heck, maybe even for the law.
Correction to above:
Being that your changes of being killed by a terrorist...
Please, Megan. Stop embarrassing yourself by displaying your stupidity. Anyone with any brains reads Greenwald. We know you're not only "confused"-- you're completely and totally ignorant on this issue. Hey, Atlantic! Better pundits, please!
And to Glorious, I would say that when Megan has a forum as "respectable" as the Atlantic to spew misinformation, it is better that she realize that A LOT of people are paying attention and that she will not get away with it. She is wrong, wrong, wrong--and you're response is, "okay just one person point that out please"??? I would hope that thousands upon thousands point out just how wrong she is.
No, surlaw, the regular commentators and Greenwald are paying attention. The commentators here pointed out this mistake yesterday, Glenn pointed it out in a longer article today.
The recent flood of commentators are just repeating what Greenwald said in the most obnoxiously useless "Me Too!" fashion imaginable.
If they were actually "paying attention" to this site they would have noticed it without Glenn's attention and they would have read all the previous comments here which said the very same thing Glenn did.
As I've said, you're not any smarter because you can parrot back, with fifty other people, what someone else said before you. It might make you feel good to correct an established blogger, but you're not the one noticing her mistakes and you shouldn't act like you get any of the credit for it.
And, absent trying to vicariously enjoy some of Glenn's glory in this smackdown, there is no reason we have dozens of people writing the same one-or-two sentence statement over and over again.
So. Please. Don't pretend that you're doing this in service of anything other than your ego.
Thank God OsamaHusseinIslamObama is in control now!
what qualifies as smart is avoiding mccardle's blog, as best one can.
when she first started posting, i regularly read her blog and gave it a chance.
i'm open-minded, and figured that she must know a lot about something, and even if i don't agree with her opinions, at least i'll learn something.
instead she routinely delivers a toxic mix.
she pontificates about stuff that she knows absolutely nothing about. (this post being a classic example.)
and on economic matters, her area of supposed expertise, she routinely spews forth streams of inane dogma that reveals an understanding of issues - or a lack of understanding, really - so shallow that it is shocking.
behaving in an intelligent fashion and reading this blog regularly - unless you treat it as a version of the onion - are not compatible endeavors.
She still hasn't posted an explanation or retraction or even a simple clarification... I think people are justified in continuing to criticize. If she admitted that she wasn't "confused", then it would indicate dishonesty.. If she is actually confused then she has no business writing about it. Especially given her history...
Mcardle on Krugman,
"Even when he writes about things like health care, it's far too light on the economics, and far too heavy on the "Why do Republicans want babies to die?" rhetoric I could read from any 23-year old lit major interning at a left-wing political magazine. And when he writes about things outside his field, he makes what are (I am told) elementary mistakes on things like foreign policy, while his writing rarely reveals anything new." (http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/09/whats_not_to_like_about_paul_k.php)
I wish Megan would take her own advice and avoid elementary mistakes on things she doesn't understand... Or at least have the intellectual honesty and temerity (in this cut throat blog world) to admit that she was wrong.
Torture.. the rule of law.. kind of important topics about which to be so woefully uninformed on a forum like this.
JOHN said: "It is funny to hear people who obviously know nothing about history or international law accuse megan of lack of knowledge. If you people want to learn something, which you don't but I can dream, you might want to go back and read about Nuremburg..."
It's difficult to tell whether John is in favor of or against the procedures the Bush administration put in place in Guantanamo. But his allusion to Nuremberg is useful. Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., wrote in this very magazine in 1946 about what he considered the "dangerous precedent" of masquerading political justice for legal justice.
"It is against this deceptive appearance, big with evil consequences for law everywhere, that as a matter of civil courage all of us, judges as well as lawyers and laymen, however silent we ordinarily are, ought to speak out. It is for their silence on such matters that we justly criticize the Germans. And it is the test of our sincere belief in justice under law never to allow it to be confused with what are merely our interest, our ingenuity, and our power."
Those words apply equally to the procedures at Guantanamo. Those who advocate that we abandon the rule of law outright are at least more honest, although sadly deluded about the nature of our Republic, than those who have attempted to wrap the sham proceedings at Guantanamo in the cloak of legitimate judicial process.
Megan would do well to visit the archives of her magazine from time to time...
You can't help but soiling yourself.
