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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

421–430 of 539 posts

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#421

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.

What do you consider the problem?

Let's say government growing out of bound (and government's power growing compared to an individual's power) is a problem. One way to curb that growth is to slow down the functioning of government.

But if you don't consider monotonic growth of government a problem, then we are very far apart indeed. =)

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#422

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…

I responded to this below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5553198

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#423

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…

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.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#424
post #52

Hi, future generations! Political prisoners are being raped with food intubators to prevent themselves from committing suicide in America's secret torture prison, with the express consent and approval of President Obama, the American Congress, and the numerical majority of the American people. Love, 2013

Not much of a secret, is it?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#425
post #405
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be sure you figure out how to enforce it first, especially for those who kidnap kids and turn them into suicide bombers (apparently they give them a 'magic amulet' which they tell the children will protect them from the blast). http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121014102...

I don't think that we can change that. But what we can do is hold ourselves to a higher standard of decency and treat people the way we'd want to be treated.

On average I think (hope?) we do. But be careful about bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#426
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

his personal narcissism seems to rival Obama's I realize that the view of Obama as a tremendous narcissist has become a right-wing meme, but it seems so odd (kind of like the related view that he's a know-nothing who can't speak without a teleprompter, though that one seems to have died down since the election). I'm curious: how did the narcissism meme get started, and what evidence is cited for it, other than that m…

Seriously? Obama's ego really does give appear to be at the upper, Blair/Sarkozy end of the big-politician scale. I could consider an argument that appearances are deceiving here; but no-one with two eyes could look at Obama's personal background and career to date and fail to see how it might, at least, leave someone else with the impression that Obama's unusually prone to feel the world as revolving around him. > (…

[deleted]

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#427
post #225
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of another country that has it quite so bad. I know of nowhere else in the western world where people fly flags or drape themselves in the flag with anything like the regularity of the US. It really sticks out compared to everywhere else I've been, and I've travelled to/in 30+ countries now.

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 reason, that's always seemed less ridiculous to me.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#428
post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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 distance on the issue of gun control. The movement has failed again and again to gain bipartisan support. Yet, here we are still talking about it in the news. Same can be said about abortion, too. These debates went on for decades now.

Nobody can say the President isn't trying hard enough in those cases, whichever side of the fence you happen to fall on. Yet, when we talk about basic human rights, the President somehow gets to just give up on the issue, and we should be OK with that? In my opinion, there is definitely a lack of effort by the President to do something about closing Gitmo, and I find that almost as disappointing as Gitmo being opened in the first place.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#429
post #364

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

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

Below shows that Obama can indeed take action to take prisoners of gitmo to trial. any reason he hasn't done any of this?

It looks like the document 'blocking money' in fact describes what the president would need to do to bring people to trial and even free them.... Am I missing something? Why hasn't he done this it seems pretty straight forward... I know hes a busy guy but I would put this shit high up there on my priority list...

(Found in the full bill at http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196, I just did a search for 'Guantánamo', its at the bottom (the 11th appearance of the term)

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c) None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer an individual who is detained, as of the date of enactment of this Act, at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, or the District of Columbia, for the purposes of prosecuting such individual, or detaining such individual during legal proceedings, until 45 days after the plan detailed in subsection (d) is received.

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Subsection d goes on to list what is needed.

(1) The findings of an analysis regarding any risk to the national security of the United States that is posed by the transfer of the individual. (2) The costs associated with transferring the individual in question. (3) The legal rationale and associated court demands for transfer. (4) A plan for mitigation of any risk described in paragraph (1). (5) A copy of a notification to the Governor of the State to which the individual will be transferred or to the Mayor . R. 2346—63 of the District of Columbia if the individual will be transferred to the District of Columbia with a certification by the Attorney General of the United States in classified form at least 14 days prior to such transfer (together with supporting documentation and justification) that the individual poses little or no security risk to the United States

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closing it would mean having the prisoners moved elsewhere, but not a change to how they are being dealt with. That's the real issue; the location isn't what matters.

> the location isn't what matters. The location is what allowed it to exist in the first place. It matters a great deal.

Due process could be instated at the current location, or the detainees could be moved to another location and be treated exactly the same. The location is not the problem.
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