What's happening with those poor devils at Camp Xray ???

Scrat wrote:

You're going to lecture me on civility? ROFLMFAO! Cool, very cool.

Dys' posts may often be elliptical or deadpan, but I've never seen him be outright rude to anyone here.

doesn't necessarily mean he's never done it, I guess, I'm not in every thread after all (counter to how it may seem), but it must at least have been pretty rare.

In your case, on the other hand, I'm always pleasantly surprised when you are civil and polite.

I remember when the USSC's decision was handed down (in the evening, with reporters clustered around), the general opinion was that the justices had stumbled and knew it ...

Perhaps you infer too much into my posts. I am often direct, and sometimes exasperated, but on the whole I tend to offer back what is offered me. If I am at times rude with certain others, it is only because I finally learned that I can expect no civility from them. While I should not let others decide how I am going to behave, sometimes it's just too much work showing respect to people who show you none.

There are also folks like Setanta here with whom I disagree and occasionally exchange salvos of incivility, but at the end of the day Setanta seems to me like someone like me... he's trying to be decent to others in here, but if he feels crossed, he'll let you know it. He has let me know it many times, and many of those I probably deserved it, so I don't complain much these days if he's a little brusque with me. My experience has taught me that if I offer him civility I can generally expect it in return, and likewise I suspect that his experience has taught him that if he treats me with disrespect I am likely to respond in kind.

And FWIW, my comments to Dys may have been a bit sarcastic/ironic in tone, but they weren't meant to be nasty. I can certainly understand him misinterpreting them, but then that's partly the eyes of the beholder, isn't it? Some comments offered in good humor can be taken as nasty if you assume the other person is going to be nasty. A lot of what Dys writes is like that, but I've learned to assume that he's typing with a smile and not a scowl. And who knows, maybe every instance where I thought Dys was being nasty he was just trying to be funny. I could as easily misinterpret him as he could me.

Fair enough. In fact, I'm never more than mildly annoyed at what I consider the lack of civility in some of your posts. If you want to adopt that stance, that's fine - lord knows i've actually needed A2K at times to express my bitchy (or call it assertive) side, too. And I never get a sense of actual aggression, or hatefulness, from your posts - some despisal, at most.

It was just the irony of you ROFLing at someone like Dys suggesting civility to you that caught my focus. I mean, I really havent got much of a problem with your attitude, but the price of it is that you cant really "expose" much of anyone else's perceived lack of politeness or respect anymore, really, unless extreme - and Dys certainly aint extreme. He writes shorthand, which vain people might perceive as dismissive, but he never bitches, that I know of. Seems a very gentle soul.

Now, if he were to "expose" someone else for not finishing his sentences, or being flippant, or something, that wouldve caught my eye, too <grins>.

August 21, 2003

Jose Padilla: No Charges and No Trial, Just Jail

by Robert A. Levy

Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

Jose Padilla is the U.S. citizen who supposedly plotted to detonate a "dirty bomb." Since his capture -- not on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq, but at Chicago's O'Hare Airport -- he has not been charged with any crime. Yet, for more than a year, Padilla has been held incommunicado in a South Carolina military brig.

Padilla's indefinite detention, without access to an attorney, has civil libertarians up in arms. That's why the Cato Institute, joined by five ideologically diverse public policy organizations -- the Center for National Security Studies, the Constitution Project, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, People for the American Way, and the Rutherford Institute -- filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Padilla v. Rumsfeld, now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

Consider this specious logic, endorsed by the Bush administration: Under the Sixth Amendment, the right to counsel does not apply until charges are filed. The government has not charged Padilla. Ordinarily, U.S. citizens cannot be detained without charge. But the administration has avoided that technicality by designating Padilla as an "enemy combatant," then proclaiming that the court may not second-guess his designation.

Essentially, on orders of the executive branch, anyone could wind up imprisoned by the military with no way to assert his innocence. That frightening prospect was echoed by J. Harvie Wilkinson, the respected and steadfastly conservative chief judge of the Fourth Circuit. In a case involving another U.S. citizen, Yaser Hamdi, Wilkinson warned, "With no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel." Judge Wilkinson upheld Hamdi's detention but pointedly noted that Hamdi's battlefield capture was like "apples and oranges" compared to Padilla's arrest in Chicago. "We aren't placing our imprimatur upon a new day of executive detentions," Wilkinson cautioned.

