Is This Really The Justice America Deserves?

[TheBigotBasher]

US to limit Guantanamo releases
Between 50 and 100 detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay cannot be released or put on trial, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

The fate of those detainees "is still open", Mr Gates told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The detention centre was set up in January 2002 for those captured in the US "war on terror".

Some 245 men are still held. In January President Barack Obama signed an order to close the prison within a year.

The US Justice Department is trying to determine which detainees will be taken by other countries or placed on trial.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8027547.stm

So we believe that they are a terrorist threat but we have NOTHING to prove it? It must be true, the Army says so.

You either support a justice system, with an independent judiciary or you do not. You can not claim to support a democracy and have people locked up without hope of release or trial based on the decision of a politician.

This is not just American history that is being torn apart, it is hundreds of years of British justice going back to the Magna Carta.

When the image of the hanging of Sadam Hussein was broadcast across the World, little did we know that would forever change the Anglo-American culture, in the way it did. The Governments of the UK and US took his mantle.

(Spelling updated and reposted on my blog http://thebigotbasher.wordpress.com/)

[Mist]

1. Our new administration shouldn't be going along with the amorphous category

created by BushChenyCo. Why are they delaying doing something about these detainees?

What are they gaining from keeping these people locked up?

[NYC_SKP]

13. We really don't know what President Obama knows about these. I'm willing to wait and see.

He was handed a fucked-up-from-the-beginning unconstitutional situation.

I'll give the benefit of the doubt on this, that he's got material that might implicate this group and that he's trying to find the best resolution to the problem.

We don't know what the administration has on them, the challenges, the paradoxes, and I trust him to work it out, but not to be able to do it yesterday.

:patriot:

[TheBigotBasher]

15. I am really not sure much can.

I guess that these are now very very angry people - who to me have every right to be angry - who can no longer be let out because of the grave danger that they now represent to innocent lives.

If you lost your liberty, probably your home and family, were tortured, faced no end to imprisonment without trial, I guess you may become annoyed.

The best thing that the US could do is tell them about the judicial system. Maybe a truck load of $$s would calm them down.

[NYC_SKP]

16. If innocent, the money would be appropriate.

And some protection or ongoing support.

[TheBigotBasher]

17. They have not even been charged with anything yet.

I still remain committed to innocent until proven guilty.

At best these people are being held for the thought crime of planning and preparing terrorist acts. The UK version of this law would never pass in the US because of the Constitution (even despite the complete disregard BushCo had for it).

As for protection / ongoing support. The Rethugs may hate it, but yeah they will probably need it, as once they are out of GITMO, a lot of bigots will assume no smoke without fire - which will place them under death threats for the rest of their lives.

[NYC_SKP]

19. The problem is that the lies are probably so deep and in layers....

...it wouldn't surprise me if the administration hasn't even figured it out yet.

Each one of them probably has a huge file of bullshit "evidence", and one cannot release them, really, until these things are sorted out.

I guess that the chance that any one of them might be chargeable, holdable, a threat, has to be a great impediment to doing the right thing too soon.

so many lies to sort through.

[TheBigotBasher]

20. I used to be a Young Tory

and I remember having a discussion with a newly elected MP. He said his biggest fear in life would be to be a member of a Party of Government that involved itself in War Crimes. The prospect of that happening, I thought was just too remote to countenance.

Many years on and the whole political landscape has changed so fundamentally that I do not know where I stand. I left the Tories when they moved to the hard right. I never expected Labour to move even further.

There are now, if you use the figures that were used of "worklesness" that were used in the 80's some 7.8 million people without jobs in the UK. It is a shocking sttaistic. Twenty percent of the active labour market are now without employment. The "claimant count" (those who qualify for jobseekers allowance) is a quarter of that.

The fact that not one, but two UK Prime Ministers, never mind the fact that they were Labour Prime Ministers, were beholden to the most extreme of Republican Presidents ever and were more than likely complicit with torture still shocks and saddens me.

We have been promised a "full investigation" in to the Iraq War now that our troops are out. This to me must include investigation into the whether senior UK Politicians and officials were complicit with war crimes.

[Kdillard]

2. The mess that is Guatanamo will not be easily resolved.

Thank the Bush Administration for that. I believe we are trying to do the best we can to resolve the matter and consider our national security.

[AllentownJake]

3. We are still fighting a war in Afghanistan

Change their status to POW. When that war ends. They should be released.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TheBigotBasher]

5. How do you know that they are dangerous?

They might be now. I guess anyone would be dangerous if they were locked away without trial, subject to extreme conditions and torture, unable to see their family.

[AllentownJake]

6. You can't hold people forever without a trial

We need to either make a case in a court of law or release them.

[TheBigotBasher]

8. That is if they are from Afganistan.

We do not know where they are from, what "crimes" they were supposed to have committed (probably none) or why they are they. All we know is that they have been classed as "too dangerous".

This is just wrong on so many levels.

[leftofthedial]

7. This is America.

There is no Justice, except in the sense that it's bought and sold like any other commodity.

[TheBigotBasher]

9. Let them buy it then.

However weak the justice system is - give them access to it.

Whatever it is - no Country should simply imprison people at will - for crimes that they were probably just thinking about.

[leftofthedial]

10. I bet their portfolios are in good shape

and could easily fund a defense led by Robert Shapiro and Alan Dershowitz...


It is deplorable that our country can be so oblivious to a reality that is so completely opposite what we used to stand for.

[TheBigotBasher]

11. What saddens me

is that Britain, under Blair, then Brown, not only followed Bush down this murky path, but created whole new paths leading to a Police State. To the most extreme of levels. These attitudes will prevail in politics, I fear, for long after I am dead.

We have fought terrorism before. The UK has had hundreds of years of doing so. We never needed to remove justice then, nor do we now.

[stillcool]

12. They can't be released because..

they've been tortured the shit out of and are brain dead. Or..they may have actually done something, but they can't be charged because all the evidence is tainted by torture. Or, they can't be released because once they land in any country, they can tell their stories, and sue the shit out of the U.S. Government, or..no country in the entire world will allow them entry.

[TheBigotBasher]

14. Sadly, that demonstrates what we have become.

We imprison people, often because some neighbour wanted to earn a few dollars, torture them and then can not let them out because we fear that the torture has made them desire revenge. I would encourage them to sue. I can definitely see how the other option may seem better when you are being electrocuted, water-boarded or whatever else was being done in OUR NAME.

[stillcool]

18. I think this will plague our country..

for years, and years, and years. I can certainly understand the desire to forget about it and move on, but it won't go away. Not this time. It's too malignant.