First International Punishment of the US for Gitmo.

[Dalton]

Here's some support for me: Obama said he would close the Gitmo detention center. After assuming office, he did not. Likely reason: he discovered that nothing was going on there that warrant shutting it down.
Now, stop treating me like some Trektard.

I'm sure you have some absolutely astounding evidence to support your "likely reason".

[Flagg]

Here's some support for me: Obama said he would close the Gitmo detention center. After assuming office, he did not. Likely reason: he discovered that nothing was going on there that warrant shutting it down.
Now, stop treating me like some Trektard.

That would be relevent if Obama had not signed an executive order on his first fucking day in office to close the torture factory down. The only reason it's still open is because congress are pussies.

You're just trolling now, aren't you?

[Flagg]

NBCNews

Bush-era torture use 'indisputable,' Guantanamo must close, task force finds

By Matt Spetalnick and Jane Sutton, Reuters

An independent task force issued a damning review of Bush-era interrogation practices on Tuesday, saying the highest U.S. officials bore ultimate responsibility for the "indisputable" use of torture, and it urged President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp by the end of 2014.

In one of the most comprehensive studies of U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects, the panel concluded that never before had there been "the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody."

"It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture," the 11-member task force, assembled by the nonpartisan Constitution Project think tank, said in their 577-page report.

The scathing critique of methods used under the Republican administration of former President George W. Bush also sharpened the focus on the plight of inmates at Guantanamo, which Bush opened and his Democratic successor has failed to close.

Obama banned abusive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding when he took office in early 2009, but the widely condemned military prison at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba has remained an object of condemnation by human rights advocates.

A clash between guards and prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay camp last weekend and the release of harrowing accounts by inmates about force-feeding of hunger strikers threw a harsh spotlight on the predicament of the inmates, many held without charge or trial for more than decade.

The task force called the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo "abhorrent and intolerable" and called for it to be closed by the end of 2014 when NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan is due to end and most U.S. troops will leave.

By then, the 166 Guantanamo prisoners should be tried in civilian or military courts, repatriated or transferred to countries that would not torture them, or moved to U.S. jails, the task force's majority recommended.

But the 2014 goal will be hard to achieve because of legal, legislative and political obstacles Obama faces. While the White House says he remains committed to shutting Guantanamo, he has offered no new path to doing so in his second term.

The release of the encyclopedic report comes in the midst of the latest round of allegations of abuse at Guantanamo - which has become an enduring symbol of widely criticized Bush-era counterterrorism practices - where military officials say 43 prisoners are currently on a hunger strike.

"TRUTH COMMISSION"

Members of the task force described themselves as the closest thing to a "truth commission" since Obama decided early in his presidency against convening a national commission to investigate post-9/11 practices.

The panel, which included leading politicians from both parties, two U.S. retired generals and legal and ethics scholars, spent two years examining the U.S. treatment of suspected militants detained after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Panel members interviewed former Clinton, Bush and Obama administration officials, military officers and former prisoners, and the investigation looked at U.S. practices at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the CIA's former secret prisons overseas.

The task force was chaired by Asa Hutchinson, a Republican former congressman and undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration, and James Jones, a Democratic former congressman who served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

In a finding the panel said was its most notable and was reached "without reservation," the report said, "Torture occurred in many instances and across a wide range of theaters."

But the panel concluded there was "no firm or persuasive evidence" that the use of such techniques yielded "significant information of value."

"The nation's highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture," the report said, though it did not name names.

The task force, while concluding that U.S. and international laws were violated, did not recommend legal action against any of those involved but it did press for tighter rules to prevent a recurrence of torture.

"We as a nation have to get this right," Hutchinson told a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

The panel urged the U.S. government to release as much classified information as possible to help understand what went wrong and cope better with the next crisis.

"Publicly acknowledging this grave error, however belatedly, may mitigate some of those consequences and help undo some of the damage to our reputation at home and abroad," the report said.

The sweeping report cataloged abusive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and chaining prisoners in painful positions.

The task force also concluded that force-feeding hunger striking detainees is a form of abuse and should end. "But at the same time the United States has a legitimate interest in preventing detainees from starving to death," the panel said.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross last week expressed opposition to the force-feeding of prisoners and said he urged Obama to do more to resolve the "untenable" legal plight of inmates held there.

The hunger strike began in February to protest the seizure of personal items from detainees' cells. About a dozen are being force-fed liquid meals through tubes.

