Cheney Says No Plans for Now to Close Guantanamo Prison

I'm about to throw the book at this thread.. Gitmo and prison camps like it have been bothering me for a very long time..

So here are some facts you may find informative..

Prisoners at Guantanamo: 38 pages

Revealed: the nationalities of Guantanamo

The UPI survey was conducted by painstaking compilation and analysis of the press and media reports from countries all around the world along with interviews with foreign government officials and concludes that nationalities of 38 separate countries are represented in the U.S. military detention center.

The United States says it has the right to indefinitely detain foreign suspects without charges or trial as long as the war against terror continues

Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors, according to documents released yesterday.

FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

Or, have a look at the Classified FBI files..

www.aclu.org...
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One small textbit taken from the FOIO 3928_3971.pdf contains:

He advised he hurts himself because he wants to return home and believed if he killed himself he would be sent home in a box and his borthers would have closure. He understood his case is being reviewed and advised he will be patient, but re-iterated being close to (retracted) would reduce his stress.

Sounds like a foaming-at-the-mouth terrorist to me!


If any other country in the WORLD were to start locking up people without due process throughout the world, you'd be screaming for war. But it ok for the United States to locked up people from 38 different countries?


Also


Panel Ignored Evidence on Detainee

A military tribunal determined last fall that Murat Kurnaz, a German national seized in Pakistan in 2001, was a member of al Qaeda and an enemy combatant whom the government could detain indefinitely at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

...

In fact, that evidence, recently declassified and obtained by The Washington Post, shows that U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information that linked Kurnaz to al Qaeda, any other terrorist organization or terrorist activities.

In recently declassified portions of a January ruling, a federal judge criticized the military panel for ignoring the exculpatory information that dominates Kurnaz's file and for relying instead on a brief, unsupported memo filed shortly before Kurnaz's hearing by an unidentified government official.

Kurnaz has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since at least January 2002.

Yep, hes still there.

How do we know if the detainee is an enemy combatant who according to Bush, Rumsfeld and O'Reilly is not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, or a taxi driver or unlucky Joe who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up getting kidnapped and sold to U.S. forces by others who lied and said they were fighters?

How do the innocent make their case if they are not allowed a voice with which to do it? Answer, they can't. That is why the Muslim world is justified in its criticism of us for holding prisoners for three years without charges, without lawyers and without a neutral forum - an Article III judge - in which to be heard.

We're pleased to learn that the U.S. plans to release 140 detainees from Guantanamo. On the other hand, we're outraged by this:

According to Time, activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. It said U.S. officials had concluded some detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. (our emphasis)

It took the U.S. over two years to figure out that up to 20% of these detainees were total innocents? During which time they were kept in cages without access to families or lawyers?

talkleft.com...

Rasul v. Bush was a lawsuit in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the U.S. court system has the authority to decide whether foreign nationals (non-U.S. citizens) held in Guantanamo Bay were rightfully imprisoned. The 6-3 ruling on June 29, 2004 reversed a Washington D.C. District Court's ruling that it has no jurisdiction to handle wrongful imprisonment cases for foreign nationals. The claimant whose name the case bears, Shafiq Rasul, was released before the decision was handed down.

www.answers.com...

The three cases related to the war on terrorism that the U.S. Supreme Court must now decide raise fundamental questions concerning the separation of powers under the Constitution and applicable federal statutes.



The question before the justices in Rasul v. Bush, heard two weeks ago, was whether courts have or lack the power to consider whether foreign nationals reported captured by American allies in the theater of war and handed over to the U.S. military are being lawfully detained at Guantanamo.

Last Wednesday, the main question in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla, the other cases, was whether any constitutional or statutory provision authorizes executive officials to deprive an American citizen whom they have declared to be an “enemy combatant” of his liberty for an indefinite period, without allowing him access to a lawyer, without charging him with a crime and without granting him the opportunity to tell his side of the story (except when under interrogation).

