How Quickly We Forget

10 Comments

1. 

   Don Durito on November 16, 2010 at 11:36 am

   I suppose a payoff is better than nothing. It would have probably never happened had New Labour still been in power – and I’m sure this will make for some semi-favorable news cycles for a teetering Tory-Liberal coalition.

   • 

     Don Durito on November 16, 2010 at 11:54 am

     I realize that seems enormously cynical. It’s just the Tories don’t exactly strike me as being anti-torture as a matter of principle.

     All that said, I am still sickened at the prospect that our own architects of torture are allowed to go about their lives with impunity. I only hold out some faint hope that some of these bastards will be tried in absentia somewhere. The US will never do squat about it.

2. 

   Brendan Skwire on November 16, 2010 at 12:28 pm

   it’s easy to point fingers at John yoo.
   it’s a lot more difficult to acknowledge that the President hasn’t closed Guantanamo, and in fact innocent people are still being held incommunicado, indefinitely. And many more were shipped over to Bagram, under his watch.

   I’m as disgusted as you are, but why gloss over this inconvenient fact.

   • 

     Don Durito on November 16, 2010 at 12:31 pm

     Precisely.

   • 

     utried on November 16, 2010 at 1:34 pm

     Congress wouldn’t fund closing Gitmo.
     Please document your accusations about Bagram.

     • 

       Brendan Skwire on November 16, 2010 at 3:58 pm

       ahem:

       Yesterday, the Obama DOJ — as expected — filed a legal brief (.pdf) which adopted the arguments originally made by the Bush DOJ to insist that detainees whom they abduct from around the world and then ship to Bagram (rather than Guantanamo) lack any constitutional rights whatsoever, including habeas review.  The Obama administration is appealing from a decision (.pdf) by Bush-43-appointed District Court Judge John Bates which, applying Boumediene, held that detainees at Bagram who are originally detained outside of Afghanistan have the right to habeas review (Afghan citizens detained in Afghanistan have none, he found).  In other words, after Obama praised Boumediene  as “defending the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy,” he’s now attempting to make a complete mockery of that decision by insisting that it is inapplicable as long as he decides to ship detainees from, say, Thailand to Bagram rather than Guantanamo.

       pdf at the link, utried.

       and here too:

       Back in February, the Obama administration shocked many civil libertarians by filing a brief in federal court that, in two sentences, declared that it embraced the most extremist Bush theory on this issue — the Obama DOJ argued, as The New York Times’s Charlie Savage put it, “that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”  Remember:  these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield.   Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country — abducted from their homes and workplaces — and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned.

       yeah, and more here, from this past May:

       The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC.

       Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse.

       The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base.

       However, it has said it will look into the abuse allegations made to the BBC.

       evidence enough for you?

       • 

         Don Durito on November 16, 2010 at 4:00 pm

         Works for me.

       • 

         utried on November 16, 2010 at 7:50 pm

         They weren’t shipped from Gitmo.
         The administration continues the cases before the courts that were begun during the Bush adminstration.
         The president has to execute the laws, not pick and choose what he likes and doesn’t like.
         The detainee cases and the others involved with “the war on terror” are a legal nightmare.
         The intervies with the BBC are not evidence.
         Believe what you want. I don’t care.
         The next time, cite the court documents. Those are news articles and not written by people who understand what is what with law.
         No, it’s not good enough.
         Those three articles you cited are slanted and ignorant.

         • 

           Brendan Skwire on November 17, 2010 at 7:58 am

           “Those three articles you cited are slanted and ignorant.”

           Riiiiight.
           i’m done with this discussion, troll.

3. 

   seabe on November 16, 2010 at 1:12 pm

   How quickly we forget? You’re making the assumption that America dislikes this sort of  behavior. Most people I know support torture “if it’s the good guys doing it.”

   Forget? Heh, they never did; they yearn for it to return.

   Yes, there is a difference despite Obama’s disgusting positions on civil liberties; I give him far less slack in that court because he has unilateral power.