Guards swept through communal cell blocks at the camp on Saturday and moved the prisoners into one-man cells.

"The action was taken to ensure the health and safety of the detainees not to 'break' the hunger strike," said Navy Captain Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention center.

This. This is how you provide evidence, Darth Hairbrain.

[Metahive]

But Flagg, everyone knows that "Evidence" are a liberal conspiracy. The true rugged individual goes by his gut and by the pricking of his thumbs alone and they do tell him most clearly that those filthy, brown-skinned, 3/5ths of a person people in Gitmo with strange names are up to no good.

[Simon_Jester]

P.S. I'm not xenophobic or racist. I know that race is meaningless and as for xenophobia, I'm simply not politically correct (see my signature)

"Not politically correct" would mean that you are honest, but impolite.

You are far too ignorant to be honest, because to be honest you must tell the truth. And to tell the truth you must know the truth. You're not politically incorrect. You're just too lazy and ignorant to learn the truth about people who aren't the same as you, and too stupid to grasp the lesson even when other people try to teach you.

[Korto]

Four years old, but the point remains.
Most Guantanamo detainees are innocent: ex-Bush official

Many detainees locked up in Guantanamo Bay were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.

"There are still innocent people there," Republican Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell, told the Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
...
"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog.
...
Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."

240 detainees held, including Omar Khadr
Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are considered terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.

"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."

But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.

So, to recap, the majority innocent and either turned in for the bounty, or arrested for the crime of being vaguely in the area while being maliciously and continuously the wrong colour (American blacks may be relieved it's not just them. Fuck, I'll be honest, Australian Aboriginals too.).
The few actual terrorists they've got unable to be tried because of the use of torture.

Now, unless you can either come up with real evidence for your claims, which I feel impossible, or at least demonstrate a good-faith determined effort to find such, which from your posts I feel highly unlikely, I predict a very short career for you on this board.

[Terralthra]

Relevant:

Gitmo Is Killing Me

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.

President Obama's administration has assessed that Yemen's security situation is too unstable to repatriate prisoners there, while Congress has forbidden (repeatedly, in several ways) the executive branch from transferring prisoners to domestic confinement or releasing them anywhere in the US, US territories, etc.

[Dalton]

Here's some support for me: Obama said he would close the Gitmo detention center. After assuming office, he did not. Likely reason: he discovered that nothing was going on there that warrant shutting it down.
Now, stop treating me like some Trektard.

I'm sure you have some absolutely astounding evidence to support your "likely reason".

Still waiting for your response.

[Dalton]

Still waiting numbnuts.

[Darth Herobrine]

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that, far from being “the Bermuda Triangle of human rights” that Human Rights Watch’s Wendy Patten had dubbed it, Gitmo was in full compliance with the humane-treatment provisions of the Geneva Convention.

commentarymagazine.com

If one adds to this mix:
• the twelve separate inquiries into the abuses alleged by critics and former detainees at Gitmo that found no evidence of those abuses taking place;
• the revelation during the release earlier this year of the so-called “torture memos” that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques had been applied to exactly three suspects in the course of eight years and had never been standard operating practice at Gitmo;
• the evaluation by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point that 73 percent of Gitmo detainees were “a demonstrated threat” to Americans;
• and, finally, the fact that the detention facility was created in the wake of a declaration by Congress in September 2001 that “all necessary and appropriate force” should be used “against those nations, organizations, or persons” [emphasis added] responsible for the attacks of September 11;
—one may be permitted to wonder why, exactly, the pressure to close the prison facility has been so intense and long-lasting.

commentarymagazine.com

Here is some support for my position on Gitmo.

[Keevan_Colton]

First a quick question, it says 73% there...assuming for the sake of argument that its correct...what about the other 27% then?

There is also the slightly larger issue of independent inquiry rather than "9/10 true believers believe!" which really doesnt do much for your case. You've not provided any documentary evidence, just a link to the homepage of a rightwing rag...which you even managed to fluff up doing correctly. Seriously boy, what is up with you?

[PeZook]

I love how "Everything we do is totally legal according to the rules of war" is trotted out literally every time Gitmo comes up and an apologist notices ; By that standard, people hate Nazis undeservedly: yes, they tortured, raped and otherwise abused their resistance prisoners, but hey, if they're not wearing uniforms then the Geneva Conventions don't apply to them!