The only point you have made john is demonstrating that you are as equally ill-informed as Megan. Her post, based on the false premise that UCMJ was being used to try KSM, questions the logic of the decision to suspend all Guantanamo trials on equally falacious grounds that it might prolong the incarceration of anyone who might be innocent.
The so-called substantive points of yours (e.g., If BO started putting people in ovens, they would be marching down the road with him; Nuremburg is still the gold standard of international tribunals) are utterly irrelavant to the point Megan is attempting to advance. Your feeble attempts to defend her feigned confusion is laughable.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/22/abject_ignorance/index.html
did you take your panties off before Glenn Greenwald paddled your ignorant ass or after ?? taken out back to the woodshed yet again. how is it that you still draw a paycheck there at the atlantic ??
"Americans military commissions themselves, the denial of rights that the UCMJ affords, and the mockery of Western justice they entail"
Greenwald is so ignorant it boggles the mind. Many of the protections that he thinks the lack of which make a "mockery of western justice" do not exist in Western Europe. Germany and France both have much more liberal rules of evidence and interrogation that the US. The rules of the tribunal as they currently stand are not that much different from the ICC or the ICTY tribunals. But he guys don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant. It just feels good to rant and rave doesn't it?
Ah yes. France and Germany encourage evidence obtained through torture. Good point John.
Sy,
If you can't post without referencing bodily functions, you are an idiot. Megan mispoke about one thing and you have a fit because you have nothing else to talk about. Greenwald is wrong about nearly everything he writes. This may be the only time in his life he has ever pointed out something correctly.
"Ah yes. France and Germany encourage evidence obtained through torture. Good point John"
There is no hearsay rule in those countries and you have no right to remain silent. Further, they allow interrogation techniques that while not rising to torture would be illegal in the US. They also have much more liberal rules regarding wire taping and such.
Hint, if you don't know anything, shut up before you say something foolish.
Now, if only Megan could learn to follow that advice...
"Further, they allow interrogation techniques that while not rising to torture would be illegal in the US."
uh-huh. Not rising to torture, eh? Like waterboarding under the Bush Administration? Luckily, on our first day under the 44th POTUS we've moved beyond those savages across the pond. We have an 8th amendment here and maybe now we can remember it.
You're as far from being Greenwald's intellectual equal as a skateboard is from a Ferrari. So claiming that "[he] is wrong about nearly everything he writes" is sort of pathetic..
Our new Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel had this to say in May last year:
"Relaxed Procedural Protections" in Terrorism Cases: What the Military Commissions Debate Is Really About
Marty Lederman
Eric writes: "We are agreed, yes? That procedural protections in civilian courts are too high for war-on-terror prosecutions? ... If yes, then there is just an empirical question of whether we should demand that federal judges relax procedural protections in terrorism cases or use an alternative military-commissions system—a question that it is far too early to answer because there is so far very little evidence as to how this alternative system will perform."
The flurry of posts on the military commissions seems to me to obscure the elephant sitting in the middle of the room, namely, that the principal "relaxed procedural protection" at issue here—the one that has caused the administration to insist upon newfangled commissions rather than courts-martial all along—is that a great deal of the relevant evidence has been obtained unlawfully.
That is to say, as with most of the great debates in the "War on Terror," even when the particular dispute is nominally about the legality of military commissions . . . it's all about the torture.
Not only would much of the evidence in these cases be inadmissible because it's the fruit of coerced testimony, but the administration is hellbent on keeping secret what it has in fact done to the detainees in its control. In any legitimate proceeding—be it court-martial or civilian trial or military commission or even congressional investigation—that information would and should be disclosed. And in a court-martial or civilian trial, there's a good chance that would happen. (Wish I could say the same about congressional hearings.) But that's nonnegotiable for the Bush administration . . . and so, the endless debates about military commissions, which are designed largely to obscure the manner in which we obtained the relevant evidence.
The interesting question, then, is whether the McCain or Obama administration would be more willing in 2009 to make transparent what happened during these interrogations—after which perhaps we could figure out whether there is any tribunal in which fair trials could take place, without unreliable evidence gleaned from torture and cruel treatment. (That is to say: It's awfully difficult to conduct war-crimes trials when a good portion of the evidence was obtained by way of ... war crimes.)
