neither of you can really prove the other wrong, and i think you're teetering on the flame line.

also, i could go on about communism for a while and how it's not a bad concept in its pure form, but that's completely off-topic. except i would have to ask - how is communism unpatriotic? communism doesn't equal anarchy or terrorism, it's just been corrupted every time its been used on a large enough people to be noticable. hahahaha.

ok, i know it's a figure of speech in a way, i just wanna be called a commie.

because a trial will set precedent, not to mention get some hoyty toyty lawyers and the ACLU to bog the system down

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-4/171808/flamewar.jpg" width=291 height=215>

First, nobody can prove a thing on this topic. It's all in what we believe as individuals. Second, I'm not flaming. I'm simply trying to understand him cause I don't understand him at all. We love to disagree with each other and I'm sure neither of us take anything we say personally. We just like going back and forth. It's really not a big deal. If The_Dude has a problem with anything I say then he can tell me.

I didn't see a flame war yet, I just looooooove my flame war logo.:D But we were getting kind of close with the old "commie" word floating around.

Well, you also seem to have forgotten about the part where the Netherlands is transformed into an Islamic (Christian?) fundamentalist state, hiding a known terror group, and refusing to hand the leader of that group over to the USA, even though he is responsible for the worst terror attack in known history, on a US landmark.

I'd say that if those things were true, I'd welcome the US invasion. I'm an atheist, and hate religious morons, and they'd hate me in such a situation...

As for the US imprisoning me: will never happen, but if it does, I'd rather be in a US prison camp in Guantanamo bay, than in a hypothetical prison in this fundy Dutch theocracy... Because that's where I would be because of my atheism and independent thought. That, or I'd be dead.

Can we drop this sub-sub-discussion now? It's irrelevant and (as you can see) pretty useless. :)

Lemme look at the checklist real quick for Iraq:
Islamic fundamentalist State? Not really.
Hiding a known terror group? Nope, might have some pesticides in the sand, though. Poor bugs.
Refusing to hand leader over to USA? Yeah. I don't know the legality of demanding a country's leader, though.
Responsible for worst terror attack in known history on US landmark? Nope, that was the other guy.
Did we invade? Yeah.
Now, an atheist in a Bush controlled Dutch prison... You do know who George W. Bush is right? Republican, conservative... <i>Christian</i> George W. Bush? Former governor from the state with the leading number of executions, Bush? Not to mention he's (sort of) a Texan, and anyone who knows anything about Texas's history with atheists...well, let's just say our most famous atheist (Madalyn Murray O'Hair) ain't available for interviews at the moment.
Oh, whoops, read that one last. Sure thing.:D

<i>You got to give me some credit, I'm informative and entertaining. And for anyone who doesn't know about the O'Hair thing, she got hacked up into little bits and buried cause she helped end prayer in school.</i>

no, not if the trial is held outside the jurisdiction of US courts.

and what's wrong w/ setting a precedent in something like this (although i doubt it will stand)

and sixrate, when did you become McCarthy Jr?

That was funny. I'm still waiting on the 5 things you like about our government, or do you need another day to think about it? That's OK, take your time. ;)

a lot of things

1) the bill of rights
2) judicial review
3) seperation of powers
4) independant judiciary w/ lifelong terms (federal)
5) the democratic party!

HAHA! You just had to throw in that last one huh? I'll go shut up and leave you alone now. :D

that was also meant to be funny!

yes yes it does. International courts can have a bearing. You act like these kids were boy scouts who were wrongly helping some old lady across the desert. Given the opportunity to kill you they probably would.

i meant that ACLU prolly cant file complaint against a court outside the US

No.. true they cannot, but there are other international bodies that probably could. But given todays climate I don't think that anyone wants to have that political albatross on their necks.

arent they doing that w/ milosovic?

so far, i havnet heard of any organizations protesting it/appealing it.

Okay, fun with statistics time...

In 2000 and 2002, Texas had the most executions out of any state.

In 2001, Texas had the second most executions out of any state.

According to the 2000 census, Texas has the second highest population out of any state.

Hmmmmmmmm, just coincidence that a state with more people in it than most states would execute more people than most states? California is #1 in population, but of course since California tends to be a very liberal state they don't execute many people.

If you count per-capita, which makes more sense to me from a mathematical point of view, Texas is still one of the higher on the list (#2 in 2000, #4 in 2001, and estimated #3 in 2002 but my data for 2002 is incomplete), but the per-capita rate really isn't significantly higher than the other states that have the death penalty. For the last three years, Oklahoma has been the #1 state for executions per-capita, and was very disproportiante in 2001, with a per-capita rate over 6 times higher than Texas.

