Photo taken from Taxi to the Dark Side
The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners — more than twice the 275 being held at Guantánamo.
The administration has spent nearly three years and more than $30 million on a plan to transfer Afghan prisoners held by the United States to a refurbished high-security detention center run by the Afghan military outside Kabul.
But almost a year after the Afghan detention center opened, American officials say it can accommodate only about half the prisoners they once planned to put there. As a result, the makeshift American site at Bagram will probably continue to operate with hundreds of detainees for the foreseeable future, the officials said…
“The problem at Bagram hasn’t gone away,” said Tina Foster, a New York human rights lawyer who has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of the detainees at Bagram. “The government has just done a better job of keeping it secret…”
And even now, the legal basis under which prisoners are being held at the Afghan detention center remains unclear. Another Defense Department official, who insisted on anonymity because she was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue, said the detentions had been authorized “in a note from the attorney general stating that he recognizes that they have the legal authority under the law of war to hold enemy combatants as security threats if they choose to do so.”
Detailed article which barely scratches the surface. If we ever return as participants in the international rule of law, we will have a garbage heap of arbitrary rulings to clean up.
These are enemy combatants captured on the battlefield. I suppose a bullet in the back of head would be more appealing. To let them go is to face them again.
It’s easy to sit in the comfort and safety of your room and judge but until you have actually had to face it in person you know nothing.
What is more concerning to me is that our actions may have destroyed international law for good. What is to stop other nations from grabbing tourists and holding them without habeus corpus? What is to stop other nations from kidnapping our citizens off our soil and torturing them into false confessions?
Nothing at all.
Big Deal! Yawn!
what else is new?
#1 – there are plenty of vets and those currently serving who prefer the rule of law. Including the rules of war.
Sorry you can’t cut it.
#1 Navy Seal –
What makes you think they won’t face those “detainees” in the future ? Where do you draw a line on this and similar areas of conflict ? Do human beings lose their rights when they happen to be in the wrong place at the right time ?
In a seemingly endless parade of law bending and law breaking we continue to do nothing but scare the rest of the planet.
#5, #6 – sadly, guys like #1 learn from their “betters” – like the decider-in-chief.
Used to be you swore an oath to defend the Constitution and obey the Uniform Rules of Military Justice. Now, selective decisions and amendments are part of the process.
#5,#7
Bravely spoken. I could explain it to you but you would never understand.
#6-DeLaMa
Having live rounds hitting all around you tends to give a new perspective to a great many things.
During a firefight, you have little time to worry about the law. You can kill them before they kill you or if you’re lucky they give up and you capture them.
Many times, as soon as these people are release they return to the battlefield and often kill friendlies before they are permanently eliminated from the equation.
The simple answer is to keep these people in custody is to save lives on both sides. I leave politics to the politicians.
Let us not be fatuous, there are no fire-fights going on around these prisoners, they are in fact disarmed, disoriented and under absolute control. Of course in battle, law matters not, but using a state of kill or be killed as an excuse for actions -off- the battlefield is to debase ourselves to the level of the utterly lawless. And if we are going to do that we had might as well declare defeat, for we have then made ourselves into the very image of everything the terrorists have said to falsely elevate their moral standing over us.
My Grandpa was an interrogator during the second world war in the Pacific theater, and the brainwashing of the jihadists is weak compared to that the Japanese were subjected to, and yet we did not torture, we did not detain without rights. Indeed, our refusal to do these things showed the lie of the ‘gaijin’ fantasy, and got us more good info than any number of torture chambers possibly could. Needless to say, he is utterly horrified by all of this, to such an extent that he can’t even watch the news anymore. I would much rather us have a country that my Grandfather could be proud of.
A memo from a politically selected attorney is not the rule of law.
#9 – Li
Thank you for your excellent remarks.
One of the many victories that the terrorists have achieved against America is dragging down our values to their level. That is a victory on their part that we will have a hard time recovering from.
Navy Seal – Your remarks tell me that you are NOT a member of the military, and never have been. Your remarks are 100% that of an “armchair quarterback’. Please do not dishonor the US military by pretending to be someone that you are not. I suspect that you are actually a ‘military age’ right winger that talks the talk but does not walk the walk.
How do I know this.. because I know lots of Navy Seals, and they would NEVER use their membership in that elite group to espouse the type of views that you are presenting.
