Kevin, maybe you should go drink another cup of coffee and rewrite this.

"European countries that are unwilling to accept Guantanamo inmates hardly have any business playing holier-than-thou over U.S. reluctance to let them roam our streets. At the same time, the United States can hardly be surprised that sovereign countries are unwilling to let us dictate the terms of their release"

How the fuck are they "playing" holier than thou? They are told they must take men almost certainly damage by 3 to 5 years of being held in a concentration camp, not even citizens of their own, without any ties in many cases, AND keep them under constant surveillance because while they were not a threat before being imprisoned and tortured, they are now.

Why the fuck is it their responsibility? This is the bed WE shit in, and not only have we refused to clean it up, we expect other countries to buy a whole new bedroom suite for us.

There is no "even handed" response here, Kevin. The reality is, we fucked up, and other countries are right in demanding we fix the problem. Europe didn't put these men and children into a torture camp, we did. If we need to spend millions if not billions to undo the crime, that is our responsibility, not there's.

Three words: Witness Protection Program

Still, what do we do with them?

We should place the terrorists in military prisons in America. The great thing about the new interrogation bill Bush just signed into law (that Thomas1 was referring to) is it allows alternative interrogation techiques that will prevent another 9/11. After the terrorists are put in military prisons, all of our soldiers should be trained how to use these alternative interrogation techiques on the terrorists to extract information vital to the national security of this country. This is the best thing to do because it is the only way to protect this country from another terrorist attack.

Send them to the Prairie Chaple Ranch outside of Crawford Texas.

Kevin--

Do we know what European countries would say if the US released the prisoners to them without setting conditions on how they would be handled?

And where does the US get off, anyway, in dictating to other countries how they deal with their citizens and resident aliens?

Like any scary brown person can be innocent.

And Kevin, you know that tough men like Bush aren't going to tell you what will REALLY happen to any brown person we get.

As Al says: locking up all the brown people is the best way to protect us!

I changed my mind, send them to Al's house. Hours of delightful conversation and meaningful sharing await.

Send 'em to Florida. They'll fit right in. Disney's always hiring. Maybe they could make a new show on World Showcase. Imagine fifty guys doing mimes of pretending to be trapped inside a box.

Ok, seriously now -- you know that once Dubya is gone from the scene, these prisoners will be either repatriated or tried in a proper court. It's just for Bush's personality cult that we can't seem to admit obvious futilities, of which Gitmo is only one of many.

Mysticdog: I agree that this is primarily our problem. But how do you propose we fix it? Concrete answers, please.

What a terrible dilemma. We have been capturing and buying these folks and then holding them in secret and abusing them. This brilliant project was yet another example of incomplete planning by the "I know what I'm doing" administration.

Now that they are no longer interested in hiding, abusing, and imprisoning some of the involuntary members of this cosmopolitan community, they pretend to be stumped regarding how to let them go.

Whether the answer is easy or hard, I expect my government to turn its awesome power and resources to solving its dilemma. Where there is a will, there is a way. Just ask our president.

If we shut down Guantanamo, what do we do with all the prisoners? This is a genuinely difficult question. . .

Why exactly is this a difficult question? Imagine a conventional prison in the U.S. being shut down. We transfer the prisoners elsewhere. Presumably there's a difficulty here because some of the prisoners in Guantanamo are not actually believed to be guilty of anything and might be released, but doesn't that mean they should be treated like anyone else? Giving them a residency permit in the U.S., though politically unpalatable, doesn't seem unreasonable.

I don't know, why couldn't we treat them as POWs under standard military procedures? If a court martial found no reason to hold them we should release them. If, because of our own actions we are unable to repatriate innocent people then our moral obligation is to give them a home in the United States.

Bush won't do this because he is too much of a moral coward. He is too afraid he will mistakenly release someone and they will commit some act of violence later.

Concrete answers, please.

Did you mean hand them over to the Mob, and let them sleep with the fishes?

I vote for turning them loose in Crawford. It's the only decent thing to do.

Almost all of the detainees must be passport-carrying citizens of somewhere. The Uighurs, for instance, are probably citizens of China. Send them back to their home countries, unless they can make a reasonable case that they'll face imprisonment/torture/execution if returned.

Kevin: Concrete answers, please.

Did you think I was kidding?

Simple solution: we broke it, we bought it.

A fallback: let the coalition of the willing sort it out. If anyone is a hypocrite here it is Blair and the Spanish premier...oops, he's retired!

Soylent Brown

What do we do with them? Charge them and try them, or release them -- at the EXACT spot on this earth where they were picked up. Real simple, in my book.

Kevin,

Did you read your own post?