(There's one other big issue, too—namely, that it is not at all clear that a great deal of the conduct alleged against some of the lower-level defendants, such as Hamdan and Khadr (e.g., driving bin Laden, delivering weapons to the front, tossing grenades at soldiers), actually violated any laws of war that were in place at the time of the conduct. But I don't see why those sorts of questions can't be resolved fairly, without regard to the nature of the tribunal.)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/05/15/relaxed-procedural-protections-in-terrorism-cases-what-the-military-commissions-debate-is-really-about.aspx
Megan -
At least you gave this post an accurate title, you are a little confused. More to the point, you are factually inaccurate in important ways.
If these trials had used the UCMJ as the legal framework for determining due process, there would have been no suspension of the proceedings nor a review of them.
The whole point of the prior administration creating the novel "enemy combatant" classification was PRECISELY AND EXPLICITLY to insure that we did not have to abide by rights and processes outlined in the UCMJ. The 120 day suspension is designed PRECISELY AND EXPLICITLY to investigate what changes need to be made to insure that the proceedings abide by the US treaty obligations and the recent supreme court decisions. This may include using the UCMJ in trials going forward.
You're not a "little confused". You're apparently totally ignorant of the facts. Were any other country we dislike doing what we're doing at "Gitmo" your ilk would be screaming about how nasty, uncivilized, and unjust those countries are.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/22/abject_ignorance/
As krader just pointed out, Megan, Greenwald just handed your ass, sliced and diced, on a platter, with pepper sauce. Suck it up!
"Many of the protections that he thinks the lack of which make a "mockery of western justice" do not exist in Western Europe. Germany and France both have much more liberal rules of evidence and interrogation that the US. The rules of the tribunal as they currently stand are not that much different from the ICC or the ICTY tribunals."
And John expects us to believe this because... well... he SAYS SO! That's called conclusory where I come from, and I'm just not going to take John's word for it. Especially since when I took Comparative Law at UC Davis law school back in the last millennium, we actually, you know, studied the relevant law, and guess what... John is (gasp) wrong!
"But he guys don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant. It just feels good to rant and rave doesn't it?
Posted by John | January 22, 2009 4:11 PM"
Yes, John, it sure does, doesn't it?
John, thank you for including Nuremburg into the discussion, which you referred to as a Gold Standard: "tried and executed for ex post facto laws based on coerced evidence and judge by judges from the Soviet Union and the winning side"
That could be ordered of course in case of Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Rumsfeld.
I especially like the ex post facto and judges from the Soviet Union and the winning side. Even without coerced evidence, they should have no difficulty in convicting that scum.
I also like your attempts - while claiming to be knowledgable about International Law - to discredit a Continental European Law system (which prohibits torture unconditionally) by claiming certain legal terms like hearsay are absent there.
DUH.
Hearsay is only a relevant term in Anglosaxon Common Law sytems who have juries of peers. It's like accusing a woman of not having a penis.
Woops! Got linked by Greenwald, and not in a good way...
100+ comments saying "McArdle you're an idiot" are unlikely to have any effect, people.
Hopefully Megan will read Greenwald's piece and become Enlightened.
Well I don't know, given Greenwald's past practices these 100+ comments may very well all be from him.
It's interesting that the two prominent bloggers who have been monomaniacally pounding the drums of hyper-outrage over Gitmo are both open homosexuals.
My guess is that they're still traumatized from all the noogies and swirlies they received in elementary school.
"My guess is that they're still traumatized from all the noogies and swirlies they received in elementary school."
Yeah, bro. Only homosexual nerds hate torture. The rest of us straight-as-a-waterboard Americans are all about it. what's the quote again? 'you can't make a freedom omelet without breakin' a few civil liberty eggs?' I
Also.. elementary school? Really? you were giving gay 8 year olds swirlies in elementary school?
Ok Rob, you got me.
How about bad experiences at leather bars? You know Sullivan's been to them, but Greenwald may be too much of a twink.
haha. i always thought twinks were young and attractive... but i'm sure greenwald has his wild side.
Steven up above correctly notes waterboarding not only is but always has been torture, as evidenced by our trials for Germans and Japanese post-WW2, and our own soldiers in Vietnam.
But it goes back even further than that. During the "Huk" (Muslim) insurrection in the Philippines in the early 1900's, a full century ago, at least two Army officers were court-martialed and imprisoned for 10 years each for ordering the use of waterboarding against prisoners (non-uniformed guerrillas).
