Guess who scares the libs in `08?
- Thread starter TGregg
- Start date
So how do you know they are enemy combatants, unless you give them a fair and democratic trial?
Americans are beheaded since it's the only law the US recognises as valid. Extreme violence against civillian iraqis is returned tit for tat.
Here are two:
Yaser Esam Hamdi was a U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan while fighting U.S. forces with the Taliban in 2001. He was named by the U.S. administration as an "illegal enemy combatant", and detained for almost three years without receiving any charges.
On June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court issued a decision repudiating the U.S. government's unilateral assertion of executive authority to suspend constitutional protections of individual liberty.
"An interrogation by one's captor, however effective an intelligence-gathering tool, hardly constitutes a constitutionally adequate fact-finding before a neutral decision-maker," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
The U.S. Supreme Court opinion reasserted the rule of law in American society: "It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad."
Justice O'Connor added, "We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaser_Hamdi
José Padilla (also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir) (born October 18, 1970) of Puerto Rican descent, is accused of being a terrorist by the United States government. He was arrested in May 2002 and detained without charge for more than three years in a South Carolina military prison under orders of President George W. Bush.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Padilla
According to Bush, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." So maybe next he can declare Cindy Sheehan as an "illegal enemy combatant" and lock her up for 3 years without any charges.
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." -- Thomas Paine
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." -- Thomas Paine
If I were sitting on a court considering the issue, I would hold:
1. That an enemy combatant is a person engaged in "combat," with the military forces of the U.S. Once that person is captured, they are the functional equivalent of a prisoner of war and should be accorded similar rights, irrespective of whether or not that person is a member of the military force of some recognized foreign State.
This holding would cover most of the Guantanamo cases currently at issue.
2. That a person who is found attempting to enter the U.S. and/or its territorial possessions, and who has the objective intent to wage war on the U.S., found by considering the totality of the circumstances surrounding the person's entry into the country, is also a prisoner of war, irrespective of whether or not that person is a member of the military force of some recognized foreign State.
The totality of the circumstances should be determined by a civil magistrate, because the person is captured not on a battlefield but while using civil methods of entry. If, however, the person is captured while using a military method of entry, such as something as trivially identifiable as a rubber inflatable watercraft designed for military activity, then that person should be deemed as an invading army of one and he/she should be immediately treated as a prisoner of war. If the person uses a civilian pleasure craft to enter U.S. waters, then the determination should be made by a civil court.
This holding covers persons such as Jose Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen and who reentered the country purportedly to wage war by conspiring to detonate a thermonuclear device (frankly, a very speculative charge, in view of the fact that there's no evidence that Mr. Padilla ever had an opportunity to acquire any radioactive materials with which to construct such a device, and further because he has never been actually charged or indicted on this issue.
However, using my proposed method of due process, Mr. Padilla would have been confined under the civil laws, and the government would have had to either come forward with some evidence, or it would have had to release Mr. Padilla.
There is of course, nothing that says the government could not maintain a 24X7 watch on Mr. Padilla while he is free, assuming that he was released rather than charged.
The fundamental issue with Padilla's incarceration is that the government has sought to have its cake and eat it, too, because the government doesn't want to produce any in- or ex- culpatory evidence, because it claims that this will compromise the national security.
I think that the truth is likely that the government doesn't have any evidence, and it is merely trying to dissuade others from pursuing similar means and methods to Mr. Padilla by keeping him confined without trial.
I can see both sides, i.e., the legitimate fear of a President, who, if he fails to do everything within his power to secure the nation from attack, may inadvertently permit a nuclear detonation on U.S. soil, vs. the very real fact that Mr. Padilla's 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendment rights have been violated in about every conceivable way, and that, absent some evidence from the government, it appears that at least with respect to Mr. Padilla, we indeed have chosen to vacate his Bill of Rights.
Anyway, I think that the above two holdings would pretty much wrap up all of the legal issues. Frankly, I'm a little ashamed of the courts for not dealing with the issues more directly, but everyone's understandably afraid of being named as the person directly responsible for the nuclear destruction of a U.S. city, due to lack of foresight.