An unambiguous federal statute and the U.S. Constitution both prohibit the executive branch from doing to Padilla what it is now doing. More than three decades ago, Congress passed Title 18, section 4001(a) of the U.S. Code. It states, "No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." Today, we have not had from Congress any statute that authorizes Padilla's detention.

Yes, Congress enacted the PATRIOT Act, which says that non-citizens suspected of terrorism can be detained, but only for seven days. After that, they have to be released or charged, unless the attorney general certifies every six months that they present a security risk. Two months earlier, Congress had passed a resolution empowering the president to use all necessary force against the 9/11 terrorists. But that resolution surely did not give the administration unfettered discretion to detain citizens without charge. If it had, then the ensuing PATRIOT Act would have afforded more protection to aliens than to citizens. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, that proposition is incredible.

Reasonably construed, Congress' resolution on the use of military force triggered the president's commander-in-chief authority. He could then order seizure of enemy soldiers and detention of persons found in a zone of active combat. But he could not order the imprisonment, without charge, of an unarmed non-soldier far from active combat, especially a U.S. citizen on our own soil.

Nor is the administration justified in its reliance on Ex parte Quirin, the Supreme Court case involving eight Nazi saboteurs, one of whom was an American citizen. The executive branch acted in Quirin in accordance with congressional authorization. The eight Nazis were represented by counsel, charged, tried, and convicted. Here, by contrast, Padilla has been denied any chance to defend himself. He has seen no lawyer; he has not been charged, much less tried and convicted. And he has been imprisoned notwithstanding a 30-year-old statute that expressly forbids the unauthorized detention of U.S. citizens.

Padilla may deserve the treatment he is receiving -- perhaps worse. That is not the point. When Americans are taken into custody, they have the right to retain an attorney. Congress must first set the rules. Then an impartial judge, not the president, should make the ultimate decision as to whether the arrest and imprisonment comport with the Constitution. James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, put it succinctly: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

This article was published in the Chicago Sun-times, Aug. 11, 2003.

Five Pakistanis Freed From Guantanamo
By MUNIR AHMAD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Five Pakistani prisoners arrived home Saturday after being freed by American authorities from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said.

The men were captured in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led campaign to oust the Taliban in late 2001, and were later shifted to Guantanamo Bay to investigate their suspected links to al-Qaida, an Interior Ministry official told The Associated Press.

The official said the men will remain in Pakistani custody for a few days before being allowed to go free.

``We believe that they had no links with any militant groups, but we want to satisfy ourselves before allowing them to go to their homes,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official gave no other details. He said efforts are underway to secure the release of the remaining Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. authorities have been holding more than 600 people from 42 countries at its naval base in Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, has been urging Washington to release its citizens.

The five men - Hafiz Liaquat Manzoor, Mohammed Ishaq, Talha Mohammed, Majid Mahmood and Ijaz Ahmad - were among nearly 50 Pakistanis caught in Afghanistan while allegedly fighting against U.S.-led coalition forces there.

So far, U.S. authorities have released nearly a dozen Pakistani prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, including a 51-year-old man, Mohammed Sanghir, who has filed a lawsuit against U.S. authorities demanding $10.4 million in compensation for his detention.

Sanghir was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. He was freed in November 2002 and claims he was in Afghanistan to teach Islam and was not involved in anti-U.S. activities there.

Earlier this month, a Pakistani judge issued notices to the Pakistani government and the U.S. State Department demanding they respond to Sanghir's lawsuit by Dec. 12.

Finally some good news:Some Pakistani Prisoners Freed

scrat said
"So, some Pakistani's who were fighting against the US in Afghanistan have been freed."
your assumtion or proven fact?

``We believe that they had no links with any militant groups, but we want to satisfy ourselves before allowing them to go to their homes,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The five men - Hafiz Liaquat Manzoor, Mohammed Ishaq, Talha Mohammed, Majid Mahmood and Ijaz Ahmad - were among nearly 50 Pakistanis caught in Afghanistan while allegedly fighting against U.S.-led coalition forces there.

Quote:

The five men - Hafiz Liaquat Manzoor, Mohammed Ishaq, Talha Mohammed, Majid Mahmood and Ijaz Ahmad - were among nearly 50 Pakistanis caught in Afghanistan while allegedly fighting against U.S.-led coalition forces there.