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You mean the people who somehow ended up in the battlefeild w/ terrorist, shooting at our troops who are really innocent and signed a horrible timeshare aggreement?
"Developed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration, the CIA's rendition program ..."
But I thought Clinton didn't do enough, didn't do anything to fight terrorism? Which is it?
If Clinton had been challenged on CIA rendition/torture, knocked down by the SC as dubya was, and then went to the witch-hunting, Repug-controlled Congress for a new law legalizing rendition and torture the way dubya has, I'm sure the Repugs would have voted it down simply becase it was Clinton asking for it.
And those mid-90s Repugs would argue against Clinton with EXACTLY the same arguments that dissenters are arguing against the dubya and current Repugs.
You mean the people who somehow ended up in the battlefeild w/ terrorist, shooting at our troops who are really innocent and signed a horrible timeshare aggreement?
So you are calling the US military a bunch of liars?
If one follows the news you will realize many from Gitmo were determined not to be terrorists and were released. Others were and have not been released. Afghanistan is a battlefield as is Iraq and with bounties being paid for terror suspects, Afghan war lords captured many innocents and sold them to us and they were wisked off and abused with no rights or legal representation.
The beauty of our rights that we used to have was they were there to protect us from the government. We had due process to defend ourselves in the case the state had it wrong. Boutons, Dan, myself, any Amercian that is crtical of this legislation could give a rats ass what happens to terrorists. Kill 'em, whatever. We are concerned with terror suspects because they are not all guilty terrorists.
Not all of the detainees were out on a battlefield shooting at our troops. According to this report Profile of Detainees --
1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any
hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.
2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining
detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive
affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a
large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist
watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably.
Eight percent are detained because they are deemed “fighters for;” 30% considered “members of;” a
large majority – 60% -- are detained merely because they are “associated with” a group or groups the
Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist
group is unidentified.
4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the
detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States
custody.
This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the
United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected
enemies.
5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants – mostly
Uighers – are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to
be enemy combatants.
Well since we did release those determined innocent, then the system is working. And whose to say that everyone there is being tortured?
THis is all assumption isn't it?
Dudes, you didn't let him fall into my trap...
He was going to say:
"of course not"
So I was going to ask him to clarify:
"So if they are captured by the US military "on the battlefield", they are guilty" and therefore don't deserve rights?"
He would say "yes, that is right"
and THEN I would point out, as you did, that the military has 100% cleared no small number of people "captured on the battlefield" and say that if Gtown was right then he is calling the US millitary a bunch of liars for clearing them.
At which point I would have caught him in the steel-trap of logic, and he would not be able to back track.
You gotta give 'em enough rope to hang themselves, so that they actually see the logically inconsistant things they believe in.
The problem is that the world at large doesn't really know that the ones we still have aren't just as innocent, and neither do you. That ISN'T assumption.
Dudes, you didn't let him fall into my trap...
He was going to say:
"of course not"
So I was going to ask him to clarify:
"So if they are captured by the US military "on the battlefield", they are guilty" and therefore don't deserve rights?"
He would say "yes, that is right"
and THEN I would point out, as you did, that the military has 100% cleared no small number of people "captured on the battlefield" and say that if Gtown was right then he is calling the US millitary a bunch of liars for clearing them.
At which point I would have caught him in the steel-trap of logic, and he would not be able to back track.
You gotta give 'em enough rope to hang themselves, so that they actually see the logically inconsistant things they believe in.
The same army intelligence at one time did conclude that soviets were infiltrating the army and other ins utions, and that Joe McCarthy's assumptions were right. Are you calling every servicemen serving in that time period a liar?
I doubt it. ANd so much for your trap.
That's for the army to find out, who you trust by the way and took every point from their report to heart.
We should trust the army, since they aren't liars.
It's the army doing it. They can't be wrong.
But they were when they apprehended the people in the first place.
Which is it?
They were right or they were wrong?
I'm so sick of the bleeding heart libs who think these s of the earth terrorists deserve the same protections as American citizens. Tell you what, we'll release them and let them come live with YOU - you can be their mentor and help them assimilate. Maybe you'll even be able to find out why they hate us so much and you can solve the problem - that is if they don't cut your throat first!
Why do we believe in fair trials for Americans?
broutons... still can't see the light... and why weren't you arguing against rendition in the mid 1990s... why did you have to wait until bush got into office.. would you be saying the same thing if gore was in office or kerry.... your silence in the mid 90's about this program .. speaks volumes....
"you arguing against rendition in the mid 1990s"
I didn't know about it. How about you? Were you knowledgable and approving/defending Clinton's CIA renditions in the mid-90s?
You mother ers keep trying to nail me as Dem, liberal, pro-terrorist, traitor, etc, and you can't do it except between your own solipsistic ears.
At this point wouldn't the issue be whether or not this is cons utional and not what smaller forms of this have been committed by previous administrations?
I thought it was wrong then and still think so. I actually wrote my congressperson about it, if memory serves.
It doesn't matter who is/was/will be in office.
I dno't get how removing an appeals process and putting out a burden of proof hurts our war on terror. If these people are really guilty of what we believe them to be, why can't we simply prove it?
I was wondering the same thing. I guess that would take too much work.
Exactly.
Not doing so simply lets the Al Qaeda types truthfully call us hypocrites.
We will never convince those who hate us to not hate us, but when we do things like this that go against what we stand for, that is seen by everybody.
This is a war of ideas, and you have to fight every enemy idea (Americans don't really believe in human rights) with every weapon possible.
Because it's not about protecting us from terrorists, it's about developing grist for the election campaigns this fall. Hopefully the true extent of what was passed by Congress yesterday gets explained to each and every citizen out there. Highly unlikely, that would require the news media to actually practice something called journalism rather than stenography.
yeah because they will always interrogate the guilty
they will violate human rights interrogating the innocent as well genius.
What worries me most about what is happening is how easy the executive branch has horded power during the post 9/11 era and how willing the general public has been with the changes. There really have been sweeping changes to the way our government is structured which have moved this country rapidly away from freedom. But the average person is content because they still enjoy the benefits of living in one of the richest countries in the world.
There is no mechanism for revolution here. There's nothing to spur change. Even now when the country is very discontent does anyone here believe we're anywhere near a critical mass to bring about sweeping changes that allow true freedom in this country? No.
It is becoming so damn Orwelian that it really is scary how quickly and silently and willingly this country is going. And very few seem to notice.
What changes and how have the affected you personally? Just curious.
If freedoms are taken away and I am not affected directly, that makes it ok to you?
Today it's habeas corpus, tomorrow it may be public dissent, who knows. As Manny alluded to, it's a gradual erosion. Bush isn't going to declare a police state because he could not get away with that. But if he inches toward it rationalizing it as protecting us with a congress that is unwilling or unable to provide any sort of a check or balance. it is entirely possible.
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