Personally, I think a nuclear attack on the U.S. by a radical Islamic fundamentalist person or group is inevitable, and it really doesn't matter what we do to try to prevent it, so I don't think that there's much harm in making some definite and certain legal holdings that will put most of the current issues surrounding the so called enemy combatants to rest.
I'm not looking forward to such an attack, and I happen to live close enough to a U.S. seaport where such an attack could occur, and I could easily be a victim.
But, I would prefer a more certain result from the courts, and I figure that within about 15-30 minutes immediately following a nuclear attack on the U.S., that the Mideast "problem" will simply cease to exist in any meaningful way, except to the extent that Haliburton will have a big job reinstalling all the melted oil wells and pipes.
ok, so all countries should declare the Geneva Convention to be invalid?
Put it this way, can you think of any country that had military rule AND human rights?
Let's not kid ourselves, the US has destroyed cities like Faluja, turning them into wastelands and displacing ordinay citizens.Your news dares not report this. The government would have a fit.
Faluja was illegal collective punishment, terrorism to the extreme.
And it is happening all over Iraq.
Come on now, what red blooded US solder would not like to kick the shit out of any dark skinned iraqi? They are trained to blindly hate. The same kinds of people who willingly rounded up people into cattle cars and sent them to the gas chambers.
Pretty sad how we have not advanced as a human race over the
last 50 years or so.
Unless you are or have acess to a highly paid lobbyist, you have no say in goverment, NONE. The dictionary definition of facism is the merger of state and business.
Just a coincidence that the top people in the US are all oil men, and HAL and co are striking untold riches in the M.E.? And ditto for arms companies. Just an unfortunate conicidence, I guess.
Still. go and vote - maybe your voice will have more pull than a tobacco, pharms,oil, arms, lobbyist!
I have an idea - look at how much the court system costs tax payers. All those lawyers, judges, and security. And then you have a conviticed criminal who goes through dozens of appeals at our expense. Why not tell the ACLU and all those whining liberals to go to hell. And those liberal judges.
What I propose is that the police will handle this. Any person arrested will go straight from the police car, to the interrogation chamber. If they confess they are sentenced. Sounds fair. I mean, police would never abuse their powers. And it saves so much money. Tell those bleeding hearts with their leftist agenda to go away. This system is used succesfully in russia, iraq, columbia etc. You don't want your conttry to be soft on crime or pander to the liberals, do you ?
Put it this way, can you think of any country that had military rule AND human rights?
Let's not kid ourselves, the US has destroyed cities like Faluja, turning them into wastelands and displacing ordinay citizens.Your news dares not report this. The government would have a fit.
Faluja was illegal collective punishment, terrorism to the extreme.
And it is happening all over Iraq.
Come on now, what red blooded US solder would not like to kick the shit out of any dark skinned iraqi? They are trained to blindly hate. The same kinds of people who willingly rounded up people into cattle cars and sent them to the gas chambers.
Pretty sad how we have not advanced as a human race over the
last 50 years or so.
Unless you are or have acess to a highly paid lobbyist, you have no say in goverment, NONE. The dictionary definition of facism is the merger of state and business.
Just a coincidence that the top people in the US are all oil men, and HAL and co are striking untold riches in the M.E.? And ditto for arms companies. Just an unfortunate conicidence, I guess.
Still. go and vote - maybe your voice will have more pull than a tobacco, pharms,oil, arms, lobbyist!
I have an idea - look at how much the court system costs tax payers. All those lawyers, judges, and security. And then you have a conviticed criminal who goes through dozens of appeals at our expense. Why not tell the ACLU and all those whining liberals to go to hell. And those liberal judges.
What I propose is that the police will handle this. Any person arrested will go straight from the police car, to the interrogation chamber. If they confess they are sentenced. Sounds fair. I mean, police would never abuse their powers. And it saves so much money. Tell those bleeding hearts with their leftist agenda to go away. This system is used succesfully in russia, iraq, columbia etc. You don't want your conttry to be soft on crime or pander to the liberals, do you ?