Oh, and today Obama DID sign an executive order for the closing of the Gitmo prison. He explained some of the prisoners will be returned to their homelands for release, some returned for trials in their own lands, some will be put on trial in civilian courts in the U.S., but that yes, there is a small hard-core group (less than 20) who may never be put on trial because they are too dangerous and the information available against them is too classified.
"The American public polls in opposition to torture--but I'm willing to bet that it polls in even more serious opposition to releasing confessed terrorists."
You mean, "confessed terrorists whose confessions were elicited via torture," yes?
In any event, given your demonstrated inability to accurately relay objective facts (such as whether or not KSM was being tried by the UCMJ), I don't know why we should trust your suppositions about completely imaginary events, such as non-existent polls that you envision in your head.
Here's a suggestion: go ahead and conduct that poll (in which you ask the American people if they support torturing suspects to obtain confessions, and then convicting said suspects on the basis of the confessions we tortured out of 'em, as was done in the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials) and then report back with your results. But for heaven's sake, Megan, stop with the guessing. It's not going well for you.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
I'm an another person who clicked through from Greenwald and, yup, I'd say he handed Ms. McArdle's doodle back to her in a lovely silver frame. And, yikes, I'm amazed that she (and her editors) just skate on as if, well, as if no one cares. On the positive side, I'm reminded of why I don't bother reading this blog and why I let my subscription to the Atlantic go. It's nice to know I made the right decision. Life's too short to bother with being intentionally mislead over and over.
I did find the gripes against Greenwald amusing. I love stuff like this "...angry bitter person who shows daily that he is incapable of thinking fairly or rationally..." What people who say stuff like about Greenwald forget is that Greenwald is essentially an old skool conservative. He's defending the values--rule of law, minimal government interference, fairness over justice, etc.--that conservatives used to stand for. Yup, he makes mistakes from time to time but the guy is generally consistent and almost always insightful. I read him even when I think he's wrong. I can't say the same about McArdle.
It's also amusing that the only things people have to say against Greenwald are either provably factually false, ridiculously and transparently ad hominem, or both. Way to win an argument! Megadittoes! w00t!
The media tells us that:
1. Obama is going to fast
2. Obama is going to slow
(and on more topics than just this one)
George Bush and the Republicans spent 8 years completely wrecking this place -- with an assist from a press that won't stop hitting the Snooze Button. How long do you really think it's gonna take to clean it up?
Are you seriously, SERIOUSLY on Obama's back claiming he hasn't, after only 1 day, solved a complicated, multi-faceted, extremely important problem? One that every person and their step-mother already acknowledges is a complicated problem that will take time to fix?
Is there a way to sue the media for malpractice?
If you're expecting a cat fight between Megan and Greenwald, I'd advise you not to get your hopes up. Megan, despite her occasional shortcomings, is a class act. The same can't be said about me or some of her other commenters, so, if you're looking for a fight, then you've got it.
I generally like Glenn (he has written for TAC, after all), but the majority of his post is a hyperbolic screed against the brazen illegality of torture. Great, we already get that from Andrew Sullivan 10 times a day. I'm sympathetic, but I'm not going to make it my life's cause to see Bush and Cheney indicted. Moreover, Greenwald is leveraging a single factual error to vent an old grievance he has with Megan: she's generally blase about the whole Gitmo thing. The horror!
His post in no way undermines Megan's main point, which is that Obama's decision is ultimately adding to the duration of the detainees' detention. Is anyone seriously denying that?
And the whole "let's compare Obama to that evil monster Bush" garbage doesn't work around here. This is a center-libertarian blog, not National Review Online. Most of us dislike Bush for a lot of the same reasons that liberals do.
Straw men arguments are ineffective. Worse, they're a total bore.
Hello, Ms. McArdle.
I'd like to ask you to clarify a question you posed today in an update to your Atlantic article.
You said: "The American public polls in opposition to torture--but I'm willing to bet that it polls in even more serious opposition to releasing confessed terrorists. "
In your hypothetical poll, would you separate those who confessed under torture from those who confessed while not being under torture? Or would you lump them together?
Uh, Megan, go back to your site launch. It's got to be more important than anything that you think that you are doing here. Just to take the simplest point - let's contrast two cases. The American government tries someone under an illegal (yes, under international law, the military commissions are illegal) law and executes them. Or, the American government tries someone under an internationally recognized legal system (the UCMJ) and executes them. Do you see a difference? No? You shouldn't be writing about Gitmo without reading SOMETHING.
