Thomas, I think they are wrong.
So what is going to happen to the people at Gitmo? Turn them all loose? I don't get it. If you simply change locations for where they are held, what does that accomplish?
So what is going to happen to the people at Gitmo? Turn them all loose? I don't get it. If you simply change locations for where they are held, what does that accomplish? Gitmo is not the issue. The issue is what do we do with the people?
okie wrote:So what is going to happen to the people at Gitmo? Turn them all loose? I don't get it. If you simply change locations for where they are held, what does that accomplish?
You know what? This is getting pointless. FreeDuck, Cychloptichorn, and I have talked at length about how we want these prisoners treated, and "turn them all loose" was not part of it. You're misunderstanding us on purpose.
I'll a break from this thread. See ya.
Gospel according to Jack (the TERROR-FIGHTING AGENT)
"Tell me where the bomb is or I will kill your son."
"I don't want to bypass the Constitution, but these are extraordinary circumstances."
"I need to use every advantage I've got."
"If we want to procure any information from this suspect, we're going to have to do it behind closed doors."
"I'm talking about doing what's necessary to stop this warhead from being used against us."
"When I'm finished with you, you're gonna wish that you felt this good again."
"You don't have any more useful information, do you?"
What would Jack Bauer do?
Canadian jurist prompts international justice panel to debate TV drama 24's use of torture
COLIN FREEZE
June 16, 2007
OTTAWA -- Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most powerful judges on the planet.
The job of the veteran U.S. Supreme Court judge is to ensure that the superpower lives up to its Constitution. But in his free time, he is a fan of 24, the popular TV drama where the maverick federal agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terrorists to save American lives. This much was made clear at a legal conference in Ottawa this week.
Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.
The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so. "So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."
What happened next was like watching the National Security Judges International All-Star Team set into a high-minded version of a conversation that has raged across countless bars and dinner tables, ever since 24 began broadcasting six seasons ago.
Jack Bauer, played by Canadian Kiefer Sutherland, gets meaner as he lurches from crisis to crisis, acting under few legal constraints. "You are going to tell me what I want to know, it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt," is one of his catchphrases. Every episode poses an implicit question to its viewers: Does the end justify the means if national security is at stake? On 24, the answer is, invariably, yes.
But sometimes this message proves a little too persuasive. Last November, a U.S. Army brigadier-general, Patrick Finnegan, of West Point, went to California to meet with the show's producers. He asked if the writers would consider reining in Agent Bauer. "The kids see it, and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about 24?" he told The New Yorker in February.
He argued that "they should do a show where torture backfires." It's not just the military that's watching 24. It turns out that the judges who struggle to square the Guantanamo Bay prison camp experiment with the British Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 are watching the show, too. It was Mr. Justice Richard Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada who inadvertently started the debate, with his derogatory drive-by slight against Jack Bauer, the one that so provoked Judge Scalia.
In his day job, the Canadian judge wrestles with the implications of torture. Last winter, for example, Judge Mosley ordered an Osama bin Laden associate freed from seven years prison and into strict house arrest in Toronto.
Judge Mosley told the panel that rights-respecting governments can't take part in torture or encourage it in any way. "The agents of the state, and the agents of the Canadian state, under the Criminal Code, are very much subject to severe criminal sanction if they would engage in torture," he said.
But the U.S. Supreme Court judge choked on that position, saying it would be folly for laws to dictate that counterterrorism agents must wear kid gloves all the time. While Judge Scalia argued that doomsday scenarios may well lead to the reconsideration of rights, in his legal decisions he has also said that catastrophic attacks and intelligence imperatives do not automatically give the U.S. president a blank cheque - the people have to decide. "If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically, as the Constitution requires, rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of this court," he dissented in a 2004 decision. The judicial majority ruled that a presidential order meant that an American "enemy combatant" wasn't entitled to challenge the conditions of his detention, which happened to be aboard a naval brig.
As they discussed torture in Ottawa, the judicial panelists from outside the United States argued that any implicit or explicit sanction of torture is a slippery slope.
Some said that legal systems might do well to enforce anti-torture laws, even if it meant prosecuting rogue agents. "What if the guy is not the guy who's going to blow up Los Angeles? But some kind of innocent?" asked Lord Carlile of Berriew, a Welshman who acts as the independent reviewer of Britain's terrorism laws.
Torture can lead to false confessions, he said. "How do you protect that person's civil rights from the risk of very serious wrongful conviction?" But Lord Carlile, a barrister by training, added that he was also concerned with Jack Bauer's rights. "I'm sure I could get him off," he said.
One panelist deadpanned that saving Los Angeles from a nuke would likely be a mitigating factor during any sentencing of Jack Bauer.
