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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#441

Post by sq1020 »

Another example of the hypocrisy of our goverment which claims to champion ideals like freedom and equality before the law.

As long as there are innocent people like this suffering grave injustices in gitmo, as long as drones are killing innocent Pakistani villagers, as long as the U.S. brazenly continues to financially and militarily support Israel, the president and every member of congress have blood on their hands.

Let me tell you something, these clowns in office couldn't care less about your or me or the homeless guy on the street. They care about being famous, having money and power and going on free vacations paid for by John Q. average tax payer!

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#442

Post by berntb »

ucee054 wrote: post #432
rmc wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bri…

Breivik was a single crazy -- not a set of organized terror groups with thousands of members (and hundreds of millions of dollars in finances) which regularly execute complex simultaneous bombings, etc, etc.

That makes the existing alQ 2001 at least a million times larger problem than Breivik in his cell 2013.

AGAIN, Breivik is only a member of a group in his own mind -- and in your mind. (I seriously wonder if there are more similarities.)

Usually at this point, I write "But you know that you're arguing nonsensically, troll".

I can't do that in your case, so instead:

I hope you're just a sad loser failing to troll and not such a hatemonger that you make bad arguments just to get some support for your conspiracies.

Edit: Clarity.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#443

Post by berntb »

vansteen wrote: post #342
berntb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an obvious analysis: The idea with terrorism against democracies is to scare the living daylight out of voters in a country. The politicians in those democracies want to win the next election do everything to stop the terror. Afaik, most every democracy that had a serious terrorist problem over years threw out the law book -- UK, Germany, Israel, Spain, USA, etc. It is a reaction built into democracy, if you…

"Afaik, most every democracy that had a serious terrorist problem over years threw out the law book -- UK, Germany, Israel, Spain, USA, etc." ... Can you precise? I can talk about something I know. I'm french. France got problem with islamic terrorism in the 90's. France is having problem with terrorism for the last 10 years. France has done two wars in the last 3 years (Lybia, Mali and still do stuff in Afganistan).…

To these examples, afaik you can add Italy, Spain and Germany.

For UK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Terrorism_Acts

Edit: This is about RAF in Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction#Trial_manipula... (But certainly, maybe the lawyers were guilty, etc.)

Edit: This is about ETA in Spain (not so strong, but still) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA#Human_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Spain#Basque_se...

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#444

Post by ChuckMcM »

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.

Actually he could have issued an executive order to release the prisoners unilaterally. That would have pissed off Congress of course but as the Commander in Chief the original rational for imprisonment came from the White House and thus could have been reversed. That he didn't do that in response to the Congressional back pressure proved to me that he didn't have the leadership to follow through.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#445

Post by mirkules »

dyno12345 wrote: post #439
mirkules wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What I'm saying is nobody will blame his lack of effort. And, if history is any indication, he or his successors will keep trying until they do pass.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#446

Post by pyre »

ctoth wrote: post #201
pyre wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rescinding that executive order doesn't make magic happen. There is the process of closing down and what to do with the prisoners that matters. It's sounding like Congress is tying the President's hands by restricting his ability to use funds (funds that Congress authorizes) towards those goals. If you're in the US and you want this to happen, I would look towards your representatives in Congress, and research these…

I find it interesting that you referenced http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali... at a time in the United States when two states have in fact legalized Marijuana. I think this simply highlights the point that change for the better is possible if the people want it enough. What does this mean for Gitmo? Could we apply the same sort of sidestep? I.E. a small forward-thinking community with a not…

  | Are there any places here in the U.S.
  | that would actually take and try the
  | Gitmo detainees?
I imagine that they would be tried in Federal court, but I would be curious what the jurisdiction would be if the crimes were committed outside of the US.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#447

Post by specialist »

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…

  For anyone that understands politics understands that things 
  can get done by applying a significant political push.
Yes. What does that pressure look like?

I've lobbied. A fair amount for an amateur. We had some small victories, but mostly lost ground.

The victories we had were because we packed the hearings with warm bodies.

Where are the people willing to pack the chambers over Gitmo? It absolutely should be closed. But Gitmo is not a motivating issue.

Down thread, you cite Obama's enthusiasm for gun control. What's the salient difference?

People are going to show up for gun control hearings.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#448

Post by rmc »

icambron wrote: post #427
rmc wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah the USAians really seem to go for flags. In most of Europe, only right wing nationalists and sports fans wave flags.

We Americans suffer from flag inflation. We mostly don't even notice them anymore, so people have to put bigger and bigger flags to prove how patriotic they are. I was at a baseball game last weekend and only noticed midway through how many (and how obnoxiously prominent) the flags were. It's silly. OTOH, many immigrants fly the flags of their home countries, I guess as a sort of badge of identity. For whatever reaso…

Another thing I've noticed from US TV & films (so it might not actually be true), is how it only seems to be the US flag that is flown. Here it's not uncommon to see flags from lots of countries. Only governmental buildings would "only fly the local flag".

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#449

Post by dhimes »

DannyBee wrote: post #409
dhimes wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This saddens me and I hope you are wrong. For 40 years DC was the center of my life. I was born there and raised in the suburbs (went away a couple of times for school). I worked in the defense industry a bit between degrees. I taught college there for a decade. I left the area ten years ago, and I found the political climate there nauseating when I left. While I acknowledge that the population at large carries a spe…

First, almost anything can be prevented by the torturing, killing, or detaining of other people, as long as you involve enough people: Kill all terrorists -> no more terrorist attacks Torture all terrorists -> learn enough to prevent attacks. Nuke entire country -> nobody left in that country to attack you Detain everyone you ever find on a battlefield -> unable to get back to battlefield Trying to apply some cost be…

You present a reasoned argument. But I need to clarify a couple of things. In your first lines

almost anything can be prevented ... long as you involve enough people

I want to point out that I only mean prevention by obtaining actionable information, not the idea that by keeping a guy off of the street we keep that particular guy from doing something awful again.

Also, under your numbered list of The only thing putting him in Gitmo does you left off one that I think is important. You are actually telling the world that we won't play fair with terrorists. (This is also, I think, the point that a lot of people are debating: that, in fact, we should play fair and take some sort of moral high ground.) We're telling the players that we can be quite nasty too.

And I completely agree with you that having Gitmo open "enables a lot of folks to ignore having this national discussion" and this could be exactly why we do it. Also, the idea that if we do get the terrorist threat to a manageable place we can close it down and "wash our hands" of it without having changed our stance in an official way.

But mostly I wanted to say that I pretty much agree with closing Gitmo. The idea authority without oversight is dangerous. But, in all honesty, if I knew it was working, I'm not sure I could be the guy to close it either. But that would be the only reason to consider keeping it open, and I have no information either way.

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