...Obama's decision is ultimately adding to the duration of the detainees' detention. Is anyone seriously denying that?...
Sigh. No, I will not deny that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west but, argh, that doesn't have much to do with Obama's EO or the matters that Greenwald is discussing. It's going to take a bit to reverse the damage Gitmo has done to our legal system. Due process takes time, even if it's expedited. Is McArdle serious arguing that the prisoners should be, I dunno, carted to Miami and given bus fare? No.
. "The American government tries someone under an illegal (yes, under international law, the military commissions are illegal) law and executes them."
How are they illegal under international law? Again, go read the ICTY statute, specifically Article 22 which says witness can testify anonmously. Also look for anything that says that testimony can't be introduced from coerced sources. You won't find any. The Statute is silent on the subject.
There is nothing illegal about the military tribunals. Countries have used them for centuries. Again, no one on this thread knows anything about international law or history. I am sorry one person who remembers hearing something about the ICTY statute in college doesn't count. You people are so ignorant you couldn't even critique or understand how hopelessly wrong someone like Greenwald is. Further, no one on here has shown one shred of understanding of the difficulties involved in prosecuting a terrorism case. I would suggest people look to Peru and the UK and how they conducted terrorism trials in the past.
The election is over. Bush is no longer around to kick around. It is time to grow up and start thinking. You have had 8 years to throw childish temper fits. As your messiah tells you, "it is time to put such childish things away." It is time to start thinking about how we are going to deal with terrorism and how we do it without giving up our safety but also not sending bad cases through our legal system to set bad precidents.
Honestly Megan, why do you consider yourself a libertarian? Surely there must be a new category for you... fiscally libertarian, socially neoconservative?
There's a reason why they would let the evidence of 'confession' go... because he was TORTURED. People who are tortured tend to confess. Heck, I could probably get someone to confess to being the Queen of England with enough pressure.
Ten bucks that "John"=Jonah Goldberg.
As far as the legal aspects of trial, I'm alright with sending them through our courts, with a slight variation. Instead of needing all jurors to find a suspect guilty for him to be guilty, I think they should go with a 2/3 or even simple majority.
If people even get a HINT of an idea that a suspect is guilty, I believe they'll be looking for revenge.
I think, in order for a court system to be legitimate, it must have at the least: habeas corpus, someone to represent the defense, non-allowal of 'coerced' information, ability for the defendant's attorney to review information against his client.
"John"=Goldberg. Sounds like it.
Love stuff like this: " Again, no one on this thread knows anything about international law or history."
Coming from someone who just said: "Germany and France both have much more liberal rules of evidence and interrogation that [sic] the US. The rules of the tribunal as they currently stand are not that much different from the ICC or the ICTY tribunals."
Funny. From Glenn Greenwald:
"Not letting abject ignorance interfere with opining
There are times when the glaring ignorance one encounters from people who are paid to write about political issues is so severe -- so illustrative of how distorted and misleading our political discourse is -- that it's impossible to ignore even though one would really like to. Let's just spend a moment marveling at this paragraph written yesterday by The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, the sum total of her commentary on Obama's suspension of military commissions at Guantanamo:
A little confused
Everyone's hailing Obama's decision to suspend all Guantanamo trials for 120 days. But I thought the problem with Guantanamo was the people being held without trial. Khalid Sheikh Muhammed (sic) was being tried by the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], which as far as I know, is what you're supposed to use on enemy combatants accused of war crimes. Doesn't this just further prolong the incarceration of anyone who might be innocent?
After she wrote that, Glenn Reynolds -- an actual law professor at the University of Tennessee and a right-wing blogger -- not only linked to it but praised McArdle for -- as he put it, upper-case letters and all -- "ASKING THE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS."
...
there is no way to think or write any of what she wrote if one has been paying even the slightest attention to these matters, and if one hasn't been, then one shouldn't be writing about them (or linking to and praising such writings).
To begin with, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not "being tried by the UCMJ." And that's not an ancillary or technical issue. That's the whole point of the military commissions controversy. They could have tried Guantanamo detainees in civilian courts or in standard courts-martial proceedings governed by the UCMJ. Instead, they created an entirely new process of "military commissions" that were explicitly not governed by the rules and safeguards of the UCMJ.