“One of the many victories that the terrorists have achieved against America is dragging down our values to their level.”
Gee, that sounds sort of chauvenistic. I thought we were all terrorists and that all US military personell were supposed to be war criminals, or something?
12,
No, that is the bullshit straw-man argument the right uses to tar anyone criticising the horrible mess Bush got us in. We are not all terrorists and our soldiers, sailores, and airmen are not terrorists.
However, our leadership is busy implementing policies and executing strategies that are little different from what the terrorists are doing.
Those that are criticising those policies and actions are not against the troops; on the contrary they are better patriots than the chickenhawks and sheeple that rubber-stamp and defend the criminal actions of our administration.
#11
Questioning my authenticity is fair but you are mistaken in your conclusion.
Personal views do not enter into this discussion only the facts on the ground. Any informed newspaper commentary would reveal the same information if so inclined.
Let’s see..
Arrest without a legal basis, no bail, no access to lawyers, no charges, no trial date, no outside communications, no record of arrest, interrogations including torture, racial profiling, ethnic profiling, no legal limitations on guards behavior, transfer to militia based forces, and on and on and on goes the list.
Yep, the terrorists are winning. They are turning the USA into just another country where principles and values are no longer a basic consideration.
Heck, just on the matter of torture.. there are multiple documented cases of people DYING under torture sanctioned by the US forces. Yet people still stand there and say “We don’t torture.”
Smartalix, you did not catch the article here last week with a link to an over intellectualized waste of paper rationalizing “We are all terrorists”. It’s the sort of thing only a professor with tenure, a con artist working the “fat, rich, idle, used-to-be trophy wife” social set, or a bigot looking for people who agree with him can get away with.
Awake, please specifically state the laws the US is supposed to be breaking. Be sure to include the jurisdiction of each law.
And, are you sure you want to regard those accused of breaking the law as having been convicted?
..Awake, please specifically state the laws the US is supposed to be breaking. Be sure to include the jurisdiction of each law.
HA, now that is one pathetic desperate request!
All of the items that I listed are illegal at a county, state, and Federal level in the USA. They are illegal under all international laws. They are illegal under the recently passed Iraq constitution.. should I continue?
Phillep.. I still await an statement by you that is based on facts, instead of regurguitaing some random “talking point” like the ChickenHawk that you obviously are.
Specify. Name events, name laws, name jurisdictions.
Name calling and vague “you know what I mean” does not cut it.
http://tinyurl.com/3cjw3t
The just about covers ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ aka torture. Given that the last people who pulled this shit were hanged at the Hague, I guess that would be the jurisdiction, eh?
Obviously everyone in Afghanistan (excluding our troops) must be terrorists. Otherwise, why are they living in Afghanistan?
And if they’re not with us, then they’re against us. So the solution is simple: Build a big fence around Afghanistan (with a screen-door at the Pakistan border), then send all the terrorists there.
Then we just implement a policy of shooting down all aircraft leaving Afghanistan.
The terrorists removed themselves from the protection of international law when they declined to wear uniforms and abide by it.
Get over it.
Oh my, they have a bunch of Afghans in a prison. You would think there’s a war going on or something.
Here’s a hint, people can be held as POWs for years.
I must be missing something from the story. What are you suggesting should happen to these people?
#14, Navy Seal,
#11
Questioning my authenticity is fair but you are mistaken in your conclusion.
Sorry, but I have to go with Awake on this. A real Navy Seal will always spell the word SEAL. True Special Forces do not use their experience to make themselves experts.
Personal views do not enter into this discussion only the facts on the ground.
Another give away you are a phony. Special forces deal with “the facts on the ground”, they don’t make policy. Policy is the purview of officers, politicians, and citizens.
#23, Mental Midget MikeN,
Here’s a hint, people can be held as POWs for years.
And how many of these prisoners are really Taliban or al Quaida? As what has been discovered in Guantanamo, many of these “Taliban” prisoners were turned in only for the bounty. They are just illiterate farmers or on someone’s shitlist.
#26
This guy may or may not be a Navy SEAL but I certainly am not but I spell it the way you required as proof. Pretty lame. You were so busy trying to discredit him you didn’t listen to what he had to say. I found his take pretty realistic and certainly carried more weight than your biased guesses.