All the more reason to have a trial, particularly if it is the government saying the confession is good or the evidence is overwhelming. Is he human? Do non-Americans have rights? In the Declaration, some of the justifications include: We can live up to those standards, and should, for the Declaration also says:
Americans who kill innocent people do get those rights. Even war criminals get those rights (most of them anyhow). Your rationale is really just anger and fear.
This is a bit of a tangent but one thing that has always bothered me about these type of debates is the presumption by many that the US Constitution doesn't extend rights to the non-citizens. It actually does since the language of the Bill of Rights is primarily strictures on the government and not the granting of rights to the citizens. That is why if a Canadian for instance were arrested in the US he would still have all of the rights that a US citizen has in regard to the Justice system. This is why Guantanamo and not another US military base was chosen since it has a very unusual arrangement that even though it is a US military base it is Cuban territory leased from the deposed Cuban government. The argument put forward by the Bush Admin. is that it isn't US territory and since the Batista government no longer exist it is essentially a lawless territory.
I had a longish response typed up to this but somehow lost it when I logged in. It boiled down to this, however. If you're talking about Arar, all evidence suggest that he is nothing more than an innocent, normal, engineer and family man. If you're talking about Khadr it's a more complicated story, but note that he was 15 at the time, and a very young 15 at that. Half of his family are/were indeed dangerous radicals, but the kids were raised in Canada and are very different in character, although they so seem to be confused and caught between two worlds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadr_family The bottom line is, the situation is not as simple as you may believe it is, and Omar Khadr may well not be guilty of what he's been charged with. Note that one of his brothers was actually an informant for the CIA.
I had a question or two, which maybe someone could answer. I figured with so many people here who follow politics I could get answers much quicker than searching for it on my own. Plus, it's less effort. I guess my first question is...has there already been serious discussions about where the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will be moved to? I would consider it foolish to even begin the process of closing the place before you have a very clear idea as to where you are going to move these guys. Obviously, just letting them free isn't a valid option. So, which city/county/state/whatever have already been vetted as potential locations to house these guys?
Obama's executive order is intended to start determining those things with the goal of closing down the base within a year. So where they will be sent and what legal process they will go through are the things that they will be working on now. As of right now, no determination has been made - I don't know if they've sorted through any options yet or not though.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds. I'm having a hard time seeing how anyone would want to have a prison such as this anywhere near their hometown or how any congressman would want it in their state/district. Should make for good political theater.
maybe they should value the constitution a little bit. sullivan has tons of posts on this. here is one.
What does valuing the constitution have to do with wanting a terrorist prison in your hometown? That makes no sense. Would you volunteer your own hometown as a location?
On the one hand, I hear you, but as a property owner, I can say this: I'd rather a few alleged radical muslims in the local jail than an array of violent gangsters, meth addicts, and pervs. Seriously, what are these alleged terrorists going to do in the local jail? Pray too loudly? And if they escaped, they wouldn't be crawling through windows to get your stereo or family. They'd be headed overseas ASAP or back into some sleeper cell in a major city , and those already exist anyway.
Honestly, the prisoners just being there isn't the problem. The issue is that now that particular area becomes a terrorist target, and I guarantee you the government would even acknowledge this by extremely beefing up the security in the surrounding area.
I'm pretty sure they would most likely be looking for a much less populated area than Huntsville, TX.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/23/gitmo.detainee/index.html Not sure if my link works, just an intersting article on CNN.
It does not matter to me. I grew up next to prisons. No big deal. What's amazing is this wingnut theme that our prisons are not safe and that by even being within the same county as one of the Gitmo guys your life is in terrible danger. Please. You guys need to watch Lockup more. Our prisons are not the prisons of the movies where a guy can hire a helicopter, kill a few guards with his bare hands, and escape. Our Max Security prisons are certainly not like the Hollywood versions and our SuperMax are so far from fiction it's not even funny. The Supermax prison in Florence, CO already holds the Unabomber, that guy with the shoes on the airplane, The Blind Sheik, traitors, Terry Nichols, a bunch of Mob guys, and Eric Rudolph. Now, if the Mob and the White Supremacist movement can't come close to getting these guys out, what makes people think Al-Q can? They haven't even been able to get the guys out who are already there. Prison ain't the movies. Besides, we don't even know what the Obama administration will do with these people, so it's a moot point right now.
its the stupidest thing I keep hearing, "who wants these guys on our soil", as if cuba is a harder place break free from edit: and the reason the prison is in cuba in the first place is to avoid our laws