When the panel opened to questions and commentary from the floor, a senior Canadian government lawyer said: "Maybe saving L.A. is an easy question. How many people are we going to torture to save L.A.?" asked Stanley Cohen, a senior counsel for the Justice Department, who specializes in human rights law. "How much certainty do we get to have that we have the right person in front of us?" Then Lorne Waldman, the lawyer for the famously wronged engineer Maher Arar, emerged from the crowd to say that very little of the conversation sounded hypothetical to him.
Mr. Arar was among a series of Canadian Arabs who emerged from lengthy ordeals in Syrian jails to complain of torture. Their common complaint is that Syrian torture - including beatings with electric cables - flowed from a wrongly premised Canadian investigation after 9/11.
A host of security agents, Mr. Waldman argued, acted with utmost urgency against innocents, after wrongly fearing a bomb plot was afoot.
Generally, the jurists in the room agreed that coerced confessions carry little weight, given that they might be false and almost never accepted into evidence. But the U.S. Supreme Court judge stressed that he was not speaking about putting together pristine prosecutions, but rather, about allowing agents the freedom to thwart immediate attacks.
"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia said.
Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist's plot would have ensured "in Los Angeles everyone is safe." During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."
In war, is your enemy innocent until proven guilty? Do you read the enemy his rights before capturing him? Do you let him call his lawyer before you interrogate him. I could ask many more questions to illustrate the point. To boil this entire argument down, it basically depends on whether you view these prisoners to have resulted from acts of war against us as a country, or did they result from committing individual crimes against a citizen or citizens. There is a different set of laws, depending on how this problem is treated. We keep hearing about following the rule of law, and innocent until proven guilty, which is all fine and dandy, but simply is not practical in regard to acts of war.
So the position you take here really hinges upon whether this is a criminal problem or a national defense problem.
The Clinton administration treated the terrorist problem as a criminal problem, and that decision did affect how we reacted to certain situations, and got us into trouble, including the fact that they chose not to take Osama Bin Laden when he was apparently offered to us by the Sudan. That may have cost nearly 3,000 innocent lives.
I think terrrorism is simply a new method of fighting wars, so I consider this to be a national defense problem or acts of war, and the prisoners should not be tried as normal criminals.
I favor the military solution to these people, as they are currently working it out.
However, we must be very careful to hold only the ones that clearly were trying to do us harm. Any American citizens that are caught in terrorist activity need to be treated somewhat differently, I think, unless they are caught red handed with something extremely serious as an act of war.
okie wrote:In war, is your enemy innocent until proven guilty? Do you read the enemy his rights before capturing him? Do you let him call his lawyer before you interrogate him. I could ask many more questions to illustrate the point. To boil this entire argument down, it basically depends on whether you view these prisoners to have resulted from acts of war against us as a country, or did they result from committing individual crimes against a citizen or citizens. There is a different set of laws, depending on how this problem is treated. We keep hearing about following the rule of law, and innocent until proven guilty, which is all fine and dandy, but simply is not practical in regard to acts of war.
You have to choose one set of laws. Either military law if these people are actually enemy combatants, or civil law if they are not. It's that simple. You can't make up a parallel system of justice just because it suits you.
Quote:So the position you take here really hinges upon whether this is a criminal problem or a national defense problem.
Not really. It can be both and it probably is both. But if you allow the president to have the power to declare anyone he wishes an enemy combatant, including citizens and residents of this country, and thereby stripping them of their constitutional rights, then you are advocating a suspension of habeas corpus and a replacement of our civil laws with military law. In effect, a military dictatorship.
Quote:The Clinton administration treated the terrorist problem as a criminal problem, and that decision did affect how we reacted to certain situations, and got us into trouble, including the fact that they chose not to take Osama Bin Laden when he was apparently offered to us by the Sudan. That may have cost nearly 3,000 innocent lives.
And how many innocent lives has our war policy cost? Is it comparable? Is it worth it? Has it made us safer?
Quote:I think terrrorism is simply a new method of fighting wars, so I consider this to be a national defense problem or acts of war, and the prisoners should not be tried as normal criminals.
There is nothing new about terrorism.
Quote:I favor the military solution to these people, as they are currently working it out, which is according to the options we have under the law.
Which people? The ones captured in Afghanistan, a theater of war, or the ones kidnapped worldwide by the CIA?
Quote:However, we must be very careful to hold only the ones that clearly were trying to do us harm. Any American citizens that are caught in terrorist activity need to be treated somewhat differently, I think, unless they are caught red handed with something extremely serious as an act of war.
Why?
