Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 539 posts

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#431

Post by eswangren »

white_devil wrote: post #246
Locke1689 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility. Introducing them to the justice system would require the same. As every American should know, Congress holds the purse strings here and has denied said request. The President has no power here.

> The problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility You need funding to keep Gitmo going too. I seriously doubt that would be a problem.

You misunderstand; it's not that we can't afford it, it's that you have to go through congress to get it in the first place.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#432

Post by ucee054 »

rmc wrote: post #370
ucee054 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way? Easy: what Norway did after Breivik. If a country is aping the Israelis, it's failed as a democracy.

That was one lone crazy person. Are there other members of Breivik's gang out there? Totally different from an organisation of many people (possibly growing).

Breivik was a zionist nut job, there are many others out there that fit that classification, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League.

Similarly, Tim McVeigh was a militia nut job, there are many others like him out there, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Republican_Army

However, these are white people, so when they blow something up they are just "one lone crazy person".

When 19 brown people bring down a couple of trade towers, suddenly it becomes "totally different"?

To be consistent with your logic, the Clinton administration should have carpet bombed Elohim City and suspended human rights in Oklahoma, including keeping innocent people locked up without trial, until they got every last Klan nut/ Church nut/Gun nut out there.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#433

Post by chestnut-tree »

enraged_camel wrote: post #389
parfe wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... Obama's second full day in office. How is that a reversal? Congress then blocked any and all money which the administration would need to take action to close the base. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196

I never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers. For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.

"...the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault."

I recommend this Salon article by Glen Greenwald from July 2012

The Obama GITMO myth: New vindictive restrictions on detainees highlights the falsity of Obama defenders regarding closing the camp

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#434

Post by ucee054 »

vxNsr wrote: post #408
ucee054 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this guy is far from innocent If you have reliable evidence then put him on trial or else shut up.

we don't need to put him on trial until the war ends And he doesn't need a trial, we just don't want him to go back out there and fight again which is totally fair and how POWs work. Take a look at the Geneva Convention, not the Wiki version but the actual thing either from the part that I posted or go to the UN website and take a look.

No, you don't have a right to claim that he is guilty of anything until it is proven beyond reasonable doubt. The Geneva convention is irrelevant to that.

Whether or not US Forces say he's guilty does not make him guilty in reality. They could be lying; they have lied many times in the past

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#435

Post by dangrossman »

david927 wrote: post #120
lukifer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The president can be on the news every night making this an issue. This is why the legal technicalities are irrelevant. The President has the ultimate bully pulpit, and it sure ain't getting used on Gitmo.

If the prisoners are ever released without being charged or tried (which won't happen because there's no evidence), they can each file a civil suit against the U.S. Government, each worth potentially hundreds of millions. I think this plays a role as well.

The United States federal government cannot be sued unless it elects to allow the suit. This is not a real threat.

Look up "sovereign immunity".

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#436

Post by jbooth »

mirkules wrote: post #410
enraged_camel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers. For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.

"For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault." I disagree. For anyone that understands politics understands that things can get done by applying a significant political push. I think Obama symbolically tried, then threw his hands up in the air in defeat when he got some resistance from Congress. I assume this is because the political chips he would lose by pushing ha…

He made a huge deal about trying to get the detainees legal trials in New York. It was a big political story for a number of weeks.

What would have had him do, specifically? He tried, it clearly wasn't happening. Maybe he should try again, but I can tell you the same exact thing would happen again. That would be your symbolic gesture.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#437

Post by [deleted] »

mirkules wrote: post #428
pkulak wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of metaphor there. No matter the "chips", and "pushing", it's still the legislative branch that makes the laws. There's got to be a limit to the blame you can assign someone for failing to convince someone else to do something.

I really can't subscribe to that argument when you look at other national issues for which the President is fighting tooth and nail. Without straying too far from the subject, take gun control as an example [and please note, I am deliberately writing this from a partisan-agnostic perspective]. The opposition to this is fierce, and the issue extremely polarizing. Yet, the President seems to be willing to go the distan…

[deleted]

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#438

Post by ucee054 »

vxNsr wrote: post #420
ucee054 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USGov are not applying the POW rules to the Guantanamo prisoners otherwise they'd have more legal protections. That's why the Bushies had to dream up the "enemy combatant" legal limbo in order to be able to abuse the prisoners like this. Even under "war rules" these prisoners should be dealt with in a better way. And "Guilty until proven innocent?" Really? Idiot.

Even so Enemy combatant has a lot of the same laws as POWs. It's possible they should be treated better but this guy is a known bodyguard of UBL[1] and has lied consistently to everyone [1] so it's not clear how he's being treated (remember this is a Oped about politics - anything goes). I'll ignore the last line as you've said nothing of substance. [1] http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/43-samir-na...

This individual is not the issue. Guantanamo Bay is the issue.

That facility is in use in order to circumvent the law in treatment of prisoners period. It was located in Cuba in order to not be on US soil, because the Bush administration thought that offshore abuse would be easier to get away with.

If you have been awake at all during the past 12 years you will have heard the news stories about prisoners being tortured/executed there.

Furthermore, you will have heard the news stories of many inmates there turning out to be completely innocent.

Finally, you will have heard of the "people sweeps" in Afghanistan and Pakistan in which local warlords sold off people arbitrarily as "terrorists" to US forces, who didn't know better (and didn't care).

These people have been bunged up in Guantanamo without a fair trail. A fair trial is the only way to determine if they actually are who you and the lying US military claim they are.

If the prisoners are "guilty" of being enemy soldiers, then yes they can rot in jail until the US withdraws from Afghanistan.

If they are innocent, they should be freed immediately and compensated.

If you can't fathom that the word of the US military (or any part of any government really) should not just be taken on trust, you should take a time-machine to Nazi Germany. You'll love it there.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#439

Post by dyno12345 »

mirkules wrote: post #428
pkulak wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of metaphor there. No matter the "chips", and "pushing", it's still the legislative branch that makes the laws. There's got to be a limit to the blame you can assign someone for failing to convince someone else to do something.

I really can't subscribe to that argument when you look at other national issues for which the President is fighting tooth and nail. Without straying too far from the subject, take gun control as an example [and please note, I am deliberately writing this from a partisan-agnostic perspective]. The opposition to this is fierce, and the issue extremely polarizing. Yet, the President seems to be willing to go the distan…

By this logic, if the gun control measures fail to pass Congress it should be the President's fault?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#440

Post by a-priori »

peterwwillis wrote: post #390
atsaloli wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the US, pixelcort, may I invite you to consider the Downsize DC effort? ( http://www.downsizedc.org/ ) Here is a quick summary of what DownsizeDC.org is about: We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, c…

make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law Not only is this the stupidest solution to a complex problem i've ever heard, it's depressing that some people take it seriously.

Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but I think it's stupid not to read bills out loud at least once before they become law.

In our House of Commons the procedure is to read each bill, out loud, three times before it is passed. Then it gets sent to the Senate where it's also read three times (mind you the Senate typically rubber stamps everything).

So every law in Canada has been read out loud a total of six times, and (assuming they're present) every member of the legislature has heard it three times.

Post reply on HN