Sorry, but it's still fucked up. A beacon of freedom and democracy should be setting an example above and beyond the legally required minimum.

[Stark]

I think you'll find excusing the heinous acts of 'your side' is totally different from understanding the heinous acts of 'the other side', pal.

The best part for me is their pathetic and childish adherence to the attitudes of their 'founders', which is why it has come to perform just the abuses their country was designed to avoid.

[loomer]

I think it might be worthwhile asking a fairly basic question.

Herobrine, do you consider waterboarding and sleep deprivation to be torture techniques?

[Darth Herobrine]

I have not found any evidence of water-boarding anywhere, even on WikiLeaks. As for sleep deprivation, if that is torture, than loads of homework and early starting school is too.

[Metahive]

I would explain to you the whole difference between entering such situations voluntarily and involuntarily (and stop pretending, everyone knows you don't do any actual research ever), but then I remember that you have already been placed on the ejection seat and are about to get skyrocketed through the ceiling and so I save myself the trouble.

[Scorpion]

Sleep deprivation is not pulling an all-nighter, numb nuts! Sleep deprivation is being forced to stand for seven days straight or more, no food, no water, being beaten up every time you even so much as lean against the wall or start to close your eyes! You know what happens when you stand up for that long? Blood starts to pool on your lower limbs, making them swell. There are know cases of people whose legs and feet have swollen so much that their pant legs ripped and whose shoes had to be cut open to take the off!

How do I know this? It was one of the favourite torture methods (other being the infamous water drip torture and that classic, room that is too small to sit or stand up) used by the infamous PIDE (Polícia de Investigação e Defesa do Estado, Investigation and State Defense Police), the Portuguese fascist secret police, trained first by the Gestapo and later the CIA.

[PeZook]

I have not found any evidence of water-boarding anywhere, even on WikiLeaks. As for sleep deprivation, if that is torture, than loads of homework and early starting school is too.

You have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.

Imagine being put in an empty concrete room. There is no bed, not even a mattress or even a chair. The floor is intentionally kept damp. It is either extremely hot or very chilly inside.

The light is always on, and blaring. You try to curl up on the floor - but it's damp, so you can't quite sleep. Then, suddenly, extremely loud noise is played through speakers.

You stay in that room for hours. There is no comfortable position: all the walls are rough, everything is concrete, even your clothes are carefully designed to be difficult to wear. If you strip, you will shiver in the cold.

Hours pass. You are not even allowed a toilet break - go right there, or not at all. Nobody comes, nobody asks you any questions. Eventually, despite all that, you begin to doze off.

That's when angry men charge in and begin to yell at you. They scream at the top of their lungs, maybe even kick you - everything so that you won't fall asleep. They leave as suddenly as they came.

You stay like this for days. EVERY TIME you are about to get sleep, any sleep, you get yelled at, kicked, hosed down with frigid water ; You stay in your own filth. Eventually you begin to hallucinate, your pounding head feels like it is ready to burst. You become convinced you are going insane and would be ready to kill for the slightest piece, a sliver, a few seconds of sleep.

If you don't think that's torture, then fuck you.

[Flagg]

I have not found any evidence of water-boarding anywhere, even on WikiLeaks. As for sleep deprivation, if that is torture, than loads of homework and early starting school is too.

Fuck it. Why have rightwing nut jobs been defending water boarding for years now, dumbshit?

[Edi]

He's just trolling for shits and giggles. Don't feed the fucknut.

[Terralthra]

I have not found any evidence of water-boarding anywhere, even on WikiLeaks. As for sleep deprivation, if that is torture, than loads of homework and early starting school is too.

You're an idiot.

[Dalton]

Lying idiot is gone.

[The Xeelee]

Everyone has a cheek criticizing America for gitmo. When we use it we are protecting your FREEDOMS around the world. Whether you like it or not.

[PeZook]

Everyone has a cheek criticizing America for gitmo. When we use it we are protecting your FREEDOMS around the world. Whether you like it or not.

So far the only freedom you have protected for me is making certain people incredibly pissed off with anyone who's ever aided America in anything, which includes Poland. Not that siting secret CIA torture houses on our soil made us any friends in the first place, of course.

[Stark]

Hey Pez, hit 'view new posts' and examine the pattern thus displayed before wasting any actual effort.

Also I actually quite like 'protecting your freedoms whether you want to or not'. Its quite pithy.