Among those countries is Germany, which also balked for years at allowing a German native, Murat Kurnaz, to return even though U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement officials had largely concluded there was no information tying him to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities.

So he is apparently innocent. But...

... U.S. officials insisted he be indicted or placed under 24-hour surveillance. The Bush administration ultimately relented after Germany refused.

Indicted for what? Put under 24-hour surveillance for what? No German court would agree to it.

Plus, what Mysticdog said.

To be serious now, there is no single “all conflicts resolved” solution to this horrible problem. We really can’t keep them and it seems unlikely that home countries will accept them.

So how about we take them back to the zip code where they were captured/abducted?

We have their pictures, prints and DNA so they will not be able to move around internationally with out the CIA knowing about it.

Given the current conditions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt that even the most dangerous and sinister among them could cause more harm. The innocent and near innocent could at least have a chance to recover the life they were jerked away from.

The Uighurs, for instance, are probably citizens of China. Send them back to their home countries, unless they can make a reasonable case that they'll face imprisonment/torture/execution if returned.

That's exactly the problem with the Uighurs.

Like many others have said, the US created this problem, and we have the obligation to fix it. We have in essense kidnapped foreign nationals, destroyed them psychologically, marked them forever as terrorists, and now want to dump them on someone else. At the least we should provide these men and boys with the resources they need to get on their feet and offer them residency in the US if they choose.

Complaining about Europe not fixing this for us is childish in the extreme. And WTF do people found to be no security risk need to be kept under 24 hr surveilence?

I'll bet there is plenty of room on Bush's fake ranch outside of Crawford, Texas. Send them there.

a) If only we had prisons inside the US that we could put people in...

b) If they haven't been charged, let them go. If they've been charged but not tried after four years, try them immediately or let them go. It works for every other suspect in every other law-abiding country (including, in most other cases, this one). For those that have been tried and convicted, see a.

First we try them,

Then we execute them.

Or maybe we just keep them indefinitely and let them do that hunger strike thing.

Or if we try them and don't actually find them guilty, we give them $20 and a bus ticket to anywhere they like.

what do we do with them?

If crimes have been committed, then the human beings at Guantanamo should be tried justly in a court of law with the same rights accorded to any person who is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury of peers. If the prosecuting authority does not have enough evidence or if evidence has been obtained illegally and cannot be used in court, then they must be released.

It is not a difficult problem to solve, unless these people did not commit crimes or if there is no credible evidence they did or if Americans just want show trials and executions for entertaining the hysterically fearful electorate.

I concur with mysticdog, the only problem is with the US and its unreasonable belief in extraterritoriality. I have no understanding whatsoever for the US position.

Cheers,

Alan Tomlinson

Thomas1 the barbarian: when those "innocents" manage to bring down another WTC, are you going to pick up the Victims' Family Compensation Fund this time around?

Bush has committed the equivalent of hundreds of 9/11s since that date. How many family compensation funds of his victims have you contributed to? By the way, exactly how much more is an American's life worth compared with someone in Iraq?

Oh just let them go in Cuba.

Have the governments of Britain, Germany, and other allied nations actually condemned the prison at Guantanamo? Journalists, lawyers, civil liberties groups, and human rights organizations have been calling attention to the inhumane treatment and legal limbo that is Guantanamo, but I don't recall any European Prime Ministers comdemning it. It's only hypocrisy if you assume that the German national government and German representatives of Amnesty International are the same entity. Which they're not.

Soylent Brown

You are so going to hell for that.

Thomas1:

The prisioners who are innocent of any terrorist acts to date are likely to commit terrorist acts in the future?

Good to know that the Department of Pre-Crime has found such an accurate precog in you, Thomas. Sheesh.

Please. There's nothing nuanced about this.

We don't want anyone in that hellhole to talk about how we tortured them. Ever. Period.

And that's why none of them will ever leave alive.

I'll bet there is plenty of room on Bush's fake ranch outside of Crawford, Texas. Send them there.

Herding rented photo-op cattle. That will keep them busy until '08. But, what then?

Maybe prison guards for Bush and Cheney when they are incarcerated for war crimes?

Thomas, when you formulate complete ideas, and engage in an exchange of reasoned points of view (and I hope you do so), I will be more than happy to answer any inquieries you have.

Our silly ass President got us in to this mess, so it is the bloggers responsibility to figure it out.

The majority of this post applies to those detainees for whom it is determined did not wage war against the US.

- Where there is no evidence to charge or further hold an individual, they should (must) be released to their home country. The authorities should be notified, but no conditions should be set on their release.