So if you want to rip on states for killing their own citizens, pick Oklahoma, Delaware, or Missouri. They have less people to start with than Texas but they kill a higher percentage of them.

Check it out: http://www.dpio.org/executions/

You should use 1970, 1980, and 1990 census data--that's where the bulk of the executed are coming from. 2000 data will be relevant in ~10-20 years once their appeals are exhausted.

True, and I think New York was #2 on the population for a while but slipped recently. I believe New York has reinstated the death penalty but hasn't had it long enough for anybody to run out of appeals yet.

Personally, I'm still undecided as to whether I'm for or against the death penalty, I just like messing with numbers :)

"76% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

Wasn't "ripping" on Texas, just stating the fact that Bush supports the death penalty and hates atheists. Since Dragonlich and I were discussing the hypothetical situation where he was imprisoned by Bush's administration, statistics or not, he'd be fucked.

Ah, but more fucked than if I were imprisoned by a fundamentalist Islamic Dutch regime? I doubt it.

Fundamentalist Christian American regime and fundamentalist Islamic Dutch regime...is either one worse than the other?

Nope. But I wouldn't think of the Bush regime as "christian fundementalist quite.

Er... yes?

The "fundamentalist" Christian American regime imprisons terrorists on Cuba, holding them in nice, spacious cells with loads of perks. I don't know of any fundamentalist Islamic regime that would do the same to an atheist like me... Do you have any idea what prisons are like in the middle-east? Compared to that, Guantanamo bay is heaven!

Christ, I'd prefer Guantanomo to living in the average afghani home let alone a prison.

Never been to either, but apparently you have. In case you haven't stayed at one of the Guatanamo Bay prisons like Dragonlich has, here's what they look like:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/furniture/in_d..._xray/cell.gif
Not too shabby, I agree, but that still doesn't excuse the no legal counsel thing.

Read more about the camp:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/pe...dy_art10.shtml

Like I said earlier, it was a <b>hypothetical</b> situation where the US had invaded the Netherlands in a similar fashion as Dragonlich's also <b>hypothetical</b> Dutch Islamic takeover.

Okay, I admit I've never set foot in one of those middle-east prisons, nor in Guantanamo Bay. Neither have you. However... I do know quite a lot about them from the annual reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and the like.

There is widespread torture and abuse in Islamic prisons, there is overcrowding and insufficient food and healthcare. As for legal counseling, if those governments even admit you're there, they'll eventually send in a local lawyer, who might speak some English, if you're lucky... Besides, legal counseling isn't going to be very useful if you've just admitted to all the charges after weeks of torture.

Note: there was a report on BBC World a while ago, about an Englishman who had been held in a prison in Saudi-Arabia. There had been a terror attack, and he was the scapegoat: Saudis don't blow people up, so it must be an outsider. After several days of torture - being repeatedly hit on his feet with a stick - he still refused to admit to doing it and was released. Others were not so lucky/brave: there are quite a few Britons in prison there, because of terror attacks on Westerners, related to "illegal alcohol smuggling"...

Now, as bad as Guantanamo might be, it's not nearly as bad as that. By the way, weren't those cells in Guantanamo upgraded from those "cages with a roof" to full-blown prison cells?

So... if a hypothetical USA attacked a hypothetical Dutch Islamic state (with me in prison), I'd be happy. I'd doubt I'd be imprisoned by the US afterwards, but if I were, it'd still be better than that hypothetical Dutch cell, given the Islamic background.

We're both the same.:D

And the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticizes the United States all the time, just the same as Saudi Arabia.

Yes they do. However, there's a difference between "The prisoners don't have access to legal counsel" and "The prisoners are tortured on a daily basis"...

I don't like the US legal system, nor the Guantanamo Bay thing (although I understand it). Yet, if I have to choose between spending my life in a US prison or a Saudi prison, I'd prefer the former, as anyone in their right mind would. The Islamic legal system (sharia) is just fucked up...

i just dont see how y'all can compare the US to saudi arabia.

come on! we're NOT on the same level here, if you're comparing US to something, compare it to canada or UK.

the US is well above saudi for comparison purposes, we're not on the same level.

Generally, unless our feelings regarding the prisoners are ambiguous (as our society has taught us to feel towards these detainees), U.S. citizens hold refusal to legal counsel and torture on the same moral plane--both are abhorrent.

Er... maybe that's the feeling of many US citizens, but I'd say that torture would be quite a bit more painful.

Also, it's not an either/or situation: I'd say fundy Islamic legal systems don't have a lot of options for legal representation; you're typically caught, put on trial and sentenced in a *very* short period of time...

This has to make Dude happy.