...
No statement obtained from any person in violation of this article, or through the use of coercion, unlawful influence, or unlawful inducement may be received in evidence against him in a trial by court-martial.
In critical respects, the Guantanamo military commissions and proceedings under the UCMJ are opposites. That's the whole point of the controversy and always has been.
Beyond those explicit deprivations of key due process rules, there has been one highly publicized event after the next exposing the Guantanamo military commissions as a sham, a travesty, a violation of the most basic precepts of Western justice. Last year, the chief Guantanamo prosecutor -- an Air Force Colonel -- resigned because he was being pressured to use evidence obtained by torture; because he was told by the DOD that acquittals were impermissible at Guantanamo; and because he was convinced that no fair trial was possible in these commissions given their structure and the pressures being exerted by the administration. Just two months ago, a high-level Guantanamo prosecutor, a Bronze-star-recipient Lt. Colonel, resigned in protest of the Bush administration's concealment of exculpatory evidence and the abuse sustained by detainees. Evidence used to justify the detentions has been systematically concealed, lost, and destroyed.
By itself, the use of coerced evidence, which is permitted in Guantanamo military commissions, violates what the U.S. Supreme Court said -- in a 1935 decision invaliding the convictions of African-American defendants obtained with confessions that were beaten out of them by Mississippi sheriffs -- was a core precept of American justice:
In Fisher v. State, 145 Miss. 116, 134, 110 So. 361, 365, the court said: 'Coercing the supposed state's criminals into confessions and using such confessions so coerced from them against them in trials has been the curse of all countries. It was the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy of the Star Chamber, and the Inquisition, and other similar institutions. The Constitution recognized the evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited them in this country. . . . The duty of maintaining constitutional rights of a person on trial for his life rises above mere rules of procedure, and wherever the court is clearly satisfied that such violations exist, it will refuse to sanction such violations and will apply the corrective.'
All of this is what makes the Guantanamo military commissions so disgraceful and why Obama's decision to suspend them (with an eye towards scrapping the system altogether) has prompted such praise. Have McArdle and Reynolds, as it seems, really remained blissfully unaware of all of this?
It's one thing to argue that Guantanamo detainees shouldn't be entitled to the protections of UCMJ, or to argue that coerced evidence should be admissible, or to insist that these episodes -- demonstrating how corrupted are the military commissions -- shouldn't be considered compelling. Those are opinions.
But to say, as McArdle did: "Gee, what's all the fuss about with these military commissions? I thought people wanted Guantanamo detainees to have nice trials under the UCMJ like they're having now" is to demonstrate a complete ignorance about what the entire debate is about. There's just no way to have paid even a tiny amount of attention to what's been going on at Guantanamo and not understand that the controversy is over the rigged and profoundly un-American military commissions themselves, the denial of rights that the UCMJ affords, and the mockery of Western justice they entail. That is why Obama didn't want his name anywhere near those proceedings and why he immediately suspended them."
Despite the fact that it's only 74 words, one could spend hours highlighting the factual inaccuracies in McArdle's "uncomfortable question." The point isn't that what she said is wrong. Everyone makes factual errors. There's nothing wrong with that. It's that there is no way to think or write any of what she wrote if one has been paying even the slightest attention to these matters, and if one hasn't been, then one shouldn't be writing about them (or linking to and praising such writings).
Again, right wing idiocrats, shut the fuck up.
MEME forwarded, my night is complete.
Supplemental, in the words of a constitutional lawyer. Why link you? Here, you have to delete it, so suck on that you idiocrats!
The Military Commissions Act, pursuant to which Guantanamo military commissions are conducted after the Supreme Court's 2006 Hamdan ruling, explicitly states in numerous provisions that various critical safeguards and procedural rights afforded by the UCMJ do not apply to detainees tried at Guantanamo (see e.g., 948b (c) and (d)). The most notable (though far from only) example is that the Military Commissions Act expressly allows the use of evidence obtained through coercion (see 948r), whereas the UCMJ explicitly bars the use of such evidence (830 Art. 30(d)):
No statement obtained from any person in violation of this article, or through the use of coercion, unlawful influence, or unlawful inducement may be received in evidence against him in a trial by court-martial.