- In the event that the individual is at risk if they were returned home, or their last nation of residence refuses to accept them, the US must negotiate with other countries to accept these individuals as refugees. Should no country be found within a reasonable amount of time (three months), the US must accept them as refugees.

- All detainees should be debriefed immediately upon release by a credible third party organization to record any claims of abuse suffered while imprisoned, to support or deny future claims.

- In the event detainees are incapable of being returned to civilian life, for physical or psychological reasons, continued care of these individuals will be the responsibility of the US Government. They will be moved to a facility under US control and readily accessible from civilian transportation hubs. They will have access to physical therapy or psychological counselling to support their eventual return to civilian life. Access to family and others will not be restricted, and if an individual's family resides outside the US, the US will provide for visits by up to 10 family members, for stays of 2 weeks each, every year, to the US. These visits are at US Government expense.

I could go on, but scarshapedstar makes me realize the futility of it.

The individuals who have been falsely imprisoned for 3 years by Bush's administration deserve the chance to sue him personally. I believe Terry Waite got awarded $1 million per year he was held. Sounds fair - but that's why Bush and his buddies don't want to admit the innocence of these men.

Those whom we cannot find another country to accept we should give residence permits to and allow them to live in the US. After all, most of these men are going to have life-long medical problems and severe psychological trauma due to their years of torture and abuse at the hands of Americans -- so who better than the American taxpayer to foot the bill for the treatment they're going to need?

Wapiti's solution is probably fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't really get to the heart of the problem, which is the fact that the U.S. has been acting as a rogue nation. What to do about the detainees is really just a small part of that larger situation.

Josh Marshall said awhile back that we'll need a Truth and Reconcilliation commission once Bush is out to sort through all the crimes that have been committed. If it's not possible to send most of the current administration to the Hague, then I suppose something like that might have to do.

I'd like to propose a variant of Colin Powell's "you break it, you bought it" rule -- "you kidnapped them, you keep them." If no one else wants them, and we can't charge them with any crime, then give them a residency permit, a SS number, and start them on the paperwork to collecting their Medicaid and disability benefits.

Kevin Drum's Euro problem:

I hate to bring this up, but is this another example of your taking unfounded swipes at Europe? Recall the theme some weeks back on how well European universities teach American history?

Your default position seems to be snark: "Britan and Germany carp," "holier than thou."

Kevin, we love you, but you should get off the west coast a bit more...

While there's no one-size-fits-all answer, there are obvious solutions.

The right answer for the Uyghurs is political asylum in the US. They were never enemies of the US, and the Uyghur community here will embrace them. This is only a few individuals, and the risks are quite small.

The Bosnians should never have been taken to Gitmo, and should be flown to Sarajevo immediately. They've already been exonerated by the Bosnian courts (which is apparently why the US won't release them).

The British residents seized on their way to Gambia should be released/deported to Britain.

The efforts to repatriate Yemenis have been less than diligent. This is a large slice of the prisoner population, and does not present a particularly difficult issue for the US.

Saudis have been going home in small groups for months -- and should go home in larger groups.

Afghans should all be sent home immediately.

Try those involved in 9/11.

Your default position seems to be snark: "Britan and Germany carp," "holier than thou."
Posted by: Friend of Labor

occasionally, sensible liberals feel the need to spout jingoistic bullshit to maintain street credibility.

occasionally, sensible liberals feel the need to spout jingoistic bullshit to maintain street credibility.

Yes, how dare they not clean up our own mess! Do the expect us to be responsible for the situation we've created????

CharleyCarp appears to actually know what he is talking about. Who the hell let him in here?

If we shut down Guantanamo, what do we do with all the prisoners?

You know, like we, um, are supposed to do.

What to do?

Make their conditions and treatment transparent to the outside world and bring them to trial. If you can't convict them then send them home. If they are dangerous enough to warrant containment their trials should clearly demonstrate that case to the public and the world.

Easy. Put them to work as laborers on the Usurper's Crawford ranchette. Plenty of security to keep them under control, and they'll be a constant reminder to shrub of what he hath wrought. Hell, even if the taxpayers pick up the bill for room and board (which shrub should have to pay), it'll still be cheaper than Guantanamo.

I agree that this is primarily our problem.

Actually, this no longer our problem at all. The law signed today makes it real simple. We do what we want. The inmates most dangerous to this country are the innocent ones, so we should continue to claim that they are guilty, and lock them away forever. If they happen to choke on the lemon chicken, well... at least that will free up beds.

Honestly Kevin, there is no point in coming up with a solution to the problem of releasing innocent detainees when it is no longer required to justify their internment with evidence.