U.S. to Free More Afghan War Prisoners From Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS


ASHINGTON, May 5 — Bush administration officials said today that they would soon release an additional group of prisoners, about a dozen, from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Officials said that the prisoners, captured in the war in Afghanistan, had been determined to have no further intelligence value and that there was no evidence that they had been involved in any crimes.

The impending release comes after officials said that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he was hearing a rising number of complaints from other countries about the indefinite detention of their citizens at Guantánamo.

Those to be released will probably include one or more of the three youths the military recently acknowledged were being held at Guantánamo. The three are believed to be 13 to 16 years old, and the disclosure of their detention by an Australian television network produced a barrage of criticism from human rights groups.

The military has so far discharged about 22 prisoners from the prison at the American naval base in Cuba, first transferring them to the custody of the Afghan government, which then released them in Kabul.

State Department officials said that Mr. Powell had not so much pressed Mr. Rumsfeld to move quickly as to apprise him that the continued, indefinite detentions was causing diplomatic problems. Mr. Powell wrote at least two letters to Mr. Rumsfeld detailing what he had been hearing, officials said.

The prison camp, at the naval base in southeastern Cuba, currently holds about 660 detainees. Even as some are to be released, officials said, others will soon be brought before a military tribunal on the base.

The United States government has kept the Guantánamo prisoners in a political and legal limbo, by declaring they are not prisoners of war but unlawful combatants. As a result of that status, Pentagon officials have said they may lawfully detain them indefinitely.


www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/international/americas/05CND-GITM.html?ex=....

Why wouldn't this make everyone happy, noit just The Dude?

If it makes you happy too, great. Its just that Dude started the thread. Its more just to make a point that these people aren't being held indefinately with no hope for release, as a lot of people seem to think. They are being treated fairly, and released whenever feasable. Can't get that damn link to work though, always have trouble with that.

Seems you didn't even read your own post:

Sure I read it, it said some of the prisoners are being released, including the youths everyone was crying about. If they are releasing the ones they determine not to be a threat, what more can you ask?

Guantanamo Bay to be turned into a "death camp"
 

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...8-5-2003_pg4_2


This completely shocked me when I read it. I can understand why the US wants to do this, but is this really the way to fight against terrorism?

Surely we are just taking a step towards becoming like the brutal regimes that create these terrorist groups? Or is becoming a savage the only way to fight a savage?

"Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported recently."

This shouldn't shock you. The United States is holding prisoners of war at Guatanamo. They have NO right to trial by jury, they shouldn't have travel rights (that's just plain silly), and this is a MILITARY court, so of course there is no right of appeal.

I think the distinction you find shocking may be because you are used to a different court system in Panama. But these are people being tried for war crimes in a military setting, not a civil one.

It seems each of these men will be well represented, and I'm sure strong evidence is needed for execution.

I'm also a little suspect about the source of this article. I'm not familiar with Pakistani press organizations, but when you read articles you need to read between the lines to see if the source is biased in any way. Could this paper be writing for a Muslim audience and be biased in this way? It seems that without too many direct quotes, the author has taken some liberties, ignoring the other options the U.S. is considering.

I am English, not Panamanian, but still yes perhaps I am looking at this from a civil rather than military perspective.

Very good point on the source though, I guess there could be a strong bias in their reporting.

That's factually incorrect. They are not prisoners of war. If they were, they would be subject to the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. Govt. has flouted repeatedly.

They are "enemy combatants", that term the government in the US use when they mean "scape goats".

to quote the red cross on the third geneva convention:
"Everyone must enjoy basic judicial guarantees and no one may be held responsible for an act he has not committed. No one may be subjected to physical or mental torture or to cruel or degrading corporal punishment or other treatment."

There we go, that's for POWs. But these are enemy combatants.

I wish I were as optimistic.

Undoubtedly, but was there any coverage in the US? there's none where I am.

I'm from Europe, I abhor the death penalty. But to even go so far as effectively giving these people show trials and then executing them is scary. It should scare everyone, especially people in the US.

nobody would even know that they're missing or they're dead.

this is gruesome!

Very good point about the Geneva Convention. You are, of course, correct about the US position here. But I think my point still stands about how they will be tried... it will be in a military setting.

I think they will be accorded all judicial guarantees. I really feel they are well represented - and will continue to be. American lawyers love high-profile cases - no matter who they are representing they will do it for no charge.

Again, we differ here. I think the system will treat these men fairly. You can't just put someone to death. The crime needs to be well documented, as well as the involvement.

Finally, I went back to look at this article again. I truely think it is quite biased - more than I originally thought - and may even be propaganda. The lead quote quotes another newspaper - which is just awful practice. The author uses action verbs like "would" were "could" is much more appropriate. And the use of the phrase "death camp" attempts to classify this in the same vein as Nazi camps in the minds of readers. When you think of "death camp" that's what you think of. I think one thing everyone can agree on, this is not a "death camp." To compare it to one is to lesson the memory of the horrors faced by those who knew all to well what a death camp was.