You are granting a president his constitutionally mandated rights and responsibility to defend the country and citizenry.
First, I suggest you read the following:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html
Cyclops, it is only your opinion that what this administration is doing is illegal. Your assertion is not backed up by law.
Secondly, protecting the constitution involves doing what the constitutions says to protect. Protecting a piece of paper protects nothing. To protect your child, does not mean to protect the birth certificate. The president clearly has not only powers, but RESPONSIBILITY and DUTY to protect this country and its citizens, as defined by the constitution. If Clinton had been paying attention to his duties, and taking them seriously as Bush does, perhaps 911 would never have happened.
I have read your posts where you keep repeating "protect the constitution" time after time. I don't comment on it most of the time, because such a phrase misses the point. Everybody is aware of the responsibility of protecting the constitution, not the least of which is President Bush, and that is why he is doing what he is doing. The point is that you simply disagree with how he is doing it, but I am one of those that think you are wrong. We live in a country of law, and we also live in a country of freedom of speech. If Bush is breaking laws, then proceed to impeach him, as the loony left wants to do. The fact is the loony left is simply loony, and their accusations that you mimic here, cylcops, are legally empty of any substance.
I am not particularly a Bush fan, and disagree with many of his policies, however, I do respect the man as a decent man that is doing the best he can to fulfill his duties in protecting the country he is serving. In another couple of years, if your side holds sway, you can try your policies again and we shall see what results we reap from that, and have mercy on us all.
Secondly, protecting the constitution involves doing what the constitutions says to protect. Protecting a piece of paper protects nothing. To protect your child, does not mean to protect the birth certificate. The president clearly has not only powers, but RESPONSIBILITY and DUTY to protect this country and its citizens, as defined by the constitution.
Everybody is aware of the responsibility of protecting the constitution, not the least of which is President Bush, and that is why he is doing what he is doing.
Secondly, protecting the constitution involves doing what the constitution says to protect. Protecting a piece of paper protects nothing. To protect your child, does not mean to protect the birth certificate. The president clearly has not only powers, but RESPONSIBILITY and DUTY to protect this country and its citizens, as defined by the constitution. If Clinton had been paying attention to his duties, and taking them seriously as Bush does, perhaps 911 would never have happened.
Obviously the Constitution gave the President tilte "Commander-in-Chief" of the military and war powers only in case someone attacked the constitution.
So then, go get your guys to impeach the criminal, George Bush. If its so obvious, it shouldn't be hard.
Keep it up, terrorist apologists and blame America first crowd, and the results won't be pretty, I guarantee you that.
The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.
President Bush's national security and legal advisers are expected to discuss the move at the White House on Friday and, for the first time, it appears a consensus is developing, senior administration officials said Thursday.
The advisers will consider a new proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where they could face trial, said the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.
Officials familiar with the agenda of the Friday meeting said Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace were expected to attend.
It was not immediately clear if the meeting would result in a final recommendation to Bush.
Previous plans to close Guantanamo have run into resistance from Cheney, Gonzales and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But officials said the new suggestion is gaining momentum with at least tacit support from the State and Homeland Security departments, the Pentagon, and the Intelligence directorate.
Cheney's office and the Justice Department have been dead set against the step, arguing that moving "unlawful" enemy combatant suspects to the U.S. would give them undeserved legal rights.
They could still block the proposal, but pressure to close Guantanamo has been building since a Supreme Court decision last year that found a previous system for prosecuting enemy combatants illegal. Recent rulings by military judges threw out charges against two terrorism suspects under a new tribunal scheme.
Those decisions have dealt a blow to the administration's efforts to begin prosecuting dozens of Guantanamo detainees regarded as the nation's most dangerous terror suspects.
In Congress, recently introduced legislation would require Guantanamo's closure. One measure would designate Fort Leavenworth as the new detention facility.
Another bill would grant new rights to those held at Guantanamo Bay, including access to lawyers regardless of whether the prisoners are put on trial. Still another would allow detainees to protest their detentions in federal court, something they are now denied.
Gates, who took over the Pentagon after Rumsfeld was forced out last year, has said Congress and the administration should work together to allow the U.S. to permanently imprison some of the more dangerous Guantanamo Bay detainees elsewhere so the facility can be closed.
Military officials told Congress this month that the prison at Fort Leavenworth has 70 open beds and that the brig at a naval base in Charleston, S.C., has space for an additional 100 prisoners.
The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.
President Bush's national security and legal advisers are expected to discuss the move at the White House on Friday and, for the first time, it appears a consensus is developing, senior administration officials said Thursday.
The advisers will consider a new proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where they could face trial, said the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.