You are so going to hell for that.

i'm pretty sure the only place i'm going why i die is "back into the food chain"

s/why/when/g

Detlef said it right.
Kevin has this problem with impartiality, probably because he's from OC. And wasn't his degree from the unaccredited School of Journalism at CSULB? (OK,I was told that CSULB's journalism program has some accreditation problem.)
Seriously, why would a country agree to crap like those conditions? Forget the courts in countries that have genuine constitutional principles (as Detlef said, no court in Germany would allow the conditions be met). Why would anyone put an innocent person under surveillance?
And: What happens when the Germans stop surveilling? Does the CIA kidnap the subject again?
I find Kevin's post quite absurd.

Aren't we all, cleek? I don't buy the "Savior on a Stick" thing either.:)

If they're not guilty of anything & if we're never going to get around to charging them with anything, and if we've so messed with their heads that they can no longer function in the outside world, then

The solution are halfway houses, taylored to the particular nationalities concerned. Since the US is a big multi-cultural place, chances are we have existing communities to fit the needs of anyone who may be in Gitmo. Establish halfway houses in sympathetic communities around the country & get these guys readjusted to life on the outside.

Once they're readjusted you can give them options: Return to their native lands, or a green card in the US. A wad of cash in either case.

Halfway house leading to an automatic green card. We messed them up, we owe them a second chance. Or any chance.

Sorry to plug my own work, but I came across a case that illustrates my point. There is a guy in Guantanamo who is being held based on a confession obtained through torture. By the Tablian, in the year 2000.

He gave an interview, setup by the Taliban, with Abu Dhabi TV, in which he said,"...if the Taliban let me live, I want to spend the next 22 years fighting for jihad (holy war) to make up for my sins."

Part of that interview was touted by Ashcroft in 2002. It is now being used as evidence against this guy, without the audio, so we can say he declared jihad against the U.S. The audio, which would probably exonerate him, is classified, naturally.

The guy was imprisoned by the Taliban, tortured into making a false confession (saying he was an American spy), and now a small part of that confession is being used to keep him locked up as an enemy combatant.

Yesterday, he could challenge the evidence. Now, hearsay is enough to keep in Gitmo until he dies.

argh... try to ignore the spelling and grammar mistakes.

If we shut down Guantanamo, what do we do with all the prisoners? This is a genuinely difficult question

Charge them with a crime and put them on trial. See it wasn't that difficult after all.

God damnit Drum you are a fucking immoral pussy.

Why is it that the Pottery Barn Principle appies to countries and not people.

Rerturn them to the exact spot where we picked them up.

what do we do with them?

This is the type of question Republicans who have registered as Democrats ask.

you can't return them to where we picked them up... most of them were "picked up" by people responding to bounties for "foreign fighters", so any local witha grudge or a willingness to trade a foreigner in for $25,000 - $100,000 just drove up with a kidnapped Arab and said "Here, we found some Al Qaida for you. Cash, please."

So, let me suggest the "We Fucked Up" approach.

1) We try the people we have anything on, in a US court of law.

2) The people that we don't have anything on, we give legal representation to. We give each prisoner several hundred thousand to get good legal representation.

3) These people, we move to a nice resort while we work out the legalities. They may bring their families. They can be isolated from other prisoners if they like. They can have military protection if they like.

4) Representitives of the US government come to appologize, individually, to each of them. The representtiives will be familiar with each person's case, and how they were treated, and will appologize and listen to the complaints of the aggreived.

5) Each prisoner is given a psych evaluation by the government and the legal defense

6) This is optional, but I think useful for reconcillation. Each prisioner may name one US official or officer to kick once in the nads. This includes the President, Donald Rumsfeld, the guard who flushed his Koran down a toliet or laughed when he sprayed water on him in the cold cell.

7) The government explains their fear of the persons potential for revenge. It offers a compensation package for wrecking the persons life. This includes US citizenship for themselves and their families, if they want it. This includes citizenship for any Islamic country we can get to agree to take them. It includes several hundred thousand dollars a year for the rest of their lives. It can include changing names and starting over in witness protection. It can include giving them a public forum to describe to teh world what happened to them. The only condition is that the US will have access to the bank account where the funds are kept, to verify it is not being used for any violent activites. They accept that they may be unobtrusively monitored. They waive any rights to sue the US government or individuals for their treatment.

8) A criminal case is prepared against those officials responsible for any torture that occured. Because these people deserve justice, and the world again needs to see the US is a just country.

There is your concrete plan for dealing with these people. It is expensive, and may end up rewarding a few actual bad guys. But it is about the only actual justice that is possible in this case. Most of these prisoners never deserved to be picked up. Our treatment of them has sullied the entire country's reputation, and lavish compensation and an accounting for the injustice is the only way we can get that back. Giving the improperly charged reoccuring compensation incentivizes them to get their lives back in order and not seek revenge, as does sending the people responsible for wrecking their lives to jail.

