NYT editorial, "A National Disgrace": Gitmo created on myth, built on lie, organized around fiction

[DeepModem Mom]

Gitmo: A National Disgrace
Published: June 6, 2007

....There is only one path likely to lead to a result that would allow Americans to once again hold their heads high when it comes to justice and human rights. First, Congress needs to restore the right of the inmates of Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions. By the administration’s own count, only a small minority of the inmates actually deserve a trial. The rest should be sent home or set free.

Second, Congress should repeal the Military Commissions Act and start anew on a just system for determining whether prisoners are unlawful combatants. Among other things, evidence obtained through coercion and torture should be banned.

And Congress should shut down Guantánamo Bay, as called for in bills sponsored by two California Democrats, Representative Jane Harman in the House and Senator Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. Both lawmakers are intimately familiar with the camp and have concluded it is beyond salvaging.

Their bill would close Gitmo in a year and the detainees would be screened by real courts. Those who are truly illegal combatants would be sent to military or civilian jails in the United States, to be tried under time-tested American rules of justice, or sent to an international tribunal. Some would be returned to their native lands for trial, if warranted. The rest would be set free, as they should have been long ago.

The Guantánamo camp was created on a myth — that the American judicial system could not handle prisoners of “the war against terror.” It was built on a lie — that the hundreds of detainees at Gitmo are all dangerous terrorists. And it was organized around a fiction — that Mr. Bush had the power to create this rogue system in the first place.

It is time to get rid of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/opinion/06wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Rageneau]

1. Begs the usual question: Where was the New York (whore)Times when Bush was BUILDING Guantanamo?

Cheerleading -- that's where they were.

HOO-Ahing

[EFerrari]

6. Yup. Exactly.

[Jim Lane]

2. The tough question about Gitmo

I absolutely agree with the editorial -- try the people against whom there's legitimate evidence, free them if they're acquitted (not a point we can assume, so I state it separately), and free anyone who can't credibly be charged.

The difficulty is what to do about civil suits brought by detainees against the U.S. government and/or the individuals who detained them (a section 1983 action). Justice wouldn't be served simply by turning a detainee loose, after stealing five years of his life, and saying, "Never mind." On the other hand, the Repugs would have a field day if a Democratic President not only closed the detention center but paid out millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to people so easily demonized.

[Tatiana]

3. Bingo. And that is why these prisoners are currently languishing in limbo.

Because if we admit that we incarcerated them wrongly, then they would rightfully be entitled to compensation for their injury and lost years of life. Bush will try to hold out until the new administration sworn in.

Yet another one of the disastrous Republican messes we'll have to clean up. When will this country learn? How many times will we elect corrupt and evil Republicans only to be driven so far in the ditch that a Democratic President will have to be elected to fix the mess and bail this country out? Why don't we elect competent leaders in the first place?

This grave mistake will cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least.

[Kagemusha]

4. You ban the civil suits on national security grounds, that's what.

Oh hell no it won't serve justice... but that's what's been done with that Arar guy in Canada, with the German citizen who was abducted and sent for an all expenses paid trip to a prison in Afghanistan for a while... and then dumped in Albania without any aid, making his survival of that something of an additional miracle... their suits were tossed because establishing their grievances would expose US intelligence secrets.

So we can expect nothing different from any attempt to file civil suits.

[EFerrari]

5. Let them sue Rumsfeld who called these people

the most dangerous terrorists in the world when over 80% of them never pointed a weapon at a US troop.

[librechik]

14. we have to do it, no matter what the dirty, lying, criminal Repukes say about us.

can we never get around this fear of what the criminals will say about us? we muxt be confident that we are right in defending the constitution against these thugs. That's what makes them back down.

[JoDog]

7. Another question

Does anyone know what the difference is between "lawful enemy combatants" and "unlawful enemy combatants"? That seems to be the nail on which a lot of this is hanging. The legal opinion seems to be that the unlawful ones should be tried, but the lawful ones shouldn't. So which is which?

[Kagemusha]

10. Well it requires accepting new, novel, arguably bogus distinctions

According to the US' wholesale invention of the "unlawful enemy combattant" term, a term that does not exist in the Geneva Conventions whatsoever and was created solely to promote the argument that the conventions do not apply to such people, is a combattant that is a member of a terrorist organization as opposed to a lawful enemy combattant, which would be a member of the military of a recognized state, usually uniformed; basically, anyone who is a soldier and is expected to be subject to the laws of war as such.

Under a strict but plain reading of the conventions, these people are considered a) civilians, b) criminals. They should be tried by regularly constituted civilian courts as terrorists and imprisoned if convicted, freed if acquitted. The US' position is that this would be wrong, dangerous and impractical, and so, has designed a regime of military tribunals under which "unlawful enemy combattants" may be tried.

The problem is, this designation only existed in the US' frequent legal arguments that criminal law does not apply to the prisoners at Guantanamo. Incredibly, the US military never actually formally designated the prisoners as such, merely designating them "enemy combattants" in "the war on terror"; therefore, the military took no stance on whether these people should be tried as war crminals, but did take the position that these people can be held until "the war on terror" is over, however many DECADES that may take.

[librechik]

17. Bush doctrines will fade once he's gone, I hope. They'd do anything to avoid

actually arguing their case on the merits. They delay and delay and delay while lives are lost and ruined.

[Supersedeas]

8. Sums up many things about Dimson's Admin

[GliderGuider]

9. Amnesty International USA

Amnesty International has a campaign called The America I Believe In. With massive international support, AI is calling for Guantanamo to close immediately.

I've signed up for the AI USA e-newsletter. Go to http://www.amnestyusa.org/.
There's SO MUCH you can do that takes SO LITTLE effort and makes a HUGH!!111 difference. (That's a whole lot bigger than any other kind of difference.)

The efforts of young people have left their fingerprints all over this organization. It's so very heartwarming.

[indepat]

11. Almost everything this administration has done is a national disgrace as are those who

enable and continue to support.

[gratuitous]

12. But what about candidates who want to "double Guantanamo"?

Will they continue to be courted and reported by the Times with deference and docility?

[EFerrari]

13. I'm afraid to ask. Who's done this? n/t

[myrna minx]

15. Romney, at the first Republican debate, said that he would "double"

Guantanamo Bay.

[EFerrari]

16. It just makes your head spin right off.

He's insane.

[librechik]

18. and I promise that Michael Moore will be the first to be incarcerated

just kiddin. He didn't say that.



He didn't have to. The wingnuts knew what he meant, on both sides of the spectrum.

Today's Republican party is really something, isn't it?

[Cha]

19. That sounds like the whole

bushitco.

"A National Disgrace": Gitmo created on myth, built on lie, organized around fiction."

I sense a soundbyte describing the last 7 years.