The issues raised in these cases are of the utmost importance because of the arbitrary, and hence potentially tyrannical, use of executive power.

In Guantanamo Cases, A Question of Tyranny

That's enough for now.. I'll be back later to see what direction this thread takes.

[edit on 6/12/2005 by QuietSoul]

Wow, excellent links QuietSoul.

Another good place to look is at the book "The Torture Memos." Lots of hard data. The book's only about 15 lbs.

You have voted QuietSoul for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Great Job Mister!

Thank You!

Originally posted by Memorialday1999
First, I have lost family members to war and to terrorism thus my perspective is a bit harsh at times, like it or not.

Second, we do know who was behind 911 and the fool even took credit for it. I will leave that topic for another thread.

Wrong place wrong time, yes I guess you could say that for all those lost on 911 and for all innocent people of any nation caught in terrorist attacks and war. War is not fun and innocent lives are a cost of war. We don't leave in Eden anymore so the world is ugly and I really don't see too much hope for it changing in my life time.

And please refrain from non-joking name calling such as "ignorant". I perceive that comment as you calling me "stupid", perhaps you are not but perception is what causes many misunderstandings in life. This site appears to promote open discussions of many opinions and I have read some pretty saucy responses on other threads. I think mine are quite toned in relation to some I have read and I do not make personal attacks although I will joke around. If a joke offends you, please let me know as it is never intentional. Have a nice day.

I never called you ignorant. I stated you're ignorant to the happenings of Gitmo and such prisons. Big difference.

You percieve that thousands of people being interrogated and tortured in Gitmo (and the like) is OKAY because some unrelated group of people knocked down our towers.


You lost family members, so you completely sidetrack the fact that our country is locking up people without due process. 20% TWENTY PERCENT of them were INNOCENT and are STILL in GITMO.. Is that OKAY because you lost family members? He's lost family, you lost family, I lost family. The war is very real and the illegal astrocities our country is also very real.


Open your eyes.

Good points, all around.

If we don't agree, let's agree to disagree and try to keep it friendly. We all benefit from that. Even when we don't see eye to eye.

[edit on 6/12/05 by EastCoastKid]

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Good points, all around.

If we don't agree, let's agree to disagree and try to keep it friendly. We all benefit from that. Even when we don't see eye to eye.

[edit on 6/12/05 by EastCoastKid]

Aye, I could go on forever about GITMO and such bases. The whole topic irks me and I'll probably be posting info on this thread all week.

The fact that people out there still believe things that are happening there are 'ok' and 'acceptable' really gets my emotions going.

For the longest time I was unbias to it all. After I did a little research (especially reading the above .pdf files) you start to realize that most of the people are being treated like absolute dog sh!t. Read those pdf files.. if you read them all and still come out thinking everything is "ok" then you need some serious re-evaluating IMO..

I don't care what the people did, who they killed or how many.. they don't deserve to be treated like animals. They need to be sent to trial, convicted and then punished. Not the other way around.

Originally posted by QuietSoul

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Good points, all around.

If we don't agree, let's agree to disagree and try to keep it friendly. We all benefit from that. Even when we don't see eye to eye.

[edit on 6/12/05 by EastCoastKid]

Aye, I could go on forever about GITMO and such bases. The whole topic irks me and I'll probably be posting info on this thread all week.

The fact that people out there still believe things that are happening there are 'ok' and 'acceptable' really gets my emotions going.

For the longest time I was unbias to it all. After I did a little research (especially reading the above .pdf files) you start to realize that most of the people are being treated like absolute dog sh!t. Read those pdf files.. if you read them all and still come out thinking everything is "ok" then you need some serious re-evaluating IMO..

I don't care what the people did, who they killed or how many.. they don't deserve to be treated like animals. They need to be sent to trial, convicted and then punished. Not the other way around.

Agreed. Keep spreading the word, QS. Pushing information on what is really going on is every bit as important as carrying a weapon for your country.

You cant hide the Sun, the Moon and the Truth