The Uighurs: It seems that they constitute a significant part of the prisoners that the U.S. does not want to send back to their own country, China. The reason: they are (or were) "freedom fighters" against a communist regime, the kind of people that we used to support when we were fighting another such regime, a generation ago. So here is an idea: let the military realse them and then let the CIA recruit them. Who knows, maybe in a few years we will need them again for their fighting skills (taught by bin Laden and Co.)Sure, there will be problems once they manage to defeat the Chinese. But that's for the next generation to worry about.

the only reason we insist on suveillance after release is to perpetuate the fiction that they were ever a threat. but you knew that.

The first thing the US can do is to drop any "demands" on future surveillance, etc. Talk about having your cake and eating it, too.

Rather than demand something, the Admin might want to think in terms of offering a carrot.

The Gitmo prisoners have already had hearings that led to the release of some. What we do with the remaining monsters is to keep them locked up at Gitmo. The anti-American critics can go f*** themselves.

Yes, ex-lib, please go fuck yourself and your anti-american sense of "justice".

The pottery barn rule obviously applies.

More concretely: like with the other Bush administration holes the first thing would be to stop digging. Assess the situation: are all cases that difficult? Or is the administration playing up the difficulties because they really really don't want to close down the facility? I suspect a fair percentage could be released without significant problems.

For the rest there just may not be a good solution. Some may have to stay in the US for their own safety, some may have to be released even if they may (theoretically) pose a risk.

Perpetuating the violation of the rule of law in Guantanamo is much worse than releasing a few rank and file "terrorists" - if there are any of those in Guantanamo in the first place.

The Bush administration has gambled higher stakes than these - and lost every time....

Zumbrunndbla wrote: The pottery barn rule obviously applies.

Zumbrunndbla, the US didn't break anything. The prisoners remaining in Gitmo are bigots and killers. Given a chance they will happily murder you and your family, simply because you're Christian or Buddhist or Jewish or anything other than Muslim.

The world should thank the US for keeping these monsters locked away. US action may have saved the lives of hundred of potential victims.

Our leadership in protecting the world from these inhuman killers makes me proud to be an American.

Let's see. Here are my underlying principles:

A. The US has forfeited any assumption of good will or honesty with regard to these people, in perpuity. The watchword of every step is verification - everything that can be done in public will be, and everything that needs some measure of confidentiality will be subject to external review by multiple independent observers. There is no trust, only review forever.

B. We can't make innocent victims of this kind of treatment whole. We can compensate them handsomely, and should.

With that in mind...

1. First, everyone gts a trial, if they haven't yet. Ideally these trials would be judged by courts of other nations, but public trials in this country with extensive independent observation should work okay.

2. The provably guilty go to maximum-security facilities in the US. They get regular visits with legal council, independent medical care, and whatever else they may need, and all of these people have a lot of authority when it comes to ordering abuse stopped, necessary treatment started, and so on.

3. Everyone else. Comes out, and gets a choice of return home or settlement in the US. In either case, their dependents and close relatives get lifelong stipends, subject to regular review to make sure that they're adequate for food, shelter, education, and the like, and that the recipients actually get the money (or credits, or whatever) to spend. This will go on at least for the lives of the prisoners.

4. Those who prefer to stay in the US may join in the witness protection program (with regular meetings with outside observers, as above), or get comparable resources to draw on in their current identities. They can change public versus protected status...maybe once a decade or so. Not too often, but not too infrequently, either.

5. All prisoners who were not convicted have standing to sue up the chain of command to the president. This standing will last for the lifetime of the prisoners. If a prisoner dies within, say, five or ten years of release, his heirs will have standing for a good long while on his behalf, maybe twenty or fifty years.

Now that's not going to happen, of course, even though something comparably thorough should. But at a bare minimum, the witness protection program seems like it should be able to handle prisoners who can't go home safely.

What do we do with the inmates at Guantanamo? We build a facility on the mainland for the ones we can't or shouldn't repatriate.

The main point of Gitmo all along, it's seemed to me, has been to make legal help, Red Cross inspections, etc., less frequent and more difficult by putting the facility away from anyplace where one could so much as rent a hotel room. It's worked.

Put 'em in the United States proper. Build a supermax prison if you have to, but move them here.

Bruce Baugh, you have quite a comprehensive plan, but I do have one question:

After Gitmo prisoners are released and go on to commit terrorist acts of murder, how do their victims get relief?

This 79 year old man Khan was held for years at Gitmo. He has one son who is still there, another on the Kabul provincial council.