In critical respects, the Guantanamo military commissions and proceedings under the UCMJ are opposites. That's the whole point of the controversy and always has been.
Beyond those explicit deprivations of key due process rules, there has been one highly publicized event after the next exposing the Guantanamo military commissions as a sham, a travesty, a violation of the most basic precepts of Western justice. Last year, the chief Guantanamo prosecutor -- an Air Force Colonel -- resigned because he was being pressured to use evidence obtained by torture; because he was told by the DOD that acquittals were impermissible at Guantanamo; and because he was convinced that no fair trial was possible in these commissions given their structure and the pressures being exerted by the administration. Just two months ago, a high-level Guantanamo prosecutor, a Bronze-star-recipient Lt. Colonel, resigned in protest of the Bush administration's concealment of exculpatory evidence and the abuse sustained by detainees. Evidence used to justify the detentions has been systematically concealed, lost, and destroyed.
By itself, the use of coerced evidence, which is permitted in Guantanamo military commissions, violates what the U.S. Supreme Court said -- in a 1935 decision invaliding the convictions of African-American defendants obtained with confessions that were beaten out of them by Mississippi sheriffs -- was a core precept of American justice:
In Fisher v. State, 145 Miss. 116, 134, 110 So. 361, 365, the court said: 'Coercing the supposed state's criminals into confessions and using such confessions so coerced from them against them in trials has been the curse of all countries. It was the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy of the Star Chamber, and the Inquisition, and other similar institutions. The Constitution recognized the evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited them in this country. . . . The duty of maintaining constitutional rights of a person on trial for his life rises above mere rules of procedure, and wherever the court is clearly satisfied that such violations exist, it will refuse to sanction such violations and will apply the corrective.'
All of this is what makes the Guantanamo military commissions so disgraceful and why Obama's decision to suspend them (with an eye towards scrapping the system altogether) has prompted such praise. Have McArdle and Reynolds, as it seems, really remained blissfully unaware of all of this?
QED.
Time to delouse right wing, you've been had!
"The chair is against the wall."
Megan ...? You're a completely vapid tool.
Buwahahahahahahaha!
Ever wonder how many of President Bush's terror war detainees were released, only to "return to the fight"?
"Their numbers have changed from 20, to 12, to seven, to more than five, to two, to a couple, to a few, 25, 29, 12, and then 24," quoted Keith Olbermann on Thursday's edition of Countdown.
The latest figure, 61, which was carried unchallenged by CNN, the MSNBC host noted, appears to be nothing but "propaganda."
A study published by Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux on Jan. 15 finds the Pentagon wrongly altered its figures on terrorist 'recidivism' 43 times, with the latest figure being "the most egregiously so."
Denbeaux first shared his findings a week prior with MSNBC host Rachael Maddow.
"Once again, they’ve failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies," the professor wrote. "Every time they have been required to identify the parties, the DOD has been forced to retract their false IDs and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantánamo—much less were they released from there."
"They have counted people as 'returning to the fight' for their having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. The DOD has revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning—except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men."
"... All of which are seriously undercut by the DoD statement that 'they do not track' former detainees," concludes Professor Denbeaux.
"So, here's a wild guess," said Olbermann. "The administration just made the numbers up, like Joe McCarthy used to."
@Terri
OK, Terri, what are your qualifications? Come on. I'd like to know. Do you have any qualifications outside of watching 24 and wishing that that studly Jack Bauer would tie you to a chair and have his way with you? Why should anyone listen to anything you say about the topic?
I came to the conclusion a few years ago that most Republicans are easily led, chickenshit, fear-crazed morons and nothing I've seen since then has made me change my mind.
"Hearsay is only a relevant term in Anglosaxon Common Law sytems who have juries of peers. It's like accusing a woman of not having a penis."
Hearsay has to do with rules of evidence. Don't French courts have rules of evidence? If so, torture should not be an issue for them either.
Now hope I'm not asking for too much here. I don't want "Willem" to feel like a woman who asked to show... oh, never mind.
"Hearsay is only a relevant term in Anglosaxon Common Law sytems who have juries of peers. It's like accusing a woman of not having a penis."
Hearsay has to do with rules of evidence. Don't French courts have rules of evidence? If so, torture should not be an issue for them either.
Now hope I'm not asking for too much here. I don't want "Willem" to feel like a woman who asked to show... oh, never mind.