Thank you for your points about Geneva. It is important to introduce it into any discussions about US policy and these prisoners.

Cmon, The Dude. I hope your kidding here.

The United States has released the names of those being held. Each is lawyered up. Their families would know, human rights groups would know (they are keeping a close eye here), and other prisoners would know.

The US Navy isn't ordering some 18 year old cadets to haul these guys off and execute them in the middle of the night...

Well, let's put it in these terms, the US refused habeas corpus. They are not going to provide the prisoners with their choice of lawyer.

Remember, this is a tribunal, which is trial by inquisition rather than the traditional common law model of the adversarial system.

I know inquisition is a loaded term, I mean it in the technical rather than emotive sense.

You have made a sensible argument, I am just concerned that the US govt has something to hide, and I am deeply cynical about the Bush administration's motives.

There's something ironic (in a Big Picture kind of way) about a section of Cuba being turned into a Death Camp.

wait a sec, human rights groups are not allowed in guatanamo.

yes the red cross was allowed in there, but they definately do not keep a close eye on what's going on there, otherwise we would know.

so, here's the deal. a husband of a family leaves to do something. next thing the family gets is a postcard saying that the husband is in cuba. then he gets killed. period.

I didn't mean human rights groups are watching at the base. I meant they are keeping tabs on the situation, putting pressure on.

Otherwise we would know what, Dude? I didn't get that part.

And what is the something your husband of the family left to do? Herd some sheep or enforce Taliban policy on the populace?

I seeing some conspiracy theorist stuff in your post.

How are they prisoners of war when they don't fight under any flag or for any specific country. The geneva convention doesn't apply to them. Terrorists fight for their own causes not for the causes of a nation. They are not uniformed and they don't have allegience to any flag.

I find it really amazing that some look for the worst in the US gov actions but see innocence in terrorists who were captured while fighting for illegitimate and oppressive regimes who openly state it is there policy to restrict human freedom.

Our options would be:

1) Shoot them instead of capture

2) Try them using US civilian law. This does not apply as they are not citizens and there crimes were not on US soil.

3) Try them using military justice as POW's or enemy combatants. If POW's they have to be released once there is not active combat. That is fine if the conflict is with another state. It is not safe to do if they are terrorists. THEY have decided to make us their enemy until death.

4) Just let them go. This is clearly not an option to rational thinkers.

Frankly, I trust the well trained members of the US military to be infinately more fair toward these people than the terrorists where when they struck the towers.

Have they? Last I heard the names still had not been released (not being sarcastic, I really don't know).

moving to politics...

A couple of definitions seem to be in order. A nation and a state are two different things.

A state is a bureaucratic institution that claims a monopoly of *violence or force over a particular region.

A nation is a collection of people bound by common culture, history, language, etc.

The "terrorists" were fighting for a nation. We made the claim that only states can have legitimate, recognized military (notice the link to the "violence" portion of the definition I provided)--thus denying them legal combatants.

[edit]We claimed that these people were fighting for a nation. Since only states can claim the right to use violence over a population, armed combatants for a nation can not claim legal protection due to acting on behalf of a legal, organized bureaucracy.[/edit]

Keep in mind that almost the rest of the world abhors the death penalty--for any crime. Even if we were to grant what we considered to be a fair trial the punishment appears barbaric to many nations and states. Add to those issues the problem that many of our actions have already been criticized as unfair by various human rights groups and a large portion of the world's population--how skeptical do you think they already are of our intentions and practices?

Would it be to our benefit to find another method of punishment or even to relinquish control of the process to either an uninterested party (if there even is one) or one of our allies (if we even have one)?

Will our actions appear to others as uncaring or indifferent to world opinion; and if so, will that damage our long term interests?

*Violence is the ability to punish those who contradict the will of the state.
Max Weber referred to power as the ability to carry out one's will against resistance.

Well said, smooth.

In my opinion, there are basically a few options open to a real democratic justice system:

1) try them under the Geneva convention as pow's
2) try them under criminal law as civilians (not possible, since the war in afghanistan was clearly outside the jurisdiction)
3) Establish a UN or other international tribunal to try these people with international oversight and scrutiny.


None of these are proposed, because, in my opinion, the current "administration" is worried that it will fumble another scape goat.

Before we all get to wound up abt this I think we had better consider the source. This is the first article I have seen on this issue and it is from a Pakistani Newspaper. What are our News sources saying? Is this true? Just look at the official Russian Newspaper Pravada if you want an example of Foreign Journalism or you just want a good laugh.