We all know why he was imprisoned. Someday one of his descendents - who will look like remarkably like Ricardo Montalban - will lead a pirate band of clones and capture the Starship Enterprise. Makes as much sense as anything else this WH does.

http://tinyurl.com/y8l2wx

Hey ex-liberal -

After you go on to commit terrorist acts of murder, how will your victims get relief? I suggest we lock you up.

I want to know where the thousands of monster terrorists that were captured after 9/11 and outside of Iraq are being held.

Gitmo's population was in the 600's right? Now it's in the 400's. They let some go, got a few more. Where is this terrorist army that Bush's 'successful program' helped catch?

enozinho, I have read that some of the released Gitmo prisoners rejoined al Qaeda or the Taliban and went on to kill people.

That illustrates the difficulty of separating the sheep from the goats. No doubt some were wrongly imprisoned in Gitmo and were not terrorists. But, how does one obtain definitive evidence one way or the other? Any prison can claim to be innocent. There's no master list or terrorists to check them against. We can't subpoena witnesses from the Taliban in Afghanistan, nor could we trust their testimony if they could be made to testify. Sadly, it's inevitable that any trial procedure will make many wrong judgments.

I have read that some of the released Gitmo prisoners rejoined al Qaeda or the Taliban and went on to kill people.

Source please?

I have read that some of the released Gitmo prisoners rejoined al Qaeda or the Taliban and went on to kill people.

I have read that some Republican Congressman rape and kill babies. And little puppies.

Fair enough: we're the ones who captured them in the first place (though the last paragraph of the Post story puts even that in doubt in at least one case). Still, what do we do with them?

How about resorting to something the Western World spent a couple of centuries evolving, i.e., due process. For each and every prisoner.

We arrest them, deny due process, and then expect to dictate the terms under which we turn them over to other countries? Kevin, I think you wrote this post just to rile us up. Well, I’m certainly riled about this subject.

No doubt some were wrongly imprisoned in Gitmo and were not terrorists.

Change "were" to "are" and we would be in agreement. That's the problem. Gitmo is not filling to the brim with new, more excitingly-evil terrorists daily. We are basically dealing with the same bunch of guys we picked up in Afghanistan in 2001.

I know where your argument was going...omelets take eggs. But there is no evidence to conclude that anti-terrorist arrests justify the continued detention of people with scant, if any, evidence against them.

If you think this is worth fighting for, well, I hope you don't. p.s. who are the sheep and who are the goats?

I have read that some of the released Gitmo prisoners rejoined al Qaeda or the Taliban and went on to kill people.

Frankly, it's astonishing to me that someone who was kidnapped and tortured by Americans for years would, upon his release, join an anti-American group to try to get some payback for his brutalization. Simply baffling.....

Stefan, the US did a wonderful thing by overthrowing the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did a wonderful thing by overthrowing Saddam. These were complicated endeavors, and we made some big mistakes. Hopefully they can be fixed, leading to greatly improved lives for the people of those two countries. I admit there's no guarantee that conditions in those two countries won't deteriorate.

But, yous silly claim that Gitmo prisoners were "tortured for years" irritates me, not only because it's utterly untrue, but because of the contrast with those we overthrew.

E.g., read this article from an Arab newspaper: Witness tells court: At least 30 people died every day in Saddam's prisons http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/204668

Without the efforts of the US, Saddam's prison killings would have been going on for the last 3 years, with no hope of ending them. Of course, a great many killings are occurring today. Our well-meaning effort may or may not ultimately work.

But, look at the contrast. Prisoners at Gitmo have ample, halal food, recreation, religious materials, medical care, a reading libfrary (Harry Potter is the most popular library reading amoung the prisoners.) It's hard to understand why someone would whine about Gitmo, while ignoring the hell hole that Saddam operated. My conclusion is that you (or those by whom you are informed) are looking for reasons to fault the US.

enozinho, the trouble with the torture story is that the Taliban are our enemy. People who commit murder wouldn't shy away from lying. Lies about American torture further the aims of America's enemies.

Note that the Red Cross regularly visits Gitmo. They haven't found the alleged torture. Therefore, I disbelieve these Taliban ex-prisoners.

The prisoners remaining in Gitmo are bigots and killers. Given a chance they will happily murder you and your family, simply because you're Christian or Buddhist or Jewish or anything other than Muslim.

Like this guy:

Published October 17, 2006

YAKHDAND, Afghanistan -- Nasrat Khan wears the long gray beard of an Afghan village elder. He estimates he is 78 or 79, and he has trouble seeing and hearing. Since suffering a stroke about 15 years ago, he needs crutches or a walker to get around.

