if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
A Guy Who Pumps Gas In Baghdad
by Lee
Jules Crittenden points to this blood-boiler in the WSJ about the coming publication of a poetry anthology by detainees at Guantanamo Bay. … How about a poetry anthology from the families of the victims of many of those Gitmo jihadists?
Unfortunately, things don’t always break down so neatly.
An Army officer with a key role in the U.S. military hearings at Guantanamo Bay says they relied on vague and incomplete intelligence and were pressured to declare detainees “enemy combatants,” often without any specific evidence.
His affidavit, released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.
Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only “generic” material that didn’t hold up to the most basic legal challenges.
Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and those intelligence agencies.
“What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” Abraham said in the affidavit, filed in a Washington appeals court on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an “enemy combatant.”
My God! It’s like everything I’ve been saying for three years is true!
Come on, Bush supporters. Let’s hear how this guy is actually a stealth Democrat. Let’s hear about how this is published in that durn librul media, and we all know that they secretly want to destroy Amurka by letting the terrists win. Come on, hit me with all your usual drivel.
Or, you can just fucking man up and admit you’ve been duped and lied to.
Comments
You asked for my response and here it is: I don’t give a shit about the people in Gitmo.
And I’ll say this too. I don’t much care for the law-enforcement approach. The stuff you quote above sounds like how attorneys would discuss a shoplifting trial.
With that being said, I say close Gitmo and send them all home, which seems to some a much worse option that Gitmo.
Lee, what would you suggest we do with guys caught on the battlefield? Since Gitmo is closing up shop, what happens next?
Lee, what would you suggest we do with guys caught on the battlefield?
I’ve answered this so many times I’m not going to boither it again.
I will say, though, that I think it’s terribly sad that someone who has made the law his profession has so little respect for the practice of it that he’s willing to issue a blanket guilty verdict to anyone we choose to accuse, regardless of a total lack of any actual evidence against them.
I will say, though, that I think it’s terribly sad that someone who has made the law his profession has so little respect for the practice of it that he’s willing to issue a blanket guilty verdict to anyone we choose to accuse, regardless of a total lack of any actual evidence against them.
I happen to agree with what Brian said and I’m also a lawyer.
But how? Explain it to me because I just don’t get it.
They’re sure these rules won’t be applied to them or the people they like. The moment that people on the right get rounded up as terrorists on flimsy evidence, it’ll all change.
I think that when you see how the legal system can be manipulated you lose faith in its ability to protect you.
I’m not saying that our legal system doesn’t work, because it’s about as good a system as you’ll find, but it often works in ways that don’t produce a result that you’d want to trust your life with.
For example, look at the OJ trial. There was a case of a very bright group of lawyers picking apart police work and creating enough doubt that a man was set free. I think almost everyone would agree that there’s no doubt that the evidence against OJ was overwhelming, but Barry Scheck was so good in doing his job that he found every little crack and used it to free a guilty man.
I knew Barry Scheck pretty well during the trial. He was a professor at my law school (Cardozo in NYC) and the trial took place when I was a member of law review. I got to see the behind the scenes work and talked with Barry about the case. While I won’t say that Barry ever said that he was going to free a guilty man (because he never said that explicitly), it was clear that Barry was using his skills to do just that.
So for me, when it comes to something like protecting us against terror, I absolutely do not want to rely on a system that can so easily be turned on its head. I bet that even without torture, a good lawyer could probably get KSM found not guilty.
I do respect the rule of law, but I do not trust the legal system to protect our lives. So if the solution to terror is to treat it like a crime, you are asking, in my opinion, for an impotent response.
That’s a very general response, but it’s the gist of my beef with the notion of responding to terror with the legal system.
And by the way, I just emailed three friends who are lawyers and asked them whether they agreed with what Brian said and they all did. Perhaps it’s the company I keep. It may also be something like seeing the kitchen at a chinese restaurant...the more you know about what happens behind the scenes, the less you like it.
I agree with just about everything you wrote. The problem is that the legal system can be perverted in the exact opposite direction. You show me OK and I’ll raise you Nifong.
But the issue isn’t guilt or innocence or protection or anything like that. It’s that our government, so that they can claim to be “doing something” (the two most dangerous words in the English language) are taking people, the majority of whom have no evidence of wrongdoing against them, and holding them indefinitely, without trial, and without the fundamental rights that we are all entitled to, even the complete shitbags.
I’m not talking about US Constitutional law. Set up something like Nuremberg, but make it legitimate. The time for doing something legitimate, however, is long past. We’ve got guys in prison based on “evidence” obtained under torture. We can’t let them go, because then we’d be “weak,” but we can’t try them because nothing but the most kangaroo of courts would accept the evidence. So these poor bastards are just going to sit in limbo, forever, unable to have the opportunity to confront their accusers, prove their innocence, or be found guilty.
I don’t care how many law degrees you have hanging on your wall, what we’re doing is wrong.
One more thing: it’s interesting your bring up Barry Scheck. Here’s a guy who has done so much good in his life freeing the innocent, and he will forever be remembered as the guy who got a double murderer off.
No matter how much good America does, what we are doing in Gitmo and our secret torture prisons will be a black stain on this country’s name for generations. Perhaps forever.
FYI, I wasn’t defending the Bush administration with that post. I was agreeing with Brian’s statement about the law enforcement approach not being to my liking.
I don’t approve of torture and I don’t agree with using a label such as enemy combatant to get around the constitutional protections we are supposed to have. This is a very unique time in history and we’re grappling with how to deal with a problem that defies the systems we have. I honestly don’t have an answer to how we should be doing things. I do know, however, that I value my safety over adherence to evidentiary rules.
Barry has done a lot of good. Personally, he’s a bit of an asshole. I had a lot of interactions with him over the years (not only during law school but also generally-we were neighbors in Brooklyn Heights and often were in social situations together) and never could stomach a lot of his grandstanding and self importance. With that said, he will go down as one of the more important guys in the legal field for his work with the Innocence Project. I think that his work with OJ helped the Innocence Project and he knew that this would happen. So while he will be somewhat infamous, he also was deliberative in cultivating his reputation.
I do know, however, that I value my safety over adherence to evidentiary rules.
I couldn’t agree more. The problem is that, rather than look to something like Nuremberg, which has total legitimacy in the eyes of history, we created secret torture prisons and sent people to Syria to be tortured and did all kinds of nefarious shit.
I think you’ll agree that it would have been quite possible for us to achieve both our goals, keeping America safe while remaining an example of propriety and hope for the dispossessed peoples of the world. And we totally blew it by taking the low road.
I agree, Lee. I think there was a method to what the administration did, and it may have even been effective, but it caused great damage too. It was short term thinking for a long term problem, at its worst. However, I don’t know whether anyone could have come up with a workable substitute.
I think you’ll agree that it would have been quite possible for us to achieve both our goals, keeping America safe while remaining an example of propriety and hope for the dispossessed peoples of the world. And we totally blew it by taking the low road.
Yes, exactly.
How the hell did you get to the point where you won’t laugh about prisoners of any kind releasing a poetry anthology!? I mean, what the hell is that!?
You know what, a lot a stuff has been thrown around about “if you do so and so, you’ve lost the war on terror”, but seriously, if you can’t laugh at your enemy when they do stupid shit like this, then you… I don’t even know. You can’t do shit.
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Do you think some of these people might have done this torturing on thier own with zeal because they believed that this was the enemy, and now they’re using the media as an outlet to cover thier individual misbehavior?
I’d wonder how much of this might have happened without direction. It seems hazing isn’t done upon direct orders (more often than not) and a certain amount of it is tolerated UP the chain not down.