He doesn't fit the common image of a terrorist, but for much of the last 3 1/2 years, the United States imprisoned Khan at its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"I asked them, `What is my crime?'" said Khan, his swollen legs splayed before him, sitting by the red walker he said U.S. officials gave him in Cuba. "They didn't say anything. No one would tell me what my crime was and why I was there."

http://tinyurl.com/y5bd4u

Yep, 78 year-old monsters who can't walk are waiting to break out of Guantanamo and kill us all.

You are a dimwit.

Prisoners at Gitmo have ample, halal food, recreation, religious materials, medical care, a reading libfrary

So we can document the Gitmo detainees' reading habits, calorie intake (4200 per day), how many times they've thrown feces at guards, and their favorite food (filet-o-fish), but we can't determine if they are guilty of anything.

I've read that bullshit story from Richard Miniter in the NY Post too. Richard Lowry and Michael Steyn got the talking point Gitmo tour as well.

On the issue of Saddam vs. Guantanamo, why not compare apples with apples?

"Mr. Ginco named Mr. Atef as one of the Qaeda and Taliban operatives who tortured him in early 2000, applying electric shocks to his ears and toes, nearly drowning him in a filthy water tank, depriving him of sleep and beating him on the soles of his feet."

Those Afghani Frat houses must be a hoot.

...Note that the Red Cross regularly visits Gitmo. They haven't found the alleged torture. Therefore, I disbelieve these Taliban ex-prisoners.

Posted by: ex-liberal on October 17, 2006 at 7:55 PM | PERMALINK

Gosh, you are a complete idiot, and if you were ever liberal you'd have recognized it before speaking.

Early on, when there were some Red Cross leaks, we know that the US administration was admonished several times for conditions and treatment of prisoners, and ICRC was ignored.

Per international agreement for the ICRC to inspect, the reports go to the imprisoning government. There is no procedure for public reporting. We will only learn when and if those reports are released under freedom of information.

So you (and I) "know" nothing about Red Cross inspections.

What we have found out, and only by accident, through reporters and slips of the tongue from prison staff are such things as mass suicide attempts, forced feeding, etc.

Just like the bill signed today, Guantanamo will prove to be one of the worst blots on US human rights histroy.

Just drop the moniker. You never were.

Oh, I forgot. Lieing just seems to come naturally to Repugnuts.

notthere, you think you're attacking my position, but you're actually closer to supporting it. The early Red Cross leaks found some fault, but nothing like prisoners being "tortured for years," as Stefan alleged. IMHO if the US was now regularly torturing prisoners, and if the Red Cross found out, I think we would know about it, one way or another.

trex, are you arguing that being sick and old and having a beard proves that one is not a terrorist? That would let Osama bin Laden off the hook.

trex, are you arguing that being sick and old and having a beard proves that one is not a terrorist? That would let Osama bin Laden off the hook.

Bin Laden is in his 40 's, you fucktard.

And his kidney problem is not debilitating.

But you got me on the beard thing: I was definitely arguing terrorists can't have beards.

Who ties your shoes for you?

That illustrates the difficulty of separating the sheep from the goats...But, how does one obtain definitive evidence one way or the other?

It's only difficult for a jackass.

Trex: Everyone knows that fundamentalist Muslims don't really consider a man a true adult until he's reached the age of 40, the age when Muhammad first received revelation. Until then, he is a "shaab" or youth.

So ,technically-speaking, that 79 year-old should have plenty of good, freedom-hating years ahead of him. I'm pretty sure that's what Ex-liberal was trying to say. Republicans are nothing if not experts on Muslim/Middle-Eastern culture.

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"Mysticdog: I agree that this is primarily our problem. But how do you propose we fix it? Concrete answers, please." Kevin Drum

Kevin: First, you practice what you preach. No torture. Legal representation. Fair trial.

Then, the ones who are not guilty are compensated. Not only with money, but with care and time and the best that America can offer in terms of hospitality, opportunity and inclusion. I.E. make them like you, not hate you.

I'm with mmf**. Just kill the Uighurs. In China they'd be lucky to get a bullet in the back of the head without being tortured. A little injection in tropical Cuba would be a mercy.

IMHO if the US was now regularly torturing prisoners, and if the Red Cross found out, I think we would know about it, one way or another.

Yes, you'd think we would have heard about it by now...oh, wait, we did, several years ago in fact:

BBC.co.uk
Tipton three complain of beatings
Sunday, March 14, 2004

Three Britons released from Guantanamo Bay after two years of imprisonment have told of the conditions they endured as terror suspects.
The three - Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and Shafiq Rasul, 26, all from Tipton in the West Midlands - returned to Britain last week.

They had been captured in Afghanistan, suspected of links to the Taleban, and were taken to the US camp in Cuba.

The three told UK newspapers they were often beaten by US troops.

Their claims of abuse come after similar descriptions by two other released Britons.

....Mr Iqbal said that while being held by US troops in Afghanistan they were made to kneel bent double, with their foreheads touching the ground.

"If your head wasn't touching the floor or you let it rise up a little they put their boots on the back of your neck and forced it down. We were kept like that for two or three hours."

Mr Rasul said he was also kicked, punched and knelt on by troops.

....Mr Ahmed said during an interrogation session in Afghanistan with an MI5 officer and another official who said he was from the Foreign Office, "all the time I was kneeling with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head."

....For the flight from Afghanistan to Cuba, Mr Rasul said they had their heads shaved, body cavities searched, were dressed in orange overalls, given goggles and earmuffs, and chained.

"The only thing that relieved the sensory deprivation and occupied me for the 22-hour flight was that I was in serious pain," Mr Rasul told the Observer.

"The guards told me to go to sleep but the belt was digging into me - when I finally got to Cuba I was bleeding. I lost feeling in my hands for the next six months."

I notice that ex-liberal didn't try to dispute my claim that I'd read that some Republican Congressmen rape and kill babies. And little puppies.

His silence speaks volumes, doesn't it....

you let them go, of course.

none of them are terrorists.

and none had anything to do with the events of 11/09/01.

...if the US was now regularly torturing prisoners, and if the Red Cross found out, I think we would know about it, one way or another.

Posted by: ex-liberal on October 17, 2006 at 9:04 PM | PERMALINK

I think we SHOULD know about it, but I doubt it.

You don't read too well! You really are a complete moron. The ICRC are going to be silent on it. It's not a question of "if now" but if ever as a systematic scheme. It clearly was. We know that from Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan, the now admitted secret imprisoning and "extraordinary renditions", consistent ex-prisoner evidence, etc.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/10/10/redcross.guantanamo.ap/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6618051

Either say torture is OK by you, or admit these guys are the biggest shits in recent US history. Just come clean and admit you're a Gestapo hugger.

Note that the Red Cross regularly visits Gitmo. They haven't found the alleged torture. Therefore, I disbelieve these Taliban ex-prisoners.

I missed this bit. Wrong again:

WASHINGTON - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

A detainee is escorted by guards at Guantanamo Bay. In a confidential report the International Committee of the Red Cross said it found prisoner abuse that amounted to 'a form of torture' at the US military facility, The New York Times reported (AFP/File/Roberto Schmidt)

An ICRC inspection team that spent most of June at Guantanamo Bay reported the use of psychological and sometimes physical coercion on the prisoners, the newspaper said.

It said it had recently obtained a memorandum that quoted the report in detail and listed its major findings.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1130-01.htm

And in case your language skills are no better than your reasoning skills, allow me to post the following definition in advance:

Tantamount: Equivalent in effect or significance; not differing in essence.

trex, in this context, "tantamount to" torture means "not" torture. If the Red Cross had found torture, they would have said so.

the word that thats missing here is "integrity".
They think some of these people are genuinley dangerous. Its very simple.
Try them or convict them. Otherwise release them.
period.
you mean that some of these dangerous people might be released? Integrity is where you do the right thing, even if the results might not be to your liking. Thats integrity.

Or we can go with the War Crimes option:
Use as much "I can't believe its not torture!" on them as needed, and then try them and convict them and detain them indefinately.

Your either on the side of America.
Or on the side of the Republicans.
Its that simple.

ex-liberal, if you read even the short blurb I posted, in it the Red Cross said that the treatment amounted to a "form of torture."

A form of torture is torture. It is not the absence of torture.

I don't know how you can be so willfully fucking obtuse.

...If the Red Cross had found torture, they would have said so.

Posted by: ex-liberal on October 17, 2006 at 11:30 PM | PERMALINK

Let's spell it out, moron.

The ICRC inspection rules do not allow it to make announcements or pronouncements about what they find in prisons.

T h e y I s s u e A R e p o r t T o T h e H o l d i n g G o v e r n m e n t.

F o r T h e i r E y e s O n l y!

Talk about impenetrably dense.

Ex-Liberal, there are two separate categories of potential (I emphasize, potential) criminal you're talking about.

#1: Someone who was in fact guilty of terrorist acts or war against the US, who is brought before a hearing that conforms to the Geneva Conventions and US traditional practice, and is found not guilty. This person returns to the Middle East and resumes their war against the US. What we have here is a failure of that particular hearing, and given evidence of the person's actual crimes, it would be as important to review the hearing to find out how